Public-private-philanthropy partnerships

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.

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.’

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.

TPI, through its partnership with the Laudes Foundation in the TRANSFORM! programme , has examined how the Regenerative Production Landscape Collaboratives (RPLC)  benefit from multi-stakeholder partnership. This TPI research reviews the incentives of all of the stakeholders in RPLC India, and reveals the benefits that they are experiencing from the highly collaborative nature of the initiative.

RPLC harness the power of multi-stakeholder partnerships to transform agricultural systems across four countries, creating sustainable livelihoods for farmers while regenerating ecosystems through innovative collaboration between government, business, and civil society organisations.

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.

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

The programme is partially funded through the generous support of The African Climate Foundation and Laudes Foundation.

The programme itself is a collaboration between TPI and The World Association of Public Private Partnership Practitioners and Units (WAPPP) as well as an emerging community of partners including:

Max von Abendroth, Lead Public-Private-Philanthropy Collaboration at TPI & Chair of the Philanthropy in PPPs Forum at WAPPP – contact

Tom Harrison, Programme Director – contact