Close to fifteen hundred people gathered in Brussels at the beginning of April at BE Philanthropy, a one-day event to talk about the work of philanthropy in Europe. The convenor of this tri-annual gathering was the King Baudouin Foundation (KBF), Belgium’s largest public foundation and one of the largest in Europe. The Brussels conference brought together participants from around western Europe including European foundation leaders, advisors, researchers, intermediaries, nonprofit leaders and fundraisers.
I attended the event this year with Myriad Canada, a cross-border giving foundation launched under KBF sponsorship in 2018. I had first participated in the conference in 2023 when the world was still coping with the aftereffects of the pandemic. That year, as I noted in my blog on the conference, the pandemic, war, inflation and social unrest had darkened the mood in Europe. Since then, the continuing war in Ukraine and the policies of the United States towards Europe (and the rest of the world) have only added to the mood of worry. In convening the 2026 conference, KBF’s goal was in part to inspire philanthropy to step up its game in the face of the multiple pressures on European civil society and on the continent more broadly.
What struck me as an increasingly prominent focus for European philanthropy is the need to strengthen democracy in the face of the polarizing and systemic impacts on their societies of economic stress, the increasing use of social media and artificial intelligence, the dislocations of war and the felt decline of local communities. The rise of populist political leaders has been in response to this increasing sense of pessimism about the future and a longing for a past where people had more hope and communities had more social capital. Liberal democracies are facing political challenges to their legitimacy. At a deeper level, the forces of inequality and withering local and civil/social communities are pushing against a liberal democratic model that is being found wanting.
A panel discussion at the conference highlighted the trends and concerns that philanthropists are feeling about the threats to democracy. These threats are linked politically to the rise of more authoritarian and right-wing populist political movements and governments in Europe. As these gain power, they are undermining global coordination and collective action, as well as shrinking the space for civil society. Panel members agreed that philanthropy can play a more active role in supporting mechanisms for integration rather than division, in bringing people together to foster their understanding of other perspectives, and in funding independent and trusted sources of information.
Recognizing the challenges posed by threats to liberal democracy, European funders are reacting with increased commitment. They are directing money to community partners; some foundations are also delivering their own programs. The KBF itself has a Democracy program to “strengthen and defend democratic values”. It does this through projects and support to organizations working on what it sees as five essential components (and leverage points) for a healthy democracy:
The KBF increases its impact in this area by joining in pooled funds. For example, in 2020 it co-founded the European Artificial Intelligence and Society Fund, which supports organizations across Europe working on AI and democracy. KBF also participates in Civitates, a pooled fund dedicated to addressing democratic decline and strengthening civil society, media and digital rights in Europe, which was created in 2017. Increasingly the KBF sees its role as evolving from funder to ecosystem builder and steward, taking a long-term view about the need to invest in an information system that is pluralist and trustworthy, and that strengthens individual democratic agency.
Philea, the European foundation network, is promoting the defense of democracy as a priority for funders. A year ago, it published a briefing for European funders on democratic backsliding on the continent, with opportunities for philanthropic action to address the root causes of such backsliding. Philea runs a Democracy Network for interested funders who want to exchange on strategies to defend and develop democracy. Philea also takes a strong interest in democratic and pluralist media networks. It recently published a research report on how philanthropy is funding journalism and media in Europe. To quote the report, “the field of journalism and media is widely recognised by funders as essential for democracy, accountability and countering misinformation, but it still receives only a tiny slice of philanthropic budgets. Despite this, there is growing urgency, a slow but visible increase in investment, and a shift toward more flexible, long‑term funding, as the field grapples with a rapidly changing media landscape, unstable business models, and rising threats to independent journalism”. Many of the questions and experiences shared at BE Philanthropy are shared across the Atlantic in Canada. We also face multiple challenges to our social cohesion embodied in loss of local civic space and social capital, loneliness, youth isolation and continuing inequities of all kinds. We too are experiencing huge changes in our sources of information and in the organization of work. Our trust in media and in government is declining. Philanthropy’s response to these challenges is similar on both sides of the Atlantic: more investment in local infrastructure and neighbourhoods, more work to counter the effects of digital harms and to bolster public interest media, and more innovative uses of collaboration, pooled funding and investment tools. What we need in Canada is more urgency of action, and greater alignment of philanthropic efforts. We can learn from the Europeans who are already moving in this direction with a real firmness of purpose.
How many times have you heard someone make a broad statement about why foundations do what they do? More often you hear negative statements such as “philanthropy is a vanity project” or “philanthropy is about exercising power” or “philanthropy is about avoiding taxes”. You can also hear positive but equally general statements such as “philanthropy is about making social change” or “philanthropy is about taking risks and innovating”. The reality is that philanthropy is not monolithic but pluralistic. Foundation philanthropy is as diverse in its motives as the people who are engaging in it, as donors, directors or actors.
This is the starting point taken by Ariel Simon, author of The 13 Intentions of Philanthropy, a thought-provoking recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Simon is an American foundation leader who is President of Tambourine Philanthropies, a private foundation focused on health-related research. Simon asks the two questions that many philanthropists ask (or should ask) themselves routinely: what is our motive in this moment, and how should we best achieve it?
