The six roles of philanthropy in driving transformational partnership
The world’s most pressing challenges won’t be solved by any single actor. They require transformational partnerships: multi-sector collaborations that harness the combined resources of public, private, civil society, and philanthropic actors to address root causes and create lasting, self-sustaining change.
Philanthropy is uniquely placed to provide the activation energy these partnerships need: the catalyst that starts a chemical reaction; the initial burst of energy needed to overcome inertia and set transformation in motion.
Our research identified six distinct roles that philanthropy can play to activate and sustain transformational partnerships.
1: Initiating
Every partnership begins with a spark. Philanthropy, with its social and political capital, is often best placed to light it.
This could mean sponsoring a side event at a major conference to discuss a shared challenge, convening people around a shared problem, or simply hosting a conversation between potential partners. It could be as simple as funding travel and accommodation.
2: Supporting partnership development
Moving from a promising conversation to a robust partnership is harder than it looks. Philanthropy can serve as a neutral facilitator, helping to develop a collective vision or ‘partnering strategy’, creating space to develop trust between partners, and putting the building blocks of effective collaboration in place.
This stage might also involve training partners in effective partnering practice, an essential skill that is often assumed but rarely taught.
3: Funding partnership infrastructure and operations
Partnerships need infrastructure to function. Sometimes that’s a secretariat and usually a working budget, systems for ongoing monitoring, evaluation, and learning, to allow a collaboration to adapt and improve over time. Yet, this kind of operational funding is the hardest to secure.
One of the clearest findings from our research is that traditional short-term funding cycles are fundamentally misaligned with the timescales that transformational change requires. Philanthropy is well placed to provide patient, flexible capital that fills this gap.
Crucially, philanthropy can also fund community and NGO partners to enable their participation in the partnership, so that collective knowledge is harnessed and transformative change can really happen.
4: Technical assistance
Philanthropy often holds significant expertise that it can deploy directly in support of a partnership.
This might mean providing issue-focused technical advice, whether on a topic like WASH or on operational matters like HR and grant management. It might mean bringing relevant knowledge, skills, and networks to bear on a specific challenge. Or it might mean building capacity more durably, through secondments or the allocation of dedicated staff time to work alongside partners over the longer term.
5: Seed funding/piloting/innovation
Unlike many actors, philanthropy has the financial freedom to take risks. It can invest in innovative approaches, explore new financing mechanisms, and generate the evidence that other investors need before they will commit. By leveraging that freedom to test and prove concepts, philanthropy creates the conditions for public and private actors to follow at scale.
6: De-risking
Finally, philanthropy can reduce the barriers that prevent other actors from engaging. This includes reducing political or reputational risk, which often deters public sector partners from entering unfamiliar territory. It also means using capital to reduce financial risk to a level that is acceptable for public and private investment through instruments such as guarantees or first-loss capital. And it extends to building the broader enabling environment: the policy conditions, regulatory frameworks, and institutional landscape that allow other actors to engage with confidence.
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In each case, philanthropy uses its unique standing — independent, credible, and not beholden to market pressures — to make the case for collaboration, generate enthusiasm, and create the conditions for it to begin.
You can find our one-page overview of the roles here. Why not use it to start a conversation with your team about the role you or your partners are playing in partnerships?
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Transform
Philanthropy’s role in transformational partnership goes well beyond funding. The six roles above represent a significant opportunity, and our research suggests the sector knows it.
The ambition is there. What is often missing is the mindset, the institutional capability, and the practical partnering skills to act on it.
Our research, drawing on a needs assessment of 55 philanthropic foundations, found that the biggest barriers foundations report are not a lack of willingness. Instead, they point to a shortage of systems thinking and partnership awareness (cited by 74% of respondents), difficulty committing resources over the longer timeframes that transformation requires (66%), and insufficient internal guidance and training. These are solvable problems, but solving them requires treating partnering as the professional skill it is.
Through our Transform initiative, The Partnering Initiative, WINGS, and Philea are working together to help foundations make that shift: building the mindset, institutional capability, and practical skills needed to step fully into these roles. If your organisation is ready to explore what this looks like in practice, we would love you to join us.
Register for our upcoming Philanthropy masterclass: Unlock the power of partnerships for transformational impact
