In our new Supporter Spotlight series, we are inviting our community of supporters to share their stories and passion for LGBTQI equality. We recently spoke with Charlie Melvoin and Paolo Fresia about their philanthropy and support of LGBTQI human rights worldwide.
Thank you for joining us today! Please could you introduce yourselves?
Charlie: Sure! I’m Charlie, I’m originally from LA and now live in London with my husband Paolo. We met a decade ago while on the same master’s programme at Cambridge – he was my first and last boyfriend! We have two children via surrogacy, a two-year-old and a four-month-old. After various tech jobs, mainly in China, I started my own connected fitness company called Zygo which provides the first technology solution for underwater streaming audio and live coaching, with an app of guided workouts.
Paolo: And I’m Paolo, I’m originally from Torino in Northern Italy and then moved to the UK for University. I’ve also lived in Asia and the US with Charlie, and we now live in London together. I started my career in finance and was unsatisfied with the lack of purpose, so decided to focus on my social and environmental impact by working for NGOs. I then lost my mother and inherited some money, allowing me to combine my financial and NGO experience to build a portfolio of impact investments. For the past three years my full-time job has been to deploy this portfolio and speak about it, aiming to inspire others to create more meaning with their money.
Could you tell us more about your approach to philanthropy?
Paolo: What I realised from the beginning is that a lot of traditional philanthropy has been about the donors. That never sat well with me. It should really be about resourcing people who are trying to tackle the world’s challenges in a proactive and systemic way. So, I developed a strategy to make sure that we maximise this kind of impact in our investments. Our approach falls into three main areas: evidence-based effective philanthropy; supporting social and grassroots movements; and support for causes close to the heart.
So, in our evidence-based philanthropy we look explicitly at the best interventions from a social and technical point of view that are going to tackle some of the big issues in the world. This is a fantastic approach for areas where we know what the problem is, and we know what the solution is.
But many issues and inequalities are best addressed by grassroots activists and movements, which is why we also focus on supporting this. These are often the biggest, most systemic challenges about equality and human rights. For example, in advocating for LGBTQI equality you need to start from the grassroots to be able to influence the system and policy makers. The inspiration for that started with the Guerrilla Foundation, an organisation established by my friend Antonis Schwarz. I was privileged enough to be able to serve on their board, and now to be a small part donor to their efforts. And, of course, GiveOut is now a very thematic LGBTQI complement to our broader social justice strategy.
And finally, we also leave space to support issues that come from the heart. These investments aren’t systematic and are potentially not as impactful, but they’re still very important. Especially during the COVID crisis, it’s important to look around yourself, consider your neighbours, and ask how to activate your resources to support those around you.
Charlie: And that approach of giving from the heart is what I grew up familiar with on a smaller scale. That was my family’s traditional, or more American and less sophisticated, approach which I think is common to a lot of people. You don’t have the energy or skillset to do the research that Paolo’s done, so it’s the stuff that inspires you which you support. There’s a place for that certainly, but it’s been really interesting to me to see that’s only a small sliver of the broader picture.
Do you think there’s a difference between philanthropy and charity?
Paolo: Yes, I see a big difference between terms like charity and philanthropy. In charity, you often assume a certain power dynamic where there’s a giver and a grantee. And then, in what I’d think of as strategic philanthropy, people and institutions give surplus resources to transfer that power through appropriate governance structures, and smartly use that capital to really try and make a difference in a strategic way. Strategic philanthropy also works to transfer power to the people who are experiencing the issue at hand, giving them the resources, freedom, and patience to discover the right tools to make progress.
So, I think that philanthropy needs to be more selfless and about the impact rather than the donor. That’s very much needed in this space. Of course, it’s a really hard process to go through as a wealth holder, to give up this power, and so I have tremendous respect for the journey that everyone needs to go through to become this type of progressive philanthropist.
What advice would you give to people who are thinking of starting their philanthropic journey?
Paolo: I think a lot of people don’t become philanthropists because they don’t have this sound financial planning. Without good financial planning you don’t have the confidence to be able to take risks in other parts of your portfolio. So first, you come together as a family and you figure out what type of life you want. Then you work out the amount of excess resources you have so that you can start figuring out a plan to maximise your impact across your investments – and I do see investments as both philanthropic and financial. So if you look at our investments on 100% Sustainability you will find anything ranging from stock market funds to our support of GiveOut, because we really view every investment as a blend of social, economic, environmental, and systemic returns.
Charlie: The networks you’ve plugged into also give you more confidence because they give you experience and a shared sense of mission. Those are a more recent invention facilitated by fantastic online programming and discussion groups, but that make the approach feel far more proven. Otherwise, you end up stuck as an individual who is trying to engage in philanthropy somewhat haphazardly.