The answer is of course that there are many motives or, as Simon calls them, intentions. He believes that “American philanthropy is animated by at least 13 intentions, each with its own view of success and moral logic of what good looks like”. I think these could be applied beyond American philanthropy. They are not culturally or politically bound. And his typology of intentions is a useful prompt for any foundation discussion of its purpose.
Simon outlines in a table the 13 intentions, including their definitions, examples, and common tactics, and visions of success. He has grouped them according to four types: communitarian, transformative, declarative and humanitarian. He also notes that some intentions will overlap or co-exist. For the sake of the reader, I summarize them: strengthen community; give back or memorialize; build and sustain the commons; share joy and celebration; accelerate breakthroughs; tackle a major problem; advance flourishing; elevate values; build power; take a stand; respond to a crisis; offer a helping hand; promote potential.
There is nothing particularly new about articulating each of these intentions. The value of Simon’s approach is that he differentiates these intentions in a way that is helpful to the choice of tactics and to the expectation of what success looks like. The link from purpose to action to impact becomes clearer.
How can a better understanding of one’s philanthropic intention contribute to having impact? In answer, Simon notes that his typology of intentions “does more than clarify and decode different approaches to philanthropy; it also offers a broader and better approach to understanding and assessing “effectiveness.” It suggests that the term “effective” is inherently contextual and helps avoid the category error of foisting one intention’s vision of success onto another’s. It highlights that the best way to judge the effectiveness of an act of service or philanthropy is to ask why it was undertaken in the first place and what it sought to achieve.”
In this way, not only do we avoid the application of broad statements about philanthropy’s best or most valuable purpose, we can also avoid broad statements about the greatest impact of philanthropy. Simon mentions effective altruism as one philosophy about philanthropy that does not fit all contexts or purposes. Other philosophies such as reparative or trust-based philanthropy also do not represent most or best impact in all cases, although these approaches might fit with the specific intention of the funder in specific cases. What is so helpful about Simon’s typology is that it avoids moral or practical judgments about what is “best”.
Simon is making the case for a pluralistic philanthropy, not only because there are many equally valid intentions and many effective approaches, but also because a diversity of intentions makes for a more durable and more justifiable practice of philanthropy. A foundation can have a portfolio of intentions, just as it works on a portfolio of programs. It does not have to be limited to a single grand purpose (although it might choose to do that too). As Simon crisply states “there are as many ways to give well as there are to waste money. But the right test of both is best defined by the intentions that drive giving, not by a singular theory of how philanthropy should work.” Spending time on thinking through one’s intentions is time well spent.
I think that being clear about intention also will make it easier to communicate what philanthropy is about. Communicating intention to colleagues, partners and the larger public may help to counter some of the negative myths about philanthropy ‘s motives that otherwise circulate only too freely. It is important to articulate a mission or purpose, as many funders now do. But more is needed. There may be multiple complementary intentions in that mission statement, and therefore the clearer a foundation can be about what it intends, the better it will be able to assess what tactics to use and how to know whether they are effective.
Simon’s conclusion is one that strongly resonated with me: “I’ve come to think that the operative question for philanthropy isn’t always how to make the biggest difference, but how to make a meaningful one”. This might be the most important intention of all: to make a meaningful difference to the issue or challenge that inspires you to philanthropic action.
“The world is more dangerous and divided, and this moment calls for a renewed focus on strengthening the bonds that hold our society together. As Canada’s population becomes more diverse, fostering community and civic engagement and a collective sense of belonging is becoming increasingly important.” This is a statement from a federal media release announcing a new Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion. “The new [Council] will help build a more inclusive and united Canada; one grounded in our shared values, with a strong focus on community involvement, and rooted in the belief that far more unites us than divides us”, says the federal Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture.
There is a lot to agree with in this statement. The suggestion of shared values. The focus on community involvement. The idea that we are more united than divided. But is this perspective shared by the many people and by organizations across Canadian civil society who have been working for years to build stronger relationships and more trust and cohesion in our communities? Are their efforts bearing fruit? We hear more about the divisive than the cohesive forces: the negative impact of social media, isolation and loneliness, hate speech and racism, polarized politics, eroding trust in the media, in business, in democratic processes. While we may seem more united as Canadians these days in the face of political and economic threat, does this paper over some deeper cracks? There are clearly divides in Canada along geographic, socio-economic and identity lines, to name three. Will they worsen in spite of our current resolve?
And what can foundations and their community partners do to close the gaps and build more cohesion? Some foundations in Canada today are paying more attention to the need to strengthen our democracy. This can mean countering the forces of hate and division. This can mean building stronger information systems for public benefit. This can mean strengthening public service and safeguards for fair democratic participation. Ultimately, all of this involves building and reinforcing trust in our systems, our leaders and our fellow Canadians.
Yuval Harari the Israeli historian has said: “Democracy runs on trust. Dictatorship runs on fear. The moment trust erodes – whether in institutions, elections, or truth itself – democracy crumbles.” Trust is fundamental. And, as many have noted, once lost it’s not easily regained.
