What We Can Learn From the COVID-19 Philanthropy Commons

(Illustration by RLT_Images)

A few weeks after the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic, Eric Braverman of Schmidt Futures and Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation penned an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, lamenting philanthropy’s inability to join forces to amplify and expedite impact. “Fourth-grade soccer teams with phone trees have more effective lines of communication than we do,” they wrote:

“Even the largest philanthropies figure out what others are doing through random emailing or searching online. We need mutually informed action; instead we have a bazaar of many stalls operating independently.”

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic provided a prime opportunity to change this dynamic, not only to establish an infrastructure for funder coordination but to expedite the strategic deployment of assets for relief and recovery efforts. Coalitions have come together in the past to share learnings, align on strategy, or pool resources toward a specific effort, of course. But there has never been a sustained system for institutional or individual funders to organize at scale for the greater good, during a crisis or otherwise. As a result, donors must reinvent the wheel, identifying prospects and doing due diligence from scratch.  

In April 2020, Schmidt Futures took COVID-19 as an opportunity, organizing more than 200 people (mostly staff from institutional philanthropies) to meet the moment. Eight groups formed to address a particular need resulting from the pandemic, including a technology working group of large institutional foundations that sought to build an online infrastructure that could enable donors to share information about specific, vetted giving opportunities, learn from other stakeholders, and coordinate to fund immediate needs or even co-invest. Recognizing the potential of this online tool to function as a sustained collaboration platform between institutional and individual funders—a relatively groundbreaking development for the sector—the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation provided pilot funding for the development and execution of this pilot effort, known as the COVID-19 Philanthropy Commons, which was launched in September 2020.

The work began by building the digital infrastructure. After careful vetting, the Commons co-leads selected CapShift as back-end website developer and partner to expediently build the COVID-19 Philanthropy Commons to be a platform that would work with philanthropic and financial institutions to mobilize capital to impact investments. By September, the site was ready for a soft launch and consisted of standard features, including a personalized login page, a dashboard where funders could view saved organizational profiles, and a filter option that allowed users to sort funding opportunities by topic or geography. Users could browse through each funding opportunity, gleaning high-level information about the organization seeking funding, planned activities, and a section about intended impact. Users could see which Commons member submitted the opportunity and then be put in touch directly with the nonprofit.

Despite the ease of the platform itself, the lack of compatibility with users’ existing grants management systems created a barrier to a streamlined opportunity submission process. What’s more, there was no ability for users to interact with each other, which limited all opportunities for community building among members.

Due to cost and time requirements, the working groups co-leads elected not to pursue major technical enhancements to improve the user experience or overall functionality of the platform, but they did proceed with various attempts to provide a higher-touch experience to attract more engagement with the platform and between Commons users. This included hosting monthly conference calls where individual philanthropies shared their COVID-19 giving strategies and insights with other pilot members, and the co-leads also engaged with an independent contractor to serve as a Sourcing Partner and proactively identify compelling COVID-19 funding opportunities for the Commons. A staff member from the Milken Institute’s Center for Strategic Philanthropy assumed the part-time role of the Commons Community Manager to foster connections between like-minded funders and personally flag investment opportunities that best aligned with individual users’ philanthropic priorities. This individual sent bimonthly, personalized emails to each Commons user and flagged newly added funding opportunities that most aligned with their philanthropic interests.

None of these efforts materially changed funder behavior or improved the utilization of the Commons platform.

What did we learn? From a technical standpoint, the project was successful. The Commons grew to encompass a customized opportunity-sharing and co-funding platform that, at least theoretically, could be used to reduce friction and increase speed and coordination within the philanthropic ecosystem. The Commons also hit its marks in terms of sourcing nearly 200 funding opportunities related to the pandemic and developed a custom taxonomy to help members find opportunities that fit their mandates. 

