Achieving Change Together!

Catalyst 2030

Catalyst 2030 is a fast-growing movement that works to help its 1,700 plus members and 1,340 organizations improve their capacities to achieve social impact and realize the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. It is a social entrepreneur and innovator-led initiative that works alongside communities, governments, businesses, and funders to achieve systemic change. What is particularly impressive is the exceptional level of enthusiasm and commitment of members — demonstrated partly by the extraordinary amount of volunteer hours given — to maintain a highly democratic and collaborative process to drive change.

Giving Compass

Research conducted by Giving Compass (GC) reveals that only 9% of donors do comparative research before giving away money. This finding is quite significant, considering how much more effective one nonprofit can be compared to another. GC is unique in that it offers its visitors numerous options, including donating to nonprofits, issue funds & intermediaries, projects, or joining a giving circle to fund with a group of individuals with the same interests. The organization also provides high-quality information on a wide range of issue areas. Millions of people worldwide could benefit significantly from GC’s site if they knew it existed.

SDG Philanthropy Platform

According to NPTrust, foundations gave away close to $91 billion in 2021. However, giving from philanthropy is just a tiny piece of the pie. Much larger amounts of development funding come from governments. The SDG Philanthropy Platform (SDGPP) is a part of Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support. The organization convenes local actors and diverse sectors to create enabling environments. SDGPP is part of the United Nations Development Program, which works in 170 countries. Despite skepticism, UNDP has built trust and provides valuable consultative services in many of these countries. Successful partnerships with governments and related actors can increase development efforts enormously and prevent wasting extensive amounts of money.

Generation Pledge

Over the next 25 years, roughly $68 trillion is going to the next generation. And every year, many more people inherit large sums of money. Yet, we are doing very little to capture this massive windfall. Generation Pledge (GP) has already received $1.5 billion in pledges. GP works closely with existing and future inheritors through consultations to prepare them to achieve high impact with their giving. GP also asks pledgers to employ their social, career, and political capital. The organization’s founders are pledgers themselves and they are passionate about doing what we can now — including engaging exponential levers — to create a better future for all of us.

GivingTuesday

On GivingTuesday in 2021, $2.7 billion was raised in the United States alone. However, GivingTuesday does a lot more. It’s a global generosity movement that reimagines a world built upon shared humanity and has inspired countless people to give in different ways: volunteer, help people directly, or set up a group that serves the community. GivingTuesday’s Data Commons also works with partners across sectors and borders to understand the drivers and impacts of generosity, explore giving behaviors and patterns, and use data to inspire more giving around the world. 

VolunteerMatch and Similar Organizations

One very overlooked approach for achieving macro-level impact involves supporting the work of organizations that increase volunteerism, fellowships, leadership skills, and the number of people choosing to take up socially impactful careers. VolunteerMatch has helped close to 140,000 nonprofits attract 17.4 million volunteers, bringing countless hours of support to the nonprofit sector. Points of Light attracts 5 million volunteers annually, equaling $482 million. Other similar organizations include TapRoot Foundation, All for Good, International Volunteer HQ, plus more than ten others. The collective volunteer hours taking place because of these organizations is immense!

Charity Navigator and Others

It is easy to overlook the critical role organizations such as Charity Navigator (CN) play in increasing giving by building the public’s trust. In their own words, “Every year, millions of Americans rely on Charity Navigator’s ratings and resources to guide their giving.” Much to its credit, CN has become increasingly sophisticated with its rating system, which helps many donors make better choices while increasing their understanding of what to look for when choosing a nonprofit. Several other comparable organizations include Candid, Giving Compass, Give Well, and CharityWatch. Collectively, these and other organizations play an immense role in unlocking greater reserves of charitable capital worldwide.

Second Day

Imagine the impact we could achieve by significantly increasing the number of people involved in socially impactful careers. Among other things, Second Day provides colleges and universities with resources to encourage students to consider this kind of career. In their own words, Second Day is “Launching the most diverse and innovative generation of social sector leaders in American history. We are dismantling inequitable talent pipelines into the social sector through skill development, mentorship, and career planning.” Second Day created Launchpad, a comprehensive online portal to help anyone interested begin a social impact career.