Some years ago, Liz Weaver, a former leader of the Tamarack Institute, and a deeply experienced leader of community-level collective efforts to solve complex social challenges, wrote a thoughtful paper on Turf, Trust, Co-creation and Collective Impact. In this paper she unpacked trust as an emotion, and as a multi-dimensional practice. As she noted then, “our cities are trying to solve increasingly complex issues. These complex issues require us to collaborate across sectors with people we have not collaborated with before. At the same time, levels of trust between citizens and groups in society are declining. Citizens are expressing a lack of trust in leaders, institutions and systems”. Citing Adam Kahane in his book Collaborating with the Enemy, Weaver talks about the ‘enemyfying syndrome’. People who do not agree with one’s own point of view or perspective become ‘the enemy’. But, she says, “creating enemies does not lead to co-creating communities. It leads to increased turf, isolation, alienation and a blindness to the needs, challenges and aspirations of others. Kahane urges us to embrace our enemies. To embrace enemies, we must understand how to foster trust.”
This remains both true and difficult. While Weaver goes on to sort through the ways in which one can understand and build trust, it is not easy or short work. It takes time, skill, personal commitment and opportunity to build empathy and common purpose.
Again, what can philanthropic funders do to help build trust within communities and among people? Weaver and others point to the interpersonal and local levels as the places where trust must begin. Funders do frequently work with community and local partners but more often in one-to-one relationships. Is there a role for them that goes beyond support for individual organizations? A timely set of suggestions are presented in a report from the Freedom Together Foundation, a US foundation working on democracy, justice and belonging. This report, A Bigger We, offers a strategy to strengthen belonging, bridging, and collective agency in the American (and our) democracy.
A Bigger We pinpoints agency – the act of exerting our will to remake the world around us – as the key to overcoming alienation and conflict. The lack of agency experienced by many people is, in the view of the report authors, not a crisis of demand but a crisis of supply. People want to participate but don’t have the civic structures and leaders to create opportunities for participation. Collective agency and shared leadership are required, they say, for sustained engagement in public life. They go on to say that philanthropy has a critical role to play in cultivating collective agency. The report suggests that funders can support the development and training of community organizers who can foster agency, fund research and data collection work at local levels to measure community agency and make long term and flexible funding commitments to community organizers.
We have some extraordinary resources for Canadian funders interested in strengthening community trust and agency at local levels. The Tamarack Institute is an excellent Canadian resource for funders. The Shorefast Institute is another. MakeWay and other intermediaries for funders provide opportunities for collective funding. But there is still a gap that Canadian philanthropy can think about filling as they consider how to support efforts to provide both agency and a sense of belonging across the country. It’s a gap in support for developing and supporting the movement leaders and capacities that will drive sustained trust-building within communities. We have some excellent leaders and thinkers already in this field like Adam Kahane and Paul Born who has given us yet another terrific guide to community organizing with his recent book Breakthrough Community Change. Perhaps a discussion topic for funders now contemplating how they can play their own part in building cohesion across our country?
At the beginning of the year, I and many others look back at last year’s expectations and surprises, and forward to this year’s possibilities. But in doing so we are often prisoners of our biases. We indulge in linear thinking and assume that the past will foretell the future. When I look back on my early January 2025 blog expressing wishes and worries for the coming year in philanthropy, I certainly did not anticipate the geopolitical and economic developments of 2025. Many of our assumptions about our relations with the United States and the rest of the world have been overturned. What could this mean for Canadian philanthropy in 2026? How might we think about what is to come?
We could start with thinking about thinking itself. In a recent article in The Financial Times by Gillian Tett, she quotes from a Swiss Federal Intelligence Service manual on “cognitive biases that hamper our thinking, such as “group think” (adhering to the cozy assumptions of our tribe), “anchoring” (relying exclusively on whatever information we see first, say on social media), “confirmation bias” (only seeing data that reinforces pre-existing views), “mirror imaging” (assuming others think like us), the “absence of evidence” bias (failing to think about the data we lack) and “survivorship bias” (judging data only with success stories, not failures)”.
That’s a daunting list of biases. How to counter them? The FIS manual, according to Tett, offers some useful advice: “Stress test your beliefs; think statistically; ask yourself what you know and what you don’t; periodically think the opposite of your assumptions”.
So with this advice in mind, I asked myself how to think more creatively about the opportunities for philanthropy in 2026. The landscape trends that I identified in early 2025 are still very relevant (for the list see here). But what is new? We now see even more clearly that Canada is facing both significant external threats and internal economic and social challenges of affordability, regional disparity and fraying civic engagement. What can philanthropy do?
If I look at the context for Canadian philanthropy and the nonprofit sector with fresh eyes, I see a contradictory picture that is both very dynamic and surprisingly static at the same time. On the dynamic side, I see accelerating digital disruption: new technologies forcing new ways of working, rising expectations of speed and customization, increasing pressure through cybersecurity threats. I also see more dynamism in applying technologies to solving economic and social issues whether in developing new energy sources, protecting water resources and innovating in sustainable agriculture, developing new approaches to maintaining a heathy aging population, or to designing liveable and affordable housing. The opportunities are great.
