Public-private-philanthropy partnerships

Empowering philanthropy’s role in transformative public-private collaboration for a sustainable and socially just future

Public-private-philanthropy partnerships (PPPPs) are a powerful type of multi-stakeholder collaboration. They have the potential to bring about systemic change through a coordinated and synergistic approach to policy and regulation change, innovation, investment in scalable commercial approaches, generating evidence for change, and building new capacities.

Philanthropy can play critical and diverse roles in such partnerships – thereby addressing complex challenges such as energy transition, climate adaptation and mitigation, food security, health, and education.

This programme aims to accelerate good practice and create pathways to action for philanthropy in transformative PPPPs through research, knowledge sharing and exchange, community building, and developing interventions that support the enabling conditions and ecosystem for successful PPPPs.

What are PPPPs for People and Planet?

A long-term multi-stakeholder collaboration in which public, private, and philanthropy sectors align and combine their unique resources and powerful levers to together deliver social, economic, and/or environmental transformation.’

TPI’s working definition of PPPPs includes the following types of collaboration:

All 3 Ps (public, private, philanthropy) need to be involved and need to have “skin in the game”
The relationship is formalized (though not necessarily through a legally binding contract)
The collaboration can involve funding and implementing projects and/or creating blended finance mechanisms
Geographical scope can include global, regional, national or local levels
Any kind of thematic area, providing the partnership aims to achieve transformational change for the benefit of people & planet

About the programme

This pioneering programme combines research, knowledge sharing and exchange, direct support to PPPPs, codification of best practice and community building to inform and enable and series of interventions to strengthen the empowering environment for more and better PPPPs.

Reports and publications

As an initial phase of a major new programme to accelerate the use of PPPPs, TPI, with the support of Laudes Foundation and the African Climate Foundation and in association with WAPPP, undertook research looking at 46 PPPPs around the world. The aim was to understand how they deliver systems transformation, and the essential role of Philanthropy in injecting the ‘activation energy’ that makes them happen. The report was launched in December 2023 at COP28 and provides fascinating insights into the power and flexibility of PPPPs.

The report includes our newly published PPPP Library, which includes details of all 46 PPPPs analysed, and provides a resource to PPPP practitioners globally.

The next phase of the programme will be to directly support a number of PPPPs, draw out learning from the experience and begin to codify and develop best practice guidance.

Ways to get involved

There are multiple ways to get involved, including (but not limited to!):

Joining the PPPPs network to stay connected

Sharing examples of PPPPs for our research and knowledge base – contribute an example to our new PPPP library

Providing grant funding to support the overarching programme – please contact us

Working with TPI to develop your organisation’s strategic approach to PPPPs and/or to review or create a case study of an existing PPPP that you are involved with/supporting – please contact us