The Partnering Initiative – Systems Change Activation

What Should Philanthropy Fund Before the Partnership Can Work?

The Partnering Initiative argues that public-private-philanthropy partnerships can combine capabilities that no sector possesses alone, but that these collaborations frequently need what it calls “activation energy” before they can function. Its research across 46 partnerships identifies roles for philanthropy that include convening, co-design, catalytic funding, partner capability, de-risking and creating space for testing and learning. The important point is that philanthropy’s distinctive contribution may occur before a large investment becomes possible, when trust is weak, responsibilities are unclear, models remain untested and commercial or public actors cannot yet justify moving. This is close to the idea of funding the conditions for action, but it also adds a useful discipline: catalytic philanthropy should remove a specific barrier that is preventing other actors from doing something consequential. A grant that convenes organisations without changing their ability to act together is not automatically catalytic, just as de-risking capital that permanently subsidises an unviable model is not genuine leverage. The strongest philanthropic intervention may therefore be one whose success becomes visible later in government action, commercial investment, institutional capability or a partnership that no longer requires the original foundation to hold it together. The question I would ask of any catalytic grant is simple: what larger action becomes possible because this money moved first?

Source: The Partnering Initiative, Systems Change Activation: Empowering Philanthropy’s Catalytic Role in Transformational PPPPs, 2023. Read the executive summary