But I also see surprising stagnation: in organizational models, in governance practices, in the growth of networks and in regulatory frameworks. Shouldn’t the charitable sector be evolving more dynamically in response to the undoubted pressures that face it? Should we be seeing more alliances, more mergers, more shared platforms, more shared governance, more intermediaries? Admittedly, some of the rigidity in charitable organizational models and behaviours is because of the rules imposed by government funding requirements and regulations. And some of it is imposed by the zero-sum approach to competitive fundraising. A lot of it may be a function simply of lack of resources, and a need to survive that doesn’t allow time for creativity in organizing and rethinking structure and governance.
So what is philanthropy’s role in the face of these contradictions and pressures? In February 2025, I set out some thoughts about philanthropy and its contribution to the strengthening of Canada. I quoted Vinod Rajasekeran on the opportunity for philanthropy to help build our collective future. He argued that while philanthropy may need to rescue organizations under pressure, this rescue should not be simply to maintain a status quo but to help it evolve. I agreed then and I agree even more now. Philanthropy can use its resources for innovation. It can also use those resources for repair. In both cases, the effort should be to inject more dynamism into our sector.
Philanthropy can innovate by helping create networks, by building intermediaries, by supporting creators and entrepreneurs, by creating spaces for civic convening, by funding local voices, narratives and public journalism. Philanthropy can repair by strengthening organizational capacity, by providing resources to train leaders, by investing in needed technologies, by funding exploration of alliances and collaborations.
And philanthropy can raise its own voice to influence policy change, to advocate for more flexibility in regulation, and more streamlined government partnerships.
There are great opportunities for funders in our current environment. What do we need? We need more data and evidence (to know what we don’t know). Can we do that for ourselves as a sector and not wait for government to step up? CanadaHelps and MakeWay and Daro and others are building the technologies and platforms that will help us see patterns more quickly (perhaps with AI help?). We need more models and standards for dynamic managers and governors. We have thinkers in our sector who are doing that. Can we help them do more? We need new ways of supporting collaborative efforts across our sector. Funders are already stepping up creatively to support intermediary networks across Canada through the Charitable and Nonprofit Sector Infrastructure Collaborative Fund. There are many possibilities for more and better future building. With fresh eyes, I hope that in 2026 we will see more dynamism right across our sector, seeded with a focused boost from philanthropy.
It’s hard not to worry these days about what is happening to democracy in North America. Yes, this worry is particularly concentrated on the United States given the constant stream of news from the USA about polarization, conflict, and outright attacks on democratic institutions. We have not experienced these attacks in Canada. But we should worry about the frittering away of social cohesion in Canada as we too experience the impacts of social media disinformation, social isolation, and lessening of trust in community, which can lead to a lessening of trust in democratic institutions. We need to reinforce our degree of civic empathy. And philanthropy can play a role in this.
I was struck by this term of civic empathy in listening to the Giving Done Right podcast with Stephen Heintz, the long serving President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Heintz has been a leader in strengthening civic spaces, culture and empathy across America. He participated in the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship which went on a listening tour (well before the 2024 election). As he puts it, “listening is an incredibly important part of the restoration of trust. We need to approach each other with civic empathy as opposed to civic antipathy, which is what is practiced a lot these days. And empathy is more about trying to put yourself in the shoes of the other and understand them and listening to them rather than trying to persuade them. In our information environment, that is a difficult practice, civic empathy, but it is essential. I think we all need to retrain ourselves in this skill and really listen to each other. That happens in community settings.”
Heintz believes that the best way to rebuild trust by listening is to do it locally, in community, around shared interests. This requires the creation of community space and programming to fill that space and to draw people together. His other insight is that national funders can have more local impact when they collaborate. The Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship devotes a section of its final report Our Common Purpose to the importance of the “hyper-local world of libraries, playgrounds, public parks, community gardens, churches, and cafes” which are the spaces that support associational life. Heintz and the RBF worked with other major American foundations to create the Trust for Civic Life, to help build community gathering spaces and to reinforce civic life across rural America.
This idea of civic empathy of course also applies in urban communities. Without mentioning civic empathy directly, Local Trust in the United Kingdom gives unrestricted funding to 150 communities to enable them to transform and improve their lives and places as they choose. People feel listened to when they are given the resources to act. In Canada the Tamarack Institute is proposing a Strategy for Belonging aimed at strengthening communities and “sustaining our democracy by way of community-led involvement”. A more involved and empathetic community is likely to be a community that supports democracy. It is also a community that engages people in strengthening their own economic “nutrition” as the social enterprise Shorefast puts it. The link from trusting community to strengthened economy to engaged democracy is clear. DemocracyXChange at TMU is planning a conference in 2026 to explore these links and how to build an economy that strengthens democracy and “deepens civic trust”.
The idea of civic empathy and its connection to lessening isolation and polarization has been understood for years. Community foundations in Canada know this well and are rallied to the cause of Belonging by their national organization Community Foundations Canada. Local United Ways are also invested in funding community connections. The federal government’s 2025 Budget recognizes the link between a strong economy and a strong community infrastructure and has launched a Build Communities Strong Fund which will help to create more community spaces across Canada, where people can meet through sport, culture and education.