Why are you passionate about LGBTQI rights and equality?
Charlie: On a very personal level, it’s something that we benefit from. I was lucky to grow up in places that, on a global level, are among the most progressive cities in the world. But still there’s discomfort, and still as a married couple on the streets of London we’re conscious of holding hands, of forms at school that say “mother and father”. Still from our very privileged vantage point we get a sense of a certain amount of heteronormative, conventional, and institutional thinking. And that’s in our little London bubble. Through our travels we’ve become very aware of our position and want to do what we can to support causes that are in line with what we believe should be a fundamental equality and human right.
Paolo: Yes, it really stems from that privilege. As LGBTQI people we’ve all gone through struggles with our families and the media, but we are so privileged. In many ways we’re the first ones in the world to be able to lead a life which is mostly “normal”. We don’t even think about it on a day-to-day basis, and that’s just not the case in many other places in the world. I think that’s what attracted us to GiveOut. You work to support LGBTQI activism in the hardest contexts in the world, to the point where you work confidentially with some of your grantees because it’s just so sensitive! And that’s really, at least to me, an indication that you’re thinking very methodically about how we resource individuals in the hardest to reach contexts so that we can make headway and hopefully get to the level of privilege that we enjoy here in the UK. So that’s why supporting LGBTQI rights is important to us, it combines something very personal to who we are with something which is absolutely needed in our societies.
Were there any moments that made think about LGBTQI rights and equality on a global scale?
Charlie: I worked for a summer in Uganda during University and attended a conference where I was the only non-Ugandan. Everyone was coming to say hello to make me feel welcome, and started asking all these questions, like “do you like Obama?”. And I’m like “of course I like Obama!”. As so many people on the continent were taking ownership of him, I was expecting this unanimous praise for his leadership. But instead, they criticised Obama’s leadership as too liberal and were angry that he had allowed gay marriage. One person also told me that they would kill their son if he were gay, and shared that gay people are tied to the back of a truck and dragged through the streets in their village. I wasn’t out yet but was fairly certain about my sexuality, and I felt this immense shame for not being able to speak out. Where I grew up, social stigma was the main struggle, and so I felt like I should have the courage to own that part on myself.
The contrast between this incredible warmth and that reaction was extreme. It was almost like they were trying to test my stance on the subject. And I just felt so saddened by that, but it’s a product of the context and education. It made me realise that individuals aren’t to blame. It’s policy, it’s a government that published the names of gay people so that they can be attacked and killed. And by creating this culture of fear, they’re achieving their goal of keeping people from coming out. So that’s why it’s inspiring seeing these truly courageous activists, and I am so glad to be able to support their work.
Paolo: Yes, we’ve been lucky enough to travel to so many places, and some of the places we’ve been to are very repressive when it comes to LGBTQI rights. However when we present ourselves, for example to a tour guide, at some point people understand and know that we’re a couple. And at the level of people, there’s always been so much understanding and friendliness, even if it’s completely foreign to their thinking, policy environment, or culture. But there’s this fundamental good in people’s attitude, and in the end there’s a common good that’s not reflected in the policy or national environment. Personally, what’s inspired me about your work, is that it thinks about how to extract this fundamental good from people to bring it to a more political and policy level.
But in contexts where there’s more surface level acceptance of LGBTQI people, and I’m thinking about Southeast Asian countries where we’ve worked or in the Pacific for example, my emotion has always been one of anger. Partially because it reminds me of attitudes in Italy, where it’s a politically, socially, and religiously oppressive context but there’s a sense of “you can do it, but we won’t approve”. For example, in Myanmar I was working with factory workers, many of whom were trans and were systematically denied healthcare and HIV treatment. And in Polynesia there’s social institutionalisation of a third gender, but no legal rights. And I mean, that just makes me angry. It does not comfort me the LGBTQI people are socially accepted in these countries. They’re not, they’re just deprived of the essence of what it means to be a human being, and it’s a façade.
And finally, how do you feel when you hear about the vital work that you’re making possible?
Paolo: A while ago we attended a webinar where Amir Ashour from IraQueer spoke. Seeing how people like him are working in such difficult contexts is truly inspiring for us and something we wish we could resource more. So when I see activists working in these challenging contexts, I feel extremely proud of playing a small part in resourcing that. The combination of advocacy and activism that GiveOut supports is particularly powerful because it looks at how you enable broader systems change. It starts with the grassroots and extends to reach political systems. I also like the second degree of impact that one can have by funding an organisation like GiveOut, that is an intermediary and builds a space for more philanthropy to flow to this movement. That’s a meta-impact that’s very important in terms of field building. It really shows a thirst for not settling for just being a standard, run-of-the-mill charity, and thinking really methodically about what is neglected, what is important, what is the most urgent, and let’s go there!