Failanthropic Story Hour: Ajah at TAG 2022

Photo by “No Revisions” on Unsplash

We went to TAG in San Antonio and hosted a fun event.

We're pretty big proponents of failure. It happens all the time, most things tend not to work out as planned. We think this is especially important to acknowledge, discuss, and learn from, in the social sector. Our failures should be identified quickly (and mercilessly) so that we can address them and incorporate their lessons into our work - especially the tech/data aspects to our work, which are even more fraught and complicated, making failure even more important to address in those contexts.

The philanthropic sector, traditionally, tends to avoid discussing failure - and even when we do, we tend to stick to abstract versions of it. So this year at TAG, we wanted to make a space for people to be able to safely talk about the failures they've experienced or witnessed while working in the philanthropic sector.

In other words, we wanted to spend some time complaining with some of our peers. So we did! While at TAG we brought together a group of folks who work in the philanthropy sector for an informal conversation (a Failanthropic happy hour) to vent, compare stories and commiserate together.

Despite the conference hotel unintentionally sabotaging the event by changing rooms, we pulled it off! We may or may not have had to steal some signs from a rival conference - but that is beside the point. It was really great to see a group of really smart people going around in a circle trying to identify the most egregious failure they'd witnessed and what exactly made it so awful. Having a group of people who could relate allowed us to collaborate and identify ways that the system could be fixed.

One of our favourite topics that emerged during the hour was how to offer advice to those who are new to the work. There is a lot of wisdom to be had in a room full of people who have seen the good, bad and ugly of the sector. We hope to do this again in the future at TAG and would love to see you all at the next Failanthropic story hour.