What about the role of Canadian private philanthropy in building civic empathy as a way of strengthening democracy? There are many opportunities to support local community infrastructure and individual foundations have done so. But there are gaps. And this is where more collective action may have more impact, as Heintz suggests. Building civic empathy is a complex challenge. Empathy and listening must work across socioeconomic divides. The places where people gather to work on a common activity, to debate, to meet each other, to read and watch, to garden or to play a sport are all essential. A strategy to build civic empathy can be built around them. Some private foundations have come together in Canada to support local journalism as a way to counter disinformation, and to make connections across all parts of a community. Other foundations have joined together to tackle urban and rural community needs for parks, for cultural spaces, for community gardens, for libraries. These needs are for capital to create and maintain physical space and to fuel the brains that animate them. This is “civic culture”. As the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (sponsor of Our Common Purpose) put it in in their 2025 report Habits of Heart and Mind, “ a strong and vibrant civic culture provides mechanisms to manage collective anxieties about who we are. It makes it possible for people to respect differences, freely exchange ideas, shape institutions, actively engage with diversity and build a more just society.”
In this time when Canada also is challenged to become stronger, a philanthropic commitment to reinforcing civic empathy and civic culture could not be more important.
Philanthropic funders today have more opportunities than ever for collaboration with others. But which others? The choices are many: other funders, other community partners, others in business or others in government. The reasons for collaboration are not hard to point to: more resources, more impact, more leverage and bigger change possibly. Collaborative funding can also offer the possibility of more innovation, more perspectives on a problem and more possibilities for intervention. But as I described in a recent blog, typically funders don’t engage in structured collaborative funding. Most funders choose rather to focus on funding individual organizations delivering specific services usually in a shorter timeframe. This is unquestionably needed and important. But could some part of a funder’s portfolio also be allocated to funding collaboratively, not only with other funders but with other sectors? Are multi-sectoral partnerships now more of a possibility, particularly as we consider the opportunities for investing in a stronger Canada?
It's important to distinguish multi-sectoral funding from collaborative funding although both involve collaboration. I cited some examples of collaborative funding in Canada in my blog. In these cases, funders align their funding or directly pool their funds, usually as a group of charitable funders making grants. Even this sort of funding isn’t easy. Active collaboration requires compromise, communication and usually a long-term vision. But there have been growing instances of collaborative funding over the last decade, particularly in the environmental, community development and poverty reduction fields.
Multi-sectoral funding partnerships go beyond collaborative funding. In many cases they involve some mix of nonprofit, corporate and government funders. The partnerships may also involve a mix of capital, data, expertise and policy development. There are many examples of these types of funding partnerships across the Global South as described in a recent newsletter from WINGS, the international network for grantmakers. For example, the Mesoamerican Reef Fund (MARFund), a regional environmental fund that focuses on preserving the Mesoamerican Reef, which spans Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras involves international donors, environmental organisations, philanthropy like the Oak Foundation and Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, and regional governments. Another example is the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) in Senegal, involving international partners, philanthropy like the Rockefeller Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, and communities in Africa. Launched in 2023, it aims to boost renewable energy in Senegal’s electricity mix to 40% by 2030. These partnerships are what is envisaged in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 17, which emphasizes multi-stakeholder collaborations among governments, businesses, civil society, and individuals to share resources, knowledge, and technology.
WINGS cites the benefits of multi-sectoral partnerships (MSPs) when they are properly managed:
At the local level in Canada, one of the most influential models of MSP has been the collective impact work fostered by the Tamarack Institute and its Vibrant Communities Initiative. Another example in Canada is the collaboration scaffolded by Shorefast to develop local communities and economies. Shorefast describes its work as “forging a new path at the intersection of business, philanthropy and community development”.
The most interesting opportunities for multi-sectoral partnerships in Canada today will involve a combination of innovative financing, expertise and advisory capabilities, supported by a backbone organization or purpose-built platform. Philanthropic funders have many opportunities as providers of risk capital and impact investors to engage in these partnerships.
Here are some examples:
Food and Agriculture: MaRS Discovery District is collaborating with the Farm Credit Corporation to launch a Food and AgTech Mission which “aims to mobilize capital, coordinate adopters and accelerate ventures that will strengthen Canada’s food system” through a venture accelerator and a corporate adopter cohort. These will be guided by a advisory body of experts and stakeholders from industry, finance and the innovation community, who will identify market barriers and enable large-scale adoption of agri-food innovation. The founding coalition members include representatives from Wittington Ventures, S2G Investments, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods, The Arrell Family Foundation and NYA Ventures.
Affordable Housing: The new federal agency Build Canada Homes offers an opportunity for the application of innovative financing partnerships to support the building of more affordable housing options, as described in a recent article in The Philanthropist Journal on how philanthropy can help Canada build its way out of a housing shortage. Nonprofit organizations such as New Commons Development already demonstrate the impact of a nonprofit real estate developer partnering with community organizations and attracting philanthropic investors to develop affordable and sustainable housing.
