Over the past decade, philanthropic collaboration has entered a new era of popularity and ambition. The number of collaborative-giving platforms is rising (see our growing database of philanthropic collaboratives), as is their annual giving. Collaboratives currently deploy billions annually: the nearly 200 who responded to our survey, who are part of a larger field, collectively deploy a total of $2 billion to $3 billion alone.[1]

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We attribute the recent surge, in part, to increasing interest in new ways of giving. Many newly wealthy individuals and families have become philanthropists without setting up foundations that have large staffs. Philanthropic giving through collaboratives already primed for grantmaking enables this lean approach. Collaboratives also provide donors the same advantages that mutual funds, private equity, and venture capital provide investors—portfolio diversification placed in the hands of specialists.

Bridgespan research over the past few years has highlighted the great promise funder collaboratives hold for unlocking more philanthropy and deploying it to advance social change. We’ve found: 

• They are one of four compelling pathways to increase philanthropic contributions among high-net-worth individuals.
• When executed well, they can produce significant impact.
• A substantial number of them have charted a course that differs from traditional philanthropy: They tilt toward equity and justice, field- and movement-building, and leaders of color.

To help release the potential of philanthropic collaborations, we’re eager to shine more light on their growing and evolving presence in philanthropy. This publication is the first of what we anticipate will be an annual report characterizing the state of the field. This year, we’ll focus primarily on painting the current landscape. In future years, we’ll offer more trend data as well as deeper explorations of specific themes.  

This report is based on a survey of funder collaboratives conducted in the summer of 2022. For this research, we defined collaboratives as entities that either pool or channel resources from multiple donors to nonprofits. (We call them “collaboratives,” “funds,” and “platforms” interchangeably in this report.) We reached out to over 400 such entities globally, and nearly 200 responded to our survey. (See “Research Methodology” for more on our research approach.) While this is a strong response rate, we acknowledge there are many initiatives and organizations whose input we didn’t capture. We also convened survey respondents, as well as facilitated a full-day meeting with leaders from 12 of the largest collaboratives, to discuss the findings and glean more insights. 

Key Characteristics of Philanthropic Collaboratives 

The philanthropic collaborative field is growing 

Donor collaboratives are significant actors on the philanthropic landscape. The roughly 200 that responded to our survey collectively deployed between $2 billion and $3 billion in 2021. That’s comparable to the $2.6 billion that flowed from US private foundations to donor-advised funds in 2021, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. But it’s relatively small compared to the $91 billion of US foundation giving in 2021, according to estimates from Giving USA’s 2022 Annual Report on Philanthropy. 

The number of funder collaboratives has been surging, with more than half having been founded since 2010.

Giving through these platforms is highly concentrated. The 23 collaboratives in our sample that each deployed more than $25 million per year collectively accounted for over 60 percent of overall funding. 

When asked which types of donors accounted for the majority of their funding, 42 percent of the funds in our survey cited institutional foundations, whereas only 15 percent indicated individual donors. Larger funds were more likely to rely on individual donors, with 30 percent of collaboratives that give over $25 million annually reporting individual donors as their primary source versus only 13 percent for smaller funds.

Collaboratives report having the potential to deploy significantly more dollars than they currently do. Specifically, survey respondents noted they could grant upwards of $16 billion in the coming year if fundraising were not a constraint—a multiple of five to eight times the resources they directed in 2021.

But fundraising is a constraint, according to the survey. Collaborative leaders cited insufficient awareness among donors about the value of collaboratives and donors’ preferences for giving directly to organizations as barriers to growing their funds. As one fund leader shared, “Funders are hesitant to fund through an intermediary. They want to retain control over where money goes.” Collaboratives also indicated that their own capacity to fundraise was a constraining factor, given the resources needed to cultivate and maintain a larger donor base.

Philanthropic collaboratives are active around the world on a range of social-
change efforts

Collaboratives are active around the globe. While there was a concentration of North-America-based efforts among the funds we surveyed (in part because they were overrepresented in our sample), the collaboratives’ work collectively spanned the world. We have existing and forthcoming research on funder collaboration in India as well as forthcoming research on giving to collaboratives in Africa and more broadly across the Global South. 

Collectively, funds are advancing a wide array of impact goals. When asked to name their primary issue area, the respondents’ answers spanned more than two dozen options. There were some notable concentrations. Eighteen percent cited gender equity as their primary issue area, and 11 percent named racial and ethnic justice. 

Note that collaboratives with this equity and justice orientation were less well represented among the larger funds, suggesting they face steeper barriers to fundraising than collaboratives with other primary issue areas. More specifically, among the 23 funds in our survey giving more than $25 million annually, one named gender equity and one named racial and ethnic justice as their primary issue area. 

Each respondent reported a median of six secondary issue areas, reflecting how these funds often work across programmatic siloes. Working in this cross-cutting way sometimes creates a barrier to funding, as many funds highlighted the challenge of not fitting cleanly into issue-focused funders’ strategies. Echoing a number of other responses, one fund leader shared that donors can at times “have very narrow agendas and want organizations to shift their work to meet [donor] needs.”

In our past research, we’ve highlighted that how collaboratives go about achieving the change they seek (their “investment thesis”) is as critical to their operations as what issue they are working on. Funder collaboratives are much more likely to focus on multi-stakeholder efforts, instead of, say, primarily focusing on regranting dollars to individual organizations. Sixty-three percent of the collaboratives we surveyed reported supporting a range of efforts and organizations working on a shared goal (e.g., resourcing community-driven change, cross-sector coalitions, fields, and/or movements)—more than three times the number that prioritize supporting individual organizations. 

Philanthropic collaboratives prioritize equity and diversity in their grantmaking and operations

More than 70 percent of respondents describe racial and ethnic or gender equity as a “core” or “intentional” focus of their work. This focus manifests in a variety of ways, from the funds’ primary issue areas (the concentration of funds focusing on either gender equity or racial and ethnic justice noted above) to their leadership, their grantees’ leadership, and their grantmaking methods. 

Collaboratives are far more likely to be led by people of color and/or women-led than traditional philanthropy. Nearly three-quarters of the funds in our survey indicated their leader was a woman (69 percent) or gender nonbinary individual (4 percent). Looking just at the US-based funds, nearly 60 percent reported that their senior-most leader identifies as a person of color.[2] In comparison, 62 percent of US foundation CEOs are women and 14 percent are people of color, according to 2022 research by the Council on Foundations. 

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