Ultimately, though, the COVID-19 Philanthropy Commons fell short of its ambitions to meaningfully shape members’ giving to COVID-related efforts or spur coordination among funders. We attribute this failure, largely, to sociological hurdles. Despite the quick process of getting the Commons off the ground, the effort was not able to capitalize on the initial, collective feeling of shared purpose and curiosity that we had hoped would allow the Commons to take deeper root. The sharing of funding opportunities requires meaningful connection among philanthropies, as well as direct interaction (the ability to explain why a project might be of interest, how co-funding might work, etc). Over time, perhaps a platform shared by trusted partners might serve to build efficiencies across these exchanges. But pulling together a disparate group of funders without that solid foundation and sourcing time-critical opportunities—in a very fluid set of circumstances—ultimately hindered the success of the Commons. Without existing rapport among users, the technology platform alone could not compel coordination of funding. 

Due to the suboptimal response to the Philanthropy Commons, the pilot concluded without intentions to make it a permanent institution. Its short tenure did, however, generate useful insights about what better tools for philanthropic coordination should look like.

1. Community Building Is Prerequisite to Shared Philanthropic Infrastructure

The Commons experiment underscored the cultural barriers within the field of philanthropy that hamper the prospect for coordination within the sector. We found that funders, particularly institutional foundations, were eager to advocate for their own ideas rather than put their trust in others. Few were willing to depart from their current processes and look to the platform for sourcing opportunities. But if everyone is pitching their own funded work rather than listening and buying into others’ suggestions, then (without first addressing the fierce individualism that is so prevalent within philanthropy) the value of the shared infrastructure will be nil. Funders also indicated a need for an established rapport before trusting other Commons users’ processes for vetting nonprofit funding submissions. Without an established personalized connection, funders were not inclined to consider even a vetted opportunity in the database.

What’s more, during a crisis or onset of a collaboration, people tend to think they are able (and willing) to do more than they are. Donors are no different. The working group members recommended what they thought they wanted in a best-case scenario for coordinated COVID-19 philanthropy, but this did not translate into engagement once the platform launched. So, solely relying on users’ intentions to determine how to set philanthropic coordination efforts is insufficient. After all, users are not product designers and the importance of proper R&D is paramount. The act of testing user assumptions and intentions—their presumed priorities, pain points, and proposed solutions—should be a non-negotiable step in any future product development process. Further research, preparation, and experimentation will bring the philanthropic field closer to understanding necessary conditions for behavior change; ideally, this should be done between moments of crisis so that actors are duly prepared to respond at all times, including at the onset of a new emergency.  

2. Encouraging Signs 

Although shared interests in streamlined technology for philanthropies did not translate into an active engagement among Commons participants, the experience did positively inform the efforts of the pilot’s co-lead organization, the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG). The ORFG has leaned more heavily into creating opportunities for members to share their stories, armed with the understanding that direct dialog about missions, priorities, and challenges is critical to creating a durable sense of community. By investing time in building direct connections and esprit de corps, ORFG members have grown more inclined to discuss their open research, equity in grantmaking, and civic science. More than ever, they are engaging in the type of frank peer-to-peer dialog that lays the foundation for effective, evidence-based philanthropy. A group like this one instills confidence that the sector is capable of deeper coordination so long as the opportunity to establish human connection and build rapport is at the center of it.

3. Vulnerability Begets Trust, Which Enables Collaboration 

For the sake of the philanthropic sector and the nonprofit partners they support, coordination among funders remains as necessary as ever. Fostering new and better collaborations among institutional philanthropies and individual donors is particularly needed, as few operations exist that establish ties between these cohorts. To facilitate rapport building, philanthropy support organizations could play a crucial role in building connections and pathways that will garner trust across funders. 

Much can also be learned from funder collaboratives that include a diverse set of philanthropic actors and profiles, and anecdotal accounts from the field indicate that additional attempts to further incentivize and mobilize donor coordination are ongoing. Trust will be the linchpin to those efforts’ future successes.

Philanthropy can often be reactive, conservative, and risk-averse, but times of crisis, such as a global pandemic, can push the sector to innovate and experiment, and take greater risk. The Philanthropy Commons sought to “fail fast”: to prototype and test quickly, pivot from things that aren’t working, and iterate on success the search for greater impact. We hope the Philanthropy Commons effort can provide not only practical lessons for other efforts to improve philanthropic coordination, but also inspiration for greater risk-taking and innovation in philanthropy generally.

Read more stories by Melissa Stevens & Greg Tananbaum.