As WINGS points out, philanthropy can play a unique catalyzing role in MSPs. It can provide risk capital. It can also provide networks, expertise and convening power. Philanthropy can concretely engage in MSPs by acting as a convenor, providing patient, risk-tolerant capital, supporting experimentation and early-stage innovation and ensuring that marginalised groups and Indigenous communities have a voice in decision-making and access to resources. Local philanthropy can help to boost and empower local or grassroots organizations closest to the problems and able to work on solutions. Communities need to develop partnering bodies such as community trusts and co-operatives. Public sector bodies such as regional development agencies and autonomous public corporations need to acquire new risk assessment frameworks that permit more flexibility. There is much to do for all partners to pull off these MSPs. But their impact on the complex problems we face locally, regionally or globally, can be enormous. Certainly, worth allocating some part of a philanthropy’s portfolio for the long term.
I have worked with many foundations during more than two decades of my engagement with philanthropy. I have found that the best way to understand them, and to share my understanding with others, is to tell a story about them. Stories about what they do in the present are compelling. But the story becomes even richer when it is also about the past, about how the foundation got started, what shaped it and how it evolved. My 2022 book From Charity to Change tells many such origin stories about foundations. Their stories were an entry point into understanding their impact. Looking back made it possible to see how far they had come but what also held true from their beginnings – in other words, what still mattered most to them or what drove their purpose and strategies.
New foundations are starting up in Canada all the time. Many if not most are small family funds. But some have a different origin – and one of these is the Definity Insurance Foundation. This public foundation started operating in late 2021 when it received funding from the proceeds of the demutualization of Economical Mutual Insurance Company (now known as Definity Insurance Company). The story of this demutualization and what it led to is already well told in a 2022 article in The Philanthropist Journal, ‘Looking for the Good Way’. This year, I developed a new case study tracing the evolution of this remarkable foundation, which the foundation has made public.
In late 2021, the foundation was capitalized with an endowment of $100 million provided through the Conversion Plan for the demutualization. Well before this time, a founding group of directors had begun to work on a vision for the work of the new foundation. These directors had all worked through the demutualization process and knew each other well. Although they did not have experience in the foundation sector (only one had direct experience in the charitable sector), I learned when I interviewed them for the case study that they were all very open from the start to learning as much as possible about philanthropic practice, including both grantmaking and impact investing. The directors quickly landed on a vision of a healthy, equitable and flourishing world and a mission of working with charitable partners across Canada to tackle inequity, barriers to good health and opportunity, and climate-related challenges.
By August 2021, the board had chosen three funding pillars: healthy people, thriving communities, livable planet. The directors further agreed that they wanted the foundation to focus specifically on the health and well-being of marginalized people and to help communities reduce the effects of social and economic inequality, as well as the inequitable impacts of climate change in communities and economies.
Importantly, from its inception the foundation was not a corporate foundation but an autonomous independent public foundation. The new company, renamed Definity Insurance Company, mutually agreed with the foundation to enter a partnership, the first of its kind, where they would share the Definity name, include company and community directors, and where the company would contribute additional funds to the foundation annually for the betterment of community.
In December 2021, the board selected Arti Freeman as the first President and CEO of the Foundation. This was a major turning point. The board chose a leader committed to doing things differently, building on her own deep experience but eager to try a new approach in philanthropy. Arti drew widely on advice and conversations with a range of philanthropic and social sector leaders. These open-ended conversations touched on the needs and trends that other leaders were seeing, about what and what wasn’t working, and what high impact initiatives the new foundation should consider.
In June 2022, after six months of hard work, Arti and the board agreed on a new community investment framework (CIF). Articulating the goal of the foundation as “addressing the roots of health, social economic and climate inequalities” and based on six principles (equity, diverse and inclusive, leverage resources, collaborative, community-led and shared learning), the framework connected the three original impact areas (healthy people, thriving communities, livable planet) to specific outcomes, strategies and priority populations. The framework also set out five granting approaches: partnership grants, program-related investments, research, convening and sector strengthening. Finally, the framework included a learning approach aligned with the six principles of the community investment approach: using stories, data and evidence provided by grantees and communities themselves to share, learn and adapt strategies as needed.
The board also moved to diversify its membership, adding directors who had engagement and experience with underrepresented communities or with the areas of priority to the foundation such as climate mitigation and adaptation, health equity, food security, inclusive economic opportunities or knowledge of impact investing. The new group of directors quickly formed a collegial bond with the first group around their shared boldness of vision and their commitment to supporting systemic change in communities. By late 2023, the board had adopted an even clearer focus on social justice and equity, with community at the core. It also had identified four strategic goals: flow capital to underfunded regions and communities; take a holistic approach; advance collaborative innovation; and support all of this through organizational effectiveness.
Arti and the board have shared this thinking and framework openly with their partners and with the broader public. As I learned from my discussions, the foundation is setting itself apart with a conscious approach to collaborative learning and sharing. The foundation demonstrates an unusual combination at this early stage in its development of trusting relationships among board and staff and a shared commitment to structured learning and public accountability, recognizing that community has many of the answers already, and the role of the foundation is to invest and support its partners in alignment with their intention.
