As 2025 approaches, the world stands at a crossroads. From climate action to housing solutions, the year ahead promises both innovations and setbacks. Here are seven transformative, actionable philanthropic sector insights that could shape 2025.

America’s housing shortage and reality are staggering: 7 million units are needed, yet for every 50,000 homes built, another 50,000 are lost. However, Sean Davis, philanthropy entrepreneur and author of Solving the Giving Pledge Bottleneck, is testing an innovative model to address it. His approach replaces profit-driven real estate investor capital—expecting 20% returns—with philanthropic equity, which seeks only repayment of the original amount, not profits, allowing for much lower rents than those that can be delivered today, demonstrating the importance of philanthropic sector insights.

Here’s how it works: Davis partners with developers to build housing quickly using philanthropy as the equity in workforce housing. Rather than owning the units, the developers are hired to build and manage the housing, while it is owned by a nonprofit organization, ensuring greater affordability for renters on an ongoing basis.

The concept is being piloted in Florida with a 15-unit project backed by $4 million in philanthropic equity and a 270-unit development supported by $32 million in philanthropic capital. Davis’s vision is ambitious—scaling from 50,000 affordable housing units annually to 300,000. He has already secured $100,000 from 10 philanthropists and provided initial 0% loans to developers, reducing rents by $1,000 monthly. His goal is to bring philanthropic sector insights to fruition and demonstrate what many philanthropists and developers overlook: philanthropy can be leveraged as equity in private deals, particularly in traditional workforce housing.

Davis believes this model, which he dubs "philanthropic private equity," could gain bipartisan support over the coming year. The philanthropic sector insight is simple: philanthropic capital can jump-start projects, and federal funding could eventually help scale it nationwide. "In four years," Davis explains, "we’ll take this to the White House and show how $750 million in grants plus $750 million in debt could yield 7,500 affordable units in cities like Milwaukee."

Read the full article about philanthropic sector insights by Michael Sheldrick at Forbes.