Philanthropy Together

The landscape of philanthropy is shifting, and collective giving will continue to play a transformational role. Philanthropy Together (PhT) is on a mission to democratize and diversify philanthropy globally in order to expand who and what gets funded. Through training, research, and advocacy, Philanthropy Together is ushering in a new era of philanthropy that is democratic, diverse, and powered by people acting in solidarity — with a goal to scale and strengthen the movement to 350,000 diverse individuals pooling their time, talent, and treasure in more than 3,000 giving circles by 2025. PhT helps start new giving circles and helps existing giving circles thrive.

Millennium Campus Network

The Millennium Campus Network (MCN) is a Boston-based, global non-profit that unites and trains the next generation of social impact leaders. MCN is building a robust global campus network that enables young leaders to contribute to causes, drawing upon best practices across issue areas and borders. The organization has graduated over 10,000 students from 450 universities worldwide. Its Fellowship draws over 30,000 applicants annually. The program now has active cohorts at 200 universities worldwide. Ninety-seven percent of Millennium Fellowship Alumni graduate, and eighty-seven percent of those currently employed report working in social impact careers.

Council on Foundations

The national Council on Foundations (COF) has been serving grantmakers for 75 years. COF helps its 17,000+ foundations increase the impact of their giving. With members giving away double-digit billions of dollars annually, the Council is doing critically important work. COF is the leading sector advocate and works to increase trust toward philanthropy, something of extraordinary value. This is because building trust leads to fostering solid relationships — a necessary step for positively influencing the giving practices of governments, multi-laterals, and others — some of which provide far more development funding than the philanthropy sector. COF helped get 800+ foundations to pledge larger and more flexible multi-year funding to its grantees.

NEXUS

“NEXUS serves to unite next-gen philanthropists, impact investors, and social entrepreneurs to tackle the most pressing issues of our time. NEXUS has over 6,000 members from over 70 different countries and they work to catalyze new leadership to accelerate solutions to global problems. Their mission is to connect, inspire, and activate exceptional social innovators and the next generation of influential families around the world.” Everything mentioned is highly relevant because helping some percentage of 6,000 people in 70 countries employ extensive wealth to increase leadership, accelerate solutions across many thematic areas, activate social innovation, and increase the impact of giving does a lot to build that bigger pie of resources we need.

The Philanthropy Workshop

 The Philanthropy Workshop specializes in providing  its funding members with exceptionally in-depth, peer-to-peer educational programming — for learning, creating strategies, and facilitating deep reflection on one’s values and how to integrate them into their work. The organizations offers numerous action labs that cover diverse issues. TPW is a progressive advocate not only for equity and inclusion — something which is becoming more common — but also for taking actionable steps that are not so popular, such as making philanthropy work better for all of us by embracing a broader, future-facing lens with our giving.

Synergos

Synergos was founded by Peggy Rockefeller, daughter of the late David Rockefeller. Before it became well-understood in society, Peggy learned early on that with sufficient resources, poor communities have the motivation and understanding to solve many of their problems. She has worked on incorporating mindfulness into all aspects of the organization. In their words, Synergos is “a global organization building trust and collaboration to dismantle systems that create the most urgent problems of our time: poverty, social injustice, and climate change.” Its mission is “to solve complex issues around the world by advancing bridging leadership, which builds trust and collective action.”

Women Moving Millions

Women Moving Millions (WMM) is a global community of individuals who each make a minimum $1M commitment to organizations or initiatives advancing gender equity. WMM has grown to become a thriving community of over 360 philanthropists in 16 countries who have collectively committed over $850M to the movement. The transformative potential of WMM lies in community and its shared belief that together they are more powerful. WMM challenges its members to be better philanthropists through specially curated programs to spark learning, deepen connections, and inspire bold giving. It seeks to leverage its collective strength, networks, and influence to achieve more than just incremental impact – to drive exponential change, accelerating progress towards gender equality globally.