What can we learn from the origins and early history of the Definity Foundation? The case study has attempted to highlight some of these learnings:
It’s an ongoing story for the Definity Foundation. But as this first stage concludes, Arti Freeman sums it up: "I am honoured to have been given the privilege and opportunity to lead a philanthropic organization with a blank sheet. This journey has been grounded in humility and purpose, listening and learning every step of the way. The relationships we’ve built—with our board, our team, and our friends, partners, and colleagues in the sector—have been the glue that helped this foundation find its legs. Together, we’ve worked to build an institution that is not only adaptive, but relevant and responsive to the needs of our communities."
Why is philanthropic collaboration so difficult? Much is said about collaborating, but much less is done in practice, it seems. This is true even in the face of the complexity of the issues that philanthropy addresses, the increasing push for community partnerships, and the additional leverage to be had from funding and working cooperatively. Foundations in general are reluctant to co-fund, and unwilling to cede their control over strategy and allocation of their funds.
This is not unique to Canada. Collaboration among foundations across the world is not common. Collaboration across sectors is even rarer. Why is this the case? Three networks for philanthropy have partnered to study the barriers to philanthropic collaboration. The result of their analysis is summarized in a new report Building Foundations for Collaborative Transformation co-authored by WINGS , the global network for philanthropy, Philea, the European foundation network, and The Partnering Initiative, a UK nonprofit dedicated to professionalizing the practice of collaboration.
From June to December 2024, the three partners conducted a needs analysis involving over fifty foundations across the world through a survey, interviews and workshops. These foundations ranged from small to large and from family to corporate. A couple were Canadian; most of the others were European, South American or Asian. Most had an interest in partnership and therefore were eager to participate. The study sponsors note that this might lead to an overrepresentation of foundations already engaged in collaboration, but the researchers feel that their practice aligns with a growing interest across the philanthropic field.
So, what did all this research reveal? Unsurprisingly, the surveyed foundations report that they have confidence in their partnerships with community organizations and with other funders. But cross-sectoral collaboration is rarer. They have much less confidence and less engagement in collaborations with the private sector or government. More significant are the institutional barriers to collaboration, especially collaboration intended to bring about systemic or transformational change. Most foundations are not structured for effective long-term collaboration for systems change. They don’t have the mindset, the staff skills, the investment flexibility or the ability to understand or track progress towards such change. Indeed, they would say that this is not their mission. But for those who believe that private philanthropy must respond to the systemic economic, environmental and social disruptions that we face, the need for a collaborative approach is pressing.
How to meet this pressing need? How to become “institutionally fit for partnering “as the report puts it. Based on the responses of participating foundations, it appears that the gap is primarily in operational and implementation capabilities. The will is there but the way is not. “While foundations increasingly recognise the value of partnerships at leadership levels,” says this report, “many have yet to translate this commitment into the practical tools, training, and incentive structures needed for implementation”. Foundations interested in collaboration must reconsider their internal practices (funding cycles, application and reporting requirements, staff training and incentives etc). They may also need to invest externally to build enabling environments for collaboration, such as sector infrastructure, technical assistance to partners, and regulatory policy change. And they may need to reconsider their funding strategies to take a more active role in convening, creating and sustaining collaborative structures for themselves and their partners.
One such collaborative structure is co-funding. This is a structure that is still not widely used, for many of the reason cited above. Nevertheless, done well, it is an important way in which to leverage philanthropic funds. A recent piece by Nick Grono, the CEO of an American collaborative fund, the Freedom Fund, suggests how to set up a collaborative fund effectively. He cites three different types of collaborative funds: single donor-driven; funder co-created; and community-led. Canadian philanthropy has seen examples of all three types, many of them developed only in the last decade. In the environmental sector, the Clean Economy Fund has been operating for several years now to draw environmental funders together around the goal of a transition to cleaner energy. The Ivey Foundation has been an important driver of this collaborative fund, joined by other foundations such as Trottier. An example of funder co-creation is the Workforce Funder Collaborative, bringing together funders in the Greater Toronto Area to support workforce innovators. Two examples of community-led funder collaboratives are the Foundation for Black Communities (also cited by Grono) and the Indigenous Peoples Resilience Fund, both supported but not led by private funders.
Grono is obviously a fan of collaborative funds. But he cautions that there aren’t enough examples of how to establish these funds or platforms for matching funders with interesting fund opportunities. He wants a more systematic approach. In his view, “by sharing more openly about the origin stories of highly impactful funds, and by fostering more structured pathways to fund formation, philanthropists can ensure collaborative funding models thrive”.
The Gates Foundation has led work in this area and shared many lessons learned. The Bridgespan Group has provided much data and evidence. So, we do know more now about how to foster collaboration and overcome barriers to practice. As a new generation of practitioners rises to leadership in Canadian and global philanthropy, I expect to see an acceleration in collaboration that reflects a new understanding of how private philanthropy can increase its impact. In five years’ time, the question for foundation leaders to ask themselves will be “why aren’t we involved in a collaborative”, rather than “why should we go beyond our own organizational walls?”
