Magnify Community began as a small and nimble philanthropic innovation lab in late 2018, working with urgency and a three-year time horizon to start to change norms around local giving in Silicon Valley; make local giving easier, more rewarding and high-impact; and catalyze $100 million of additional philanthropic investment in local community-serving nonprofits.

As we prepare to sunset and turn this work back to the community, we are sharing the final set of our reflections, focused on what we’ve learned from the partnerships we established over three years of experimentation.

While we also partnered closely with nonprofits and nonprofit associations, this piece focuses specifically on our partnerships with donor-supporting organizations and philanthropic intermediaries, such as foundations, donor-advised fund (DAF) sponsors, wealth advisors, and philanthropic advisors.

We had the opportunity to work with organizations of varying stature and size, from DAF providers managing thousands of accounts to donor communities stewarding a few hundred members. We are extremely grateful to all of these partners who agreed to test new approaches and tools with us, share metrics, and help us accelerate our learnings. All findings noted here are trends we observed at a macro level, and do not refer to any given partner with whom we had the privilege of collaborating.

  • While many donor-supporting organizations share our goal of accelerating giving, differing ideologies, agendas, and timelines often get in the way of collaboration.
  • There is power in leveraging trust relationships that already exist between partners and their members, rather than seeking to build new relationships directly with prospects, even though this limits opportunities to control the message and build direct relationships.
  • While many philanthropic partners express interest in co-designing events and initiatives, execution capacity is often a barrier.
  • Measuring impact means different things to different partners.
  • Educating and engaging wealth advisors to support their clients on philanthropic giving — beyond setting up charitable vehicles — is a necessary, yet insufficient step to unlocking more resources.
  • The promise of scale through corporate partners is usually elusive.

Read the full article about local philanthropy by Aude Anquetil at Medium.