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The Power of Collaboration

The Business of Giving Nov 20, 2018
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
Click here for more.
The Power of Collaboration Giving Compass
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Giving Compass’ Take:

• Jeffrey Walker discusses the value of collaboration in international development, highlighting the importance of local actors and communities. 

• What partners should you be engaging with, or engaging with more? 

• Learn how to use data to collaborate. 


Denver: Speaking about collaborating, what about philanthropists collaborating together? We see them tend to work in silos quite a lot. It’s my money, it’s my idea, and it’s my way. Are there some tools and techniques to try to bring philanthropists together around a common cause with a measurable impact?

Jeffrey: I love that– measurable impact. What are we going to have done, but do it in a collaborative way. We’ve developed a lot of different things. We have things called Jeffersonian dinners where you’re sitting going: “Why don’t we get people together around a table? Have a whole table conversation and actually share knowledge with each other?” Develop and lower walls between them saying: “ Hey, we can potentially solve things together. You know, I’m getting something out of this. I’m actually enjoying this conversation. I’m actually enjoying this dinner. I’ll come back. Let me do that again.”

Denver: As you say, it’s one conversation at the table. It’s not 7 conversations among 14 people.

Jeffrey: I cannot do thousand-person dinners where everybody’s talking to each other next to them about their dog. Actually having a conversation with intelligent people is my joy. So, that’s what we have to do. There’s all sorts of different ways to start bringing people together, but particularly donors, so that they see there’s an advantage. And it’s actually more fun. So that I would get together with some of my friends and say,” I really want to have an impact, for example, on early childhood. If that’s what your joy is too, I’ll hook you up.”

Music, whatever it might be. So, let’s bring these people together. And isn’t that the role of an ensemble player? Isn’t that the role of an orchestrator? To help unite people around these common causes? And when you do that, the energy goes up. Joy goes up. The resources start rising again. So, we’re starting to see that not just in small donors…. For pretty large donors. Very large foundations start to understand that partnerships are really critical for our long-term success, and they’re re-looking at it in this what we’re calling “system-change models.” How do you look at these larger system questions? And how do you join together with other influencers to affect the change you want to see?

Read the full conversation between Denver Frederick and Jeffrey Walker about collaboration by Denver Frederick at The Business of Giving.

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Since you are interested in Impact Philanthropy, have you read these selections from Giving Compass related to impact giving and Impact Philanthropy?

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    How Grants Can Catalyze Investment Capital for Lasting Impact

    Giving Compass' Take: • The Atlantic Philanthropies and Arabella Advisors innovated a grantmaking strategy to catalyze investment capital in order to increase access to affordable, quality health care. • How can other funders successfully use this model to increase their impact? What issue areas does this approach make sense for?  • Learn about the power of seed grants. Over 35 years, the Atlantic Philanthropies invested more than $8 billion to advance opportunity and promote equity and dignity. In its final years, Atlantic concentrated on making grants that would have impact well beyond the foundation’s life. This culminating work included a focus on health equity, with the goal of helping all people, no matter where they live or their socioeconomic status, access affordable, quality health care. Atlantic partnered with impact investing specialists at Arabella Advisors. In 2014, the foundation made an innovative grant to Vital Healthcare Capital (V-Cap), a community development financial institution (CDFI). Atlantic’s grant was designed to help V-Cap sustainably finance community-based health care providers who could fill the market gap and help solve the growing health care dilemma plaguing many US communities. The story of Atlantic’s high-risk, high-reward grant to V-Cap offers useful lessons to funders seeking ways to deploy catalytic capital and to use innovative financing mechanisms. Atlantic’s grant provided “first-loss” capital—funding that acts as credit from a grant maker who can take the first losses on an investment. By being able to absorb the first loss, Atlantic enabled V-Cap to move quickly through the often-difficult startup phase and attract over $11.5 million in additional investment, leaving it well positioned to deploy $20 million to health care providers in underserved communities by the end of 2017.  


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