Postcript: A Summer Philanthropy Bookshelf
For those who want to spend some of their summer reading more about collaboration in philanthropy or other philanthropic topics, check out my reviews of philanthropy books over the years, with links to be found here.
In early May I visited one of the most beautiful places in Canada, Fogo Island, Newfoundland. It is truly a distinctive place, with welcoming communities, stirring scenery and a long and meaningful history of human settlement. But over and above these attractions, Fogo Island features an extraordinary experiment in place building, led by the philanthropist Zita Cobb, the builder of the Fogo Island Inn and founder of the charitable organization Shorefast. For almost two decades, Zita Cobb has pursued a vision of creating “prosperous economies that serve people, nature and culture in local places”. Since 2004, Zita Cobb and her brothers, all born on Fogo Island, have been on a mission to build economic and cultural resilience on the island. Zita has not only built a world-renowned luxury inn on Fogo but has also helped to create a contemporary arts residency program, a local textile and woodworking social enterprise and many other economic development spin offs to support the resiliency of the Island’s economy. In doing so she has created a model for the application of philanthropic and private capital to helping Canadian communities and places flourish.
Zita Cobb’s thinking about philanthropic capital and its role in place-building has always gone beyond her investments on Fogo Island. The work of Shorefast, the organization she created, is to build, learn and share models of economic development that activate the assets of local places. In 2021, the Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economies launched a Community Economies Pilot with four other Canadian communities which identified four levers to strengthen community economies: attract and retain financial capital; access and leverage data; build local capacity; and create architectures for collaboration. In 2022, the Shorefast Institute published a program agenda for supporting community economies with concrete suggestions for activating these four levers. As it points out, “the project of strengthening community economies is an urgent national priority that can be one part of the toolkit in addressing the many overlapping crises we face.” This is even more true in 2025 as we face a potentially much worse threat to our economic future.
While this agenda is important for governments and private capital, philanthropic capital also has a role to play. Canadian philanthropists and foundations are already working on building social capital and reinforcing social cohesion. Many of them appreciate the importance of building strong bonds within communities through civic and democratic engagement. But, like many government policy makers, foundations tend to think vertically about issues – health care, food security, mental illness and addiction, green space and housing – and lack a framework for investing in horizontal place-based strategies to deal with a set of interrelated problems in community. This is admittedly difficult to do and arguably it is not in the mandate of foundations to lead the way in funding broad-based community development strategies. Nevertheless, foundations can take advantage of the deep knowledge already available through literature and practice around place based and community economic development. Shorefast’s research and pilots build on the work of many other Canadian thought leaders – the Coady Institute and its work on asset-based community development; the Tamarack Institute and its work with Vibrant Communities; Social Capital Partners; the Canadian Urban Institute, and others.
Many of these organizations are supported by philanthropy. Foundations such as McConnell, Maytree, Metcalfe, Atkinson, and community foundations across Canada have invested in place-based initiatives to strengthen local communities, whether urban or rural. Newer foundations such as NorthPine and Definity, in addition to Shorefast, are choosing to invest in communities as a priority. But they are not being guided by a common framework around their community investments.
If philanthropic funders took as a frame the four levers of capital, capacity, data and architecture for community collaboration, they would be guided by what the research suggests are the most essential elements to thriving in place. Too many foundations focus only on the social and cultural aspects of thriving community. The vertical silos that divide social and industrial policy in government are mirrored in philanthropy which often limits itself to meeting social needs (poverty, illness, food security, etc) rather than strengthening economic assets. Developing strategies to combat community loneliness, isolation, poverty and inequality cannot be divorced from building capability for entrepreneurship, training, and civic infrastructure.
Philanthropic capital can be deployed in many ways to strengthen communities: through investments in financial instruments such as community bonds, mortgages, and community finance funds; through direct impact investments in social enterprises and housing trusts; through grants to collect data, train community leaders and provide support to community dialogues and tables (such as the support to neighbourhood tables provided through the Collective Impact Project in Montreal). I would suggest that philanthropy also can be more urgently and effectively deployed in two areas that are underfunded by other sources of capital: knowledge building, and advocacy for regulatory and policy change. Shorefast itself provides a model for investing in knowledge building both within communities and across sectors. By sponsoring research, convening dialogues, and creating or repurposing spaces in community for dialogue, philanthropic funders can support community voice and consensus-building, and bring business and government decision-makers and investors to the community table. Philanthropy can also fund the development of policy solutions and support advocacy for those solutions to be adopted, in collaboration with community leaders. Many legal and regulatory policies could be reformed for example to support more community investment in local assets and to facilitate creative philanthropic capital deployment to communities.
When I left Fogo Island, Zita Cobb gave me the gift of a beautifully crafted wooden doorstop, made in a Fogo Island workshop. She reminded me that if we hold doors open to each other across our country, “we can do a lot, if we do it together.” Philanthropy can play that invaluable role of holding doors open for citizens, businesses and governments to come together to strengthen community, if we are bold enough.