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For many in the nonprofit sector, the dizzying pace of rollbacks and new policies in the United States has been nothing short of stunning. Social sector actors are hardly alone in this regard, of course, but they have both the opportunity and a mission-driven motivation to respond. And as many are recognizing, philanthropic foundations that support their work must rally, and quickly, to their support.

There is a growing discussion about what, exactly, that means? Many observers argue for—and some foundations are announcing—increases in grantmaking. Certainly, because many nonprofits are being hamstrung by frozen or withdrawn government grants and must respond to many other policy challenges, philanthropy can play an exceedingly valuable role by investing counter-cyclically to ameliorate these headwinds.

Yet as indispensable as providing more of philanthropy's core product will be, how that money is spent represents, perhaps, an even larger opportunity. The nonprofit sector needs funding for capacity; for shared communications, tools, and connections; for strategizing across multiple organizations; for bridging differences to catalyze bigger tents of aligned interest; and for developing and executing field-level agendas. Overall, the organizations that collectively work to strengthen our commonweal need funding for connecting, sorting, and selecting priorities, and then acting at scale.

In short: they need funding for field-building. In fact, behind the scenes of notable social accomplishments in recent decades, such as reduction of tobacco use by kids, marriage equality, and rates of teen pregnancy, is a common ingredient: focused efforts to support a field of advocates and organizations by building their shared capacity and coordination.

Together, these sorts of investments can have a powerful impact now and in the future. They are a counterweight to organizational wasting. They enable the scaled, collaborative action that is the sine qua non of any adequate response in this moment. And there is a substantial future dividend: a social sector with improved capacity for population-level improvements.

The bad news is that the field-building grants most needed are the very ones that have been, historically, most in short supply. With the notable exception of foundations focused on conservative policy goals, philanthropy has not provided enough of these instrumental field-building investments, even though analysts have documented the role of field-building in driving iconic wins. In fact, a major report by the social sector analysts at The Bridgespan Group concluded that "field-building efforts are one of the most valuable investments funders can make, but historically such efforts are the least funded." This finding aligns with the lived experience of everyone I know in the social sector, including my own during the years I worked to advance clean water at a national environmental organization.

The good news—and the core of the present opportunity—is that making a shift to a field-building zeitgeist is more possible than at any time in recent memory, precisely because of a widely shared, profound sense that this moment is not what was expected. Moments matter. In literature, and the movies, the dramatic discovery that a situation is not what one thought is called anagnorisis—think Luke discovering that Darth Vader was his father. Today, philanthropy's collective discovery of an unfamiliar present is an equally powerful, if less cinematic, moment of anagnorisis, one that can drive a new philanthropic zeitgeist.

The shift requires flipping four common and intersecting funding patterns—atomistic, narrow, exclusive, and power-concentrating—to their more productive opposites: holistic, broad, inclusive, and power-distributing.

  1. Philanthropy needs to think more about strengthening formations of organizations and people, and less about picking winners among them. A core rationale for field-building is the reality that individual organizations cannot solve big challenges alone, and so authentic and purposeful coordination generating collective impact is essential. But coordination is neither frictionless nor free. An adequate supply of shared infrastructure for movements—data capacity, communications, training, organizing, and similar resources—is essential.
  2. The lack of support for shared tools is exacerbated and related to another challenge: concentrating funding in relatively few nonprofits. Funding for environmental and climate advocates provides a vivid example. By one estimate there are 30,000 environmental nonprofits in the United States, but, in 2021, just 204 nonprofits received 50 percent of the $2.3 billion donated by members of the Environmental Grantmakers Association; in 2018, five nonprofits received 13 percent of that year’s donations. While some of these funds are regranted to other organizations, this funding pattern has little possibility of strengthening the field overall.
  3. The environmental and climate sector also illustrates a third pattern: BIPOC-led and -serving organizations collectively receive a small portion of funding—between 1.3 and 20 percent of grant dollars, depending on the study and geography. This practice deprives these organizations (many of which are deeply embedded in and experts about the issues in their communities), with critical capacity. It diminishes civil society overall by shrinking the broad web of collaborations toward big goals that would be otherwise possible.
  4. Finally, only about one in 10 foundations share decision-making power with those most affected by their funding. Participatory grantmaking, where people working in the field are trusted to make funding decisions, is particularly useful for funding social movements and broadly deploying dollars—as is needed now.

Taken as a whole, dominant funding patterns like these can throw a wet blanket on transformational efforts, and perhaps even dampen transformational aspirations, by placing out of reach scaled efforts by multitudes that can change the strategic calculus. Practically, the pattern also deprives many nonprofits of general operating funding needed to survive and thrive, a prerequisite of participation in bigger endeavors.

At best, the current approach reflects what in another context biologists would call an "evolutionary mismatch"—here, characteristic philanthropic behaviors that have not kept pace with a rapidly changing landscape. In this and other ways, if this clarifying moment focuses attention on improved approaches to supporting nonprofits, that would be a very good thing. Practices that build staying power, greater capacity for connection and, critically, collective influence are essential today, and they will only build better results over time.

Read more stories by David S. Beckman.