In working with dozens of philanthropic collaboratives, The Bridgespan Group has developed a series of iterative questions we believe can help collaborative leaders—along with the donors and partners that support them—sharpen their value propositions and paths to impact. We often walk our clients through these deceptively simple yet profound questions as they navigate choices before formal launch and at critical points in their organizational journeys.
We had the chance to workshop these questions with over 300 collaborative leaders and donors at the 2025 Global Summit of Collaborative Funds, co-hosted by the Gates Foundation and Philanthropy Together. We have incorporated this group’s input into this revised and expanded toolkit.
This toolkit is designed to support collaborative leaders and funders alike, and while the questions are numbered (given that we believe organizational form typically follows strategic function), it may be helpful to home in on the questions that are harder to answer. You may also need to go back to previous questions as the responses to others become clear. We also acknowledge that the illustrative examples on the following pages don't represent the full set of options available to collaborative leaders and funders. Please use them as starting points for your respective journeys.