Global Philanthropy Forum

Attending Skoll and Global Philanthropy Forum (GPF) conferences are a must on many foundations and high-net-worth private donors’ to-do lists. The organization is an outgrowth of World Affairs. It has grown and now offers a Brazilian Philanthropy Forum and an African Philanthropy Forum. GPF focuses internationally, and it convenes funders to learn, collaborate, and bring together effective solutions to combat some of the world’s most intractable problems. GPF believes that success comes when you provide those convened with context, strategies, possible partners, giving vehicles, and the means for measuring success.

Exponent Philanthropy

Most donor-serving organizations attract many mid-size to wealthy foundations and private donors. There has been an ongoing need for an organization focused specifically on smaller donors with no more than a few staff members. For the last 20+ years, Exponential Philanthropy, which is donor led,  has focused on helping smaller funders with lean resources achieve an exponential impact. Each year, its members nominate, vote for, and award several members who have developed exceptional projects. In their own words, Exponential Philanthropy is a place “where foundation leaders and individual funders learn and inspire one another to make an exponential impact.”

NEID Global

Many international philanthropy organizations focus on attracting exclusively high-net-worth donors. While NEID Global includes wealthy donors, they offer their rich and nuanced programming about international development and philanthropy to donors with a wide range of giving capacities. Similarly, their membership is diverse in interest and geographic focus, and their programming seeks to offer cross-siloed learning. NEID Global’s mission is to help philanthropists address the world’s big problems, and their ambition is to increase both the quality and quantity of international giving going from the US to other countries.

Dasra

In its own words, “Dasra is catalyzing India’s strategic philanthropy movement to transform a billion lives with dignity and equity.” According to Google, India is producing an estimated 70 new millionaires every day. Dasra and its partners are taking advantage of this enormous growth by building a nationwide family foundation sector. Doing so could substantially support its efforts at transforming a billion lives. Again in its own words, “Dasra has shaped the philanthropic movement, with 70+ research reports, and actively worked with 500 corporates, foundations and philanthropists to direct INR 500+Cr (USD 80+million) towards the development of India. 

Brevio 

“Brevio is a feature rich, scalable platform developed in the UK, that streamlines and simplifies non-profit grant making by quantitatively matching grant eligibility criteria to the real-time funding needs of applicants. Brevio significantly reduces the cost, complexity and administrative burden of 1) researching for grants  – the applicant is shown only the grants for which they may be eligible, or 2) Applying for grants – applicant data is keyed in once but can be used across multiple applications. For grant givers, Brevio provides an integrated suite of tools that enable benefits including industry standardized, highly customizable application forms and reduced risk of fraud, error and duplication of funding through highly targeted eligibility and pre-award due diligence checks.

Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support (WINGS)

WINGS is the world’s largest global network of networks. The organization plays many roles, including helping to create enabling philanthropic environments, advocating for the sector, convening actors, conducting and publishing research, applying research through training programs, regranting funds, and being a convener, advocate, and consultant for diverse sectors. These diverse sectors it supports include governments, international aid and development organizations, philanthropy support organizations, advocacy groups, and foundations — some of which give out large amounts of funding annually. Very notably, WINGS’ WE ACT, #Philanthropyforclimate got over 500 foundations to pledge to take urgent action on climate change — many of whom had not previously funded climate work.

Panorama Global

Panorama Global is a social impact nonprofit and platform for social change built on audacious thinking, radical collaboration, and bold action. Panorama’s mission is to maximize collective impact on pressing global challenges. Today, more than 50 diverse social change initiatives on 20 different issue areas are based at Panorama Global. In its first five years, Panorama has powered progress as a convenor (bringing cohorts of windfall grant recipients together), a fiscal sponsor (providing back-office administrative support and more to dozens of projects), a grant-maker (resourcing 120+ organizations through hosting collaborative funds), a coalition-builder (bringing together 250+ partners to help prevent future pandemics), and a resource mobilizer (helping deliver 120M+ units of PPE to community health workers in Africa).

