Philanthropy, social investment and collaboration: the importance of creating new architectures of action in the search for more resources and more transformation

In recent decades, the ecosystem of philanthropy and private social investment in Brazil has evolved, expanded and developed. We advance in the creation and adoption of practices and capabilities. The field has expanded and diversified, incorporating more and new actors with varied profiles.

At the same time, the public challenges we face as a society have also broadened and deepened. New themes add to secular challenges and the sense of urgency demands new approaches, more in line with a highly globalized and interconnected world, as this year has made so evident. Global action resonates in the local dimension in different ways, calling us to find new answers to resolve historical issues related to inequalities and the search for a more sustainable and dignified world for everyone who lives in it.

All of this only reaffirms to us that the advances and achievements of the sector need to be, above all, stimuli that reinforce the meaning and importance of thinking about new layers and stages of construction for collective action – in philanthropy and in society in a broad way – that are each more in tune with the transformations of a complex world that requires systemic approaches and, therefore, new paradigms of action.

In this search, one of the frontiers of our collective action that emerges as a priority is the expansion of our capacity for collaboration.

And when the focus is on the action of philanthropy and social investment and their contributions to the public agenda, the idea of collaborative philanthropy has been increasingly present: collaboration between philanthropic actors – donors or managers of philanthropic resources – in relation to mobilization , coordination, allocation and/or management of private financial resources for the production of public good is the definition through which GIFE has guided the concept of collaborative philanthropy.

Although collaborative philanthropy has its limits and is not always the best answer, the expansion of initiatives with collaborative architectures between donors and/or social investment organizations has the potential to add many benefits to the ecosystem:

• Expansion of the volume of private resources for the production of public goods, making it possible, through new architectures, for donors (people or organizations) with fewer resources and with very different degrees of engagement in the philanthropic universe to join new or existing initiatives.

• Mobilization of new actors/donors, by creating creative mechanisms that encourage donations in unlikely situations, such as rounding up cents at the supermarket checkout, buying a magazine when paying for medicines at the pharmacy or donation campaigns via crowdfunding (crowdfunding), with a lot of autonomy for its creators and the possibility of decentralized and participatory dissemination.

• Increased efficiency in resource management, since the costs involved can be shared among donors, rather than replicated, as often occurs with the development of isolated initiatives.

• Increased efficiency in the allocation and distribution of resources, since shared management requires the design and prioritization of common strategies, optimizing resources, avoiding duplication of actions and saving time for other partners involved in development and implementation.

• Expansion of the volume of resources for new agendas (contemporary collective challenges) or agendas that currently receive less attention and receive fewer philanthropic resources. Collaborative philanthropy architectures and formats enable many people (with varied donation potential) and organizations (including small and medium-sized ones) to come together around a common theme that has few large-sized funders acting and, even so, create support mechanisms that, by including a broad number of donors, add significant resources to contribute to the common cause, enabling new actions to be developed and increasing the contribution of philanthropy and the potential for impact on the agenda.

• Incorporation and improvement of strategies grantmaking, contributing to more donor philanthropy and ISP (and fewer executors of their own projects), strengthening organized civil society, public policies or other important actors and partners. This is because collaborative philanthropy architectures, in most cases, presuppose support for third parties and not the creation and execution of own projects.

• Encouraging the development of more participatory forms of grantmaking, contributing to the distribution of power and the engagement and protagonism of the public and/or supported communities and organized civil society in the decision on the allocation of resources. This is because the expansion of actors involved in the initiatives and, therefore, in the decision-making spheres, stimulates and opens space for greater reflection also on aspects linked to the choice of projects and organizations that receive funding.

• Stimulation and possibility of creating new thematic, regional or community funds, expanding the ecosystem.

Understanding that the field of philanthropy needs to move towards developing in all the aspects mentioned above, GIFE launched the Collaborative Philanthropy publication which delves deeper into this concept and its practical implications, including everything from an analysis of the complexity of the world we live in and its challenges, to the reasons why we need to collaborate more and better, to the mapping of several practical cases. In the book, the initiatives are organized into 3 groups: 1. collaborative co-investment spaces, 2. spaces for mobilizing and managing philanthropic resources and 3. philanthropic funds.

While group 1 brings together formats in which there is a deliberate intention on the part of its participants to articulate and collaborate through co-investment and focused mainly on coordination, allocation and/or management of resources, group 2 includes formats whose primary focus is to mobilize resources collaboratively, expanding the donor base, often promoting the engagement of the general population (or segments thereof) in donating, although not exclusively. They are, therefore, organizations and strategies created from the development of new architectures to collectively mobilize resources for actions of public interest.

Finally, in group 3 are the philanthropic funds, a format that can combine intentionality in the management and allocation of resources in a collaborative way, but also in the mobilization of financial resources through collaboration, that is, engaging a wide number of donors with different profiles.

In the context of collaborative philanthropy, funds are formats that house a combination of philanthropic and social investment resources, grouped under a defined mandate and established governance and that, thus, combine resources from different sources to support initiatives of interest. public.

When using this format, the initiative often incorporates the word fund in its name or description. In other cases, an initiative called an alliance – present in group 1 – or a philanthropic resource management organization – identified in group 2 – can create funds from the mobilized resources and present them publicly, also using this word. Although in philanthropy not all funds are collaborative philanthropy initiatives, as the resources can originate from a single source, it is quite common for the origin of a fund's resources to involve different donors who contribute their resources also because they know that they will add to the of other social investors.

A fund can also be formally constituted, being an organization in itself, or housed in an organization. It can be a perennial fund or a fund with a specific period of operation. It can be focused on a theme, have broader or very specific focuses, be focused on a territory with a multi-agenda, or even be a combination of a geographic focus with a specific agenda.

Regardless of the form they take, philanthropic funds have a huge opportunity to innovate in developing collaborative philanthropy architectures and be increasingly effective in mobilizing resources. The fund format facilitates collaboration and co-financing between stakeholders, offering donors a simple means to promote the impact of their social investments in alignment with their thematic agendas.

We have seen the creation of funds grow, gain space and relevance in the sector as a model for bringing together significant resources aimed at well-defined causes or territories. And there is no shortage of opportunities for this growth to continue expanding, both through the creation of new funds and through existing funds that take deeper ownership of the narrative and strategies that collaborative philanthropy can provide. May this growth trajectory continue to advance and increasingly bring public meaning to the action of private resources aimed at addressing our biggest challenges.