Giving Compass' Take: 

• Oksana Oracheva, General Director for the Vladimir Potanin Foundation, discusses Russian philanthropy infrastructure.

• How should global funders discuss the future of traditional foundations and the recent influx of technology-facilitated activities like crowdsourcing?

• Read about the relationship between technology and philanthropy.

Interview with Oksana Oracheva, General Director for the Vladimir Potanin Foundation in Russia.

The role of philanthropy infrastructure is gaining more and more weight on the global philanthropy agenda. How do you see its current state globally? How do you think these global trends resonate in the Russian context?

Traditionally, philanthropy used to be a privilege of big NGOs and foundations. However, today philanthropy has significantly evolved and has become much more complex and diverse, decentralized and technological, engaging more and more individuals, requiring partnerships and collaborations.  Russian philanthropy is building concurrently different types of institutions: traditional institutions such as foundations for instance and support organizations such as resource centers which provide various types of support to philanthropic and NGO activities. But at the forefront of change are different types of institutions that bring digital technologies into a philanthropic world and provide platforms for crowdfunding and crowdsourcing activities, bridging people and ideas together. That is why the philanthropic landscape in Russia, as well as in other countries, has so many different faces. Traditional definitions do not work any more.

What is the role of big players in supporting infrastructure development? How do non-profit sector needs correlate with the existing infrastructure?

There is an ongoing debate— should we support particular projects or should we invest in institutions that run these projects? And there is no simple answer. It is much easier to say that we want to support the project that will help us work towards resolving the cause but without the institution, and without the infrastructural support this project cannot be run effectively. Should we invest more in people working in those organizations, should we invest more in institutions’ building and not only in project building? Should we join our efforts in infrastructure building and in changing traditional grant making?

Read the full article about Oksana Oracheva on trends and challenges in the Russian philanthropy infrastructure at Philanthropy In Focus.