What is a Donor Collaborative?
A donor collaborative is a group of funders with a shared interest who work together to increase their impact.
- A donor collaborative can be as intimate as a local giving circle made up of four friends or as big as ClimateWorks or the Audacious Project, both of which bring together some of the world’s biggest donors and give hundreds of millions or more annually.
- Donor collaboratives might also be called collaborative funds, pooled funds, group funds, philanthropic collaboratives, or funder collaboratives.
- Donor collaboratives pool resources to make a bigger impact than any individual donor could make on their own.
- In addition to being pooled funds, donor collaboratives are also often places where funders come together to learn, share insights, and develop strategies to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges, from poverty to climate change.
- Members and funders of donor collaboratives can be individuals, foundations, or a combination of different types of donors. Donor collaboratives are especially appealing to funders looking to maximize their impact or address the biggest issues in a strategic and effective way.
What do donor collaboratives fund?
Donor collaboratives come together to make an impact on a particular issue, community, or place. There is a donor collaborative focused on almost any issue you can think of. Collaboratives can be formed to address gender equity or the environment or any other cause. Some donor collaboratives make grants for a specific geographic area or a specific demographic community.
Examples of different types of donor collaboratives include:
- Donor collaboratives that make grants for a single issue or cause. Blue Meridian, one of the nation’s largest donor collaboratives, gives to reduce poverty among young people and families. Because even a “single issue” is always interconnected with other issues, Blue Meridian’s anti-poverty funding goes to a range of related issues, from criminal justice reform to mental health to economic opportunity.
- Donor collaboratives that fund across many issues. The Audacious Project aims to support “big ideas” to address “the world’s most urgent challenges.” Among the issues they have addressed so far are health, the climate, and poverty. Donor collaboratives at the Proteus Fund, meanwhile, support social justice movements working across intersecting issues. Current collaborative funds hosted by Proteus include the Rights, Faith, and Democracy Collaborative, which supports LGBTQ+ and other activists and organizations protecting rights in the face of religious extremism, and the Piper Fund, which gives to grassroots groups focused on democracy.
- Donor collaboratives organized around identity or a particular community. The Women Donors Network organizes collaborative funds focused on issues including abortion rights, gender equality, and racial justice. The Jewish Funders Network convenes collaborative funds that give for causes such as Jewish arts and culture.
- Place-based donor collaboratives focus on a particular place or region. The Ohio Transformation Fund, for example, aims to transform criminal justice across the state. Some collaborative funds give globally, such as the ocean-protection group Oceans 5, or nationally, as with Fundo Brasil; the India Climate Collaborative; or the Trust for Civic Life, which invests in civic infrastructure in rural communities across the United States.
- Sometimes, a donor collaborative comes together for a specific purpose in a limited period of time, such as when the MacArthur Foundation, Intel Foundation, and other large donors came together to make a major combined impact as The Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education, a collaborative that sought to improve the quality of education for underserved children around the world.
As you can see from these few examples, donor collaboratives fund a wide variety of issues and move resources to many communities. A survey of 280 donor collaboratives around the world by the philanthropy consulting firm Bridgespan Group found that in the years 2021-2023, top issue areas addressed by philanthropic collaboratives included gender equity, climate change, and racial and ethnic justice.
Who funds donor collaboratives?
Donor collaboratives’ funders are as varied as their focuses. Some donor collaboratives are funded by lots of small, “everyday” donors. A giving circle at a community foundation, for example, might be funded by a group of friends who each contribute a few hundred dollars a year to collectively make an impact on an issue they care about.
That said, what most people are talking about when they refer to “donor collaboratives” are larger-scale initiatives by big philanthropic players seeking to maximize their impact by giving together strategically. The gender-equality-focused philanthropic collaborative Co-Impact is funded by large foundations including Gates and Rockefeller and mega donors like MacKenzie Scott. Blue Meridian, one of the largest funders of anti-poverty work in the United States, counts among its participating funders the Gates Foundation, Ballmer Group, and MacKenzie Scott, among many other very large philanthropies. As you can see, many large funders participate in multiple donor collaboratives. The Audacious Project is a favorite among billionaire mega donors.
How do donor collaboratives work?
Donor collaboratives pool resources from multiple funders and then make grants to nonprofits from these pooled resources. In addition to making grants, many donor collaboratives provide other forms of support to nonprofits, such as leadership development or trainings. Some donor collaboratives also engage in philanthropic advocacy or policy advocacy. Because they are created to maximize philanthropic impact, donor collaboratives often engage in strategic planning and strategic giving to ensure they are giving as effectively as possible for the issues they care about.
- Grantmaking processes vary from collaborative to collaborative, though donor collaboratives tend to have more progressive philanthropic practices than philanthropy as a whole. The Bridgespan Group’s survey found more participatory grantmaking and more unrestricted grants coming from donor collaboratives than from overall philanthropy in recent years.
- Structurally, most donor collaboratives are public charities or are fiscally sponsored by another nonprofit, such as the collaborative funds held at Borealis Philanthropy. A few donor collaboratives are philanthropic LLCs.
- Large donor collaboratives often have large staffs, while small ones may have a very small staff or no staff at all. Some small pooled funds hosted at other organizations — such as giving circles at a community foundation — are supported by the host organization’s staff. Bridgespan’s survey found that today’s donor collaboratives are more likely than traditional philanthropic organizations to be led by people of color and/or women. Some donor collaboratives engage in peer learning as part of their efforts to give most effectively. This is one of several areas of overlap between donor collaboratives and funder affinity groups.
How can my organization get a grant from a donor collaborative?
Because donor collaboratives each have their own processes, fundraising from a donor collaborative is much like fundraising from foundations and individual donors in general. They are all different, so a fundraiser needs to individually research funder collaboratives that make grants for the issue or community your nonprofit addresses and learn about their respective guidelines and processes to apply.
Inside Philanthropy’s Grant Finder has profiles of hundreds of funders that include insider takes on each funder’s grantmaking and how to get your foot in the door.
What is the role of donor collaboratives in philanthropy?
Donor collaboratives account for a small but growing share of total philanthropy. The Bridgespan Group maintains a database of more than 300 donor collaboratives, which collectively give about $4 to 7 billion annually, whereas total U.S. foundation giving in 2023 amounted to more than $557 billion. Bridgespan’s landscape review found that donor collaboratives tend to be more progressive than philanthropy as a whole, in terms of both the issues they fund and the funds’ leadership and philanthropic practices. In this way, donor collaboratives influence broader philanthropy and are often leaders in terms of cutting-edge strategies and grantmaking practices.
