The crowd roared in anticipation.  60,000 people had filled the stadium cheering for the two legends in what was being called the greatest sporting event of the 20^th century.

He had been the greatest; but inactive for nearly five years.  Foreman on the other hand, was the heaviest puncher in the world, the current world champion, a mean machine. 

He knew he couldn’t win against Foreman by brute force. So, he decided to do the unexpected. He danced, taunted, smiled at his opponent, aimed to provoke.

“That all you got, George?”.

He kept talking, grinning through pain; leaning back on the rope taking Foreman’s blows on his body, waiting for his moment to strike. 

With each punch, Foreman hit harder, with each hit, he exhausted himself some more. Foreman believed he was in control of the match, duped by the hits his opponent was taking.

“I didn’t really plan what happened that night,” Muhammad Ali said much later. “But when a fighter gets in the ring, he has to adjust to the conditions he faces.”

In the eighth round Ali suddenly unleashed a lethal blow that knocked the exhausted Foreman down.

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. 

When you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup.

When you put water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot,

You put it in a bottle, it becomes the bottle.

But water does not only flow on predictable paths.  It is not just resilient or reconciliatory… Water is persistent.  Its persistence breaks rocks, wears down mountains; its tsunamic fury reshapes geography in a moment. Just like a well-timed punch from a has-been boxer can defeat the toughest opponent… in a moment.

Sitting in the media conference after winning her 10th Grand Slam and 3rd US Open, Bill Jean King announced…

“I don't think we will be back next year unless we have equal prize money.”

She was stung by the lack of respect and decent pay for women tennis players and chose her post victory moment to demand for equal pay.

Of course there was outrage, name calling, and everything that comes when a voice is raised. King focused her energies to rally 60 women tennis players and form the Women’s Tennis Association.

"The best way to handle a woman is to keep her barefoot and pregnant.”
“These women say they want to earn the same as us, and that’s ridiculous.”

Bobby Riggs, a retired tennis player but active misogynist, publicly challenged Jean-King to a match. He claimed women’s tennis was so far beneath men’s that even post-retirement he would defeat her.

The Tennis Battle of the Sexes is still the most watched tennis match with 90 million people tuning in.  Billy Jean King defeated Riggs in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

“If I could be the best, people would have to listen when I demanded equality.”, King had famously said.

She has won 39 Tennis grand slams in her career; was ranked number one for six years.

To beat the system, she had to flow like water. She had to rise within the system she wanted to change. And when King chose her moment, the system shifted, not just for her but for every woman who walked after.  US Open was the first event that agreed to equal pay for players of both genders.

Now water can flow, or it can crash!

Be water, my friend.

For all its gentleness, water also chooses the moment to exercise its will and crash with force, for change.

From our early years in school to our adulthood spent in families and offices, we are encouraged to accept things that happen to us, to adjust and overcome. We are told to be water. And we are told it is resilience. 

Adapting to circumstances is pointless unless we pace our flow and time our crash. For most of us, flow is business as usual- simply managing the requirements of our situation.  It is when we master flow, that we build our capacity to crash.

Philanthropy is associated with intention and generosity.  It flows into the cracks that divide people. To those who are deeply marginalised and far from access to resources of their choice.  It is risk capital for change.  And in that purpose, it has power.

We assume the biggest risk in philanthropy is the risk of failure, of wastage, and most recently, of compliance.  This reflects the delusion of our own grandeur.

The biggest risks in philanthropy are risks of delayed interventions, our inability to accept that best laid plans are failing or that people may not really need what we are offering. It is our belief that NGOs-the institutions that actually engineer this change, can make “impact” with only the fuel of good intentions and cheap labour.

Some of us are working to change the way philanthropy structurally engages with development.  EdelGive is determined.  We are actively investing in people, processes and institutions to foundationally strengthen the sector. What we inherit is not in our control, but what we do with it, is. 

We as members of the local and global philanthropic ecosystem will have to choose our moment of crash. Else we will lie stagnant in cracks not of our choosing. 

We have been shown how to choose…

By Muhammad Ali, when he took the punches, punished his body to choose how history would remember him.

By Billy Jean King, when she used her stature to change the way women were paid and treated in tennis.

And by Bruce Lee, when he transformed martial arts into a modern global practice in a world that had never seen it before.

When we choose to use our strength in a way that matters instead of the way most familiar to us, comfortable to us… it is then we become water.  It is then that we may grin in pain, look our impossible in the eye, and say-- 

“That all you got, George?”.