Podcast

Philanthropy, Secrets to Success with Clare Woodcraft

2026-10-14 · By Clare Woodcraft, Fellow, Cambridge Judge Business School

Clare Woodcraft explores how philanthropy can achieve greater social impact by taking risks, backing experimentation and funding what business and government cannot. Drawing on three decades in development and foundations, she shares lessons on catalytic capital, long-term funding, learning from failure and using philanthropic resources to help promising solutions grow and drive systems change.

If your philanthropy looks like business as usual, Clare Woodcraft thinks you’re probably getting it wrong.
Her challenge is blunt: take risks. Back the unproven. Fund what businesses won’t and governments can’t. If philanthropic money simply follows the safest route, is it wasting its greatest advantage?

In this episode of Social Impact Pioneers, Clare joins Katie to challenge comfortable assumptions about charitable giving, strategic philanthropy and systems change. With three decades across international development, business and foundations, Clare shares her secrets to success and she argues that good intentions are no substitute for evidence, and writing a cheque is no guarantee of impact.

As former CEO of Emirates Foundation and Deputy Director of Shell Foundation, Clare has tested these ideas in practice. She recalls co-writing a report that put failure on the record and identified ten ingredients for success. The uncomfortable lesson? Short funding cycles, scattered priorities and reluctance to admit mistakes can undermine the change donors claim to want.

Ten practical lessons emerge from her wider argument: understand the problem; listen to communities; follow the evidence; focus your resources; commit for the long term; back experimentation; admit failure; adapt when something isn’t working; mobilise partners; and fund the capabilities that make solutions grow.
Drawing on Catalytic Capital: Unleashing Philanthropy for Systems Change, the book she co-edited, Clare explains how grants can pay for research, test technologies and reduce risks that keep other investors away. Philanthropy can make things possible before they become commercially attractive or politically achievable.

She also challenges foundations to look beyond annual grant budgets. Why preserve endowments indefinitely while urgent problems deepen? Could corporate balance sheets, family wealth, repayable grants and loan guarantees unlock more capital for public good?

For philanthropists, foundation boards, corporate social impact leaders and social entrepreneurs, this is a call to reconsider what responsible stewardship means. Protecting money matters. So does putting it to work where other funding cannot reach.

Clare’s invitation is demanding: be transparent, stay the course and bring others with you. Listen for a provocative conversation about venture philanthropy, catalytic capital and the courage to fund lasting change. The question is whether you’re being brave enough.

Links:

Reimagining Philanthropy in the Global South: www.cambridge.org/core/books/catal…912564CE19914D42
www.cambridge.org/core/books/reima…F2B28B95F6198607

Assessing Aid, A World Bank Policy Research Report: documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/6…-and-why.pdf

Shell Foundations ”failure” report which outlines the ten secrets to success!: drive.google.com/file/d/1NtSjOdND…view?usp=sharing

And if you enjoyed this conversation, take a listen to:
BUILDING INCLUSIVE ECONOMIES WITH JOE SCANTLEBURY – businessfightspoverty.org/building-inc…scantlebury/