Alliance Magazine

It is easy to overlook the value that philanthropy publications provide to its sector. Many of today’s most influential thought leaders got their start from one of these publications. Alliance Magazine provides a platform for countless people to present new approaches or ideas, develop a presence, discuss, analyze, support, or debate existing trends, practices, or opinions. In their own words, “Alliance is the leading quarterly magazine for philanthropy and social investment worldwide. It provides news and analysis of what’s happening in the philanthropy and social investment sectors across the world.” Alliance Magazine also provides ample opportunities for philanthropists to convene to discuss a broad range of topical issues.

National Council of Nonprofits

The National Council of Nonprofits (NCON) serves 25,000+ nonprofits in the United States. It helps these organizations in many areas, including fundraising, financial management, advocacy, leadership, boards and governance, ethics and accountability, and employment. NCON is the leading advocate for the sector with chapters in 48 states. State chapters work on improving local and state-level legislation, while NCON does some work at the federal level. As a leading example, and in its own words, it “secured $50 billion from Congress in forgivable PPP loans for nonprofits and helped more than 100,000 organizations learn how to access those loans.” NCON writes briefs ranging from submissions to municipal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court.

TechSoup

Resource Alliance

The Resource Alliance (RA) exists to strengthen the social impact sector, by helping people responsible for resource mobilisation to develop the knowledge, tools and connections necessary to fuel their organisation’s work. With more than 40 years of experience, RA supports a highly engaged community by providing them access to innovative thinking, best practices, and collaborative networks that ensure they are constantly growing their ability to resource the organizations and causes they serve. It connects organizations across the world not only by thematic interest but also by geography. RA holds its International Fundraising Congress once a year from 19 to 21^st October in the Netherlands, see here for more information: bit.ly/IFC2022programme.

Simmons Center for Global Chicago

The Simmons Center for Global Chicago (SCGC) helps nonprofits focused on global development in three important ways, including 1) Acting as a fiscal sponsor, which is enormously valuable in saving nonprofits time and allowing them to grow before registering for nonprofit status, 2) Providing a workspace that cuts down on overhead and brings people together, and 3) Providing a members-only grant program. SCGC is also a catalyst for the globally-focused Chicago community by connecting nonprofits, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and business community partners. Imagine the impact achievable if every city had a center where diverse actors could convene and collaborate on national or international development.

The Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth

The Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth (CSP) is a research and teaching institution. CSP works at the intersection of research, wealth owners, and investment professionals to generate state-of-the-art knowledge on impact and sustainable investing. This knowledge is used to mobilize capital toward impact.

CSP’s team consists of 20 dedicated professionals. The research team works on topics such as investment impact, climate risks, microfinance, investor preferences, and the role of banks and advisors in steering investment decisions. The outreach team, in turn, designs and coordinates trainings for wealth owners and wealth managers in order to bring research to practice.

Impact Finance Center

Confluence Philanthropy

Confluence Philanthropy is a non-profit membership network of private, public and community foundations; family offices; individual donors; and their values-aligned investment advisors representing more than $96B in philanthropic assets under management, and over $3.5T in managed capital. Their missions is to transform the practice of investing by aligning capital with their community’s values of sustainability, equity, and justice. Confluence members represent a diversity of institutions, charitable asset types, personal and professional roles, and programmatic missions, but all share a commitment to values-aligned investing. Two national annual conferences, webinars, trainings, and specific investment and change strategies translate learning and connection into concrete action.

Center for High Impact Philanthropy

Interaction Institute for Social Change

In its own words, “The Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC) brings nearly 30 years of experience to our mission to build collaborative capacity in individuals, organizations, and networks working for social justice and racial equity.” Throughout these years, IISC has trained more than 100,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations. Its in-depth trainings take place over months to help students build practical skills integrated with learning mindfulness and partnership building. IISC provides services in four areas, including Consulting, training, network building, and cohort building. The organization works with individuals, nonprofits, foundations, and faith-based capacity-building, educational, community, and public sector organizations.