Collaborative giving has surged over the past 10 years. Indeed, nearly half of the 300-plus collaborative funds—entities that pool or channel resources from multiple donors to nonprofits—that responded to Bridgespan’s annual survey of collaboratives were founded in the last decade. There’s a good reason for this increase: Executed well, philanthropic collaboratives offer donors the chance to multiply the impact of their giving. Collaboratives are often guided by leaders with strong knowledge of the topic at hand, and are structured in a way that effectively and efficiently channels resources.

Many donors we talk to and work with are bullish on the impact potential of collaboratives, which vary widely in their aims. (Blue Meridian Partners, for example, focuses on economic and social mobility in the United States, and the Equality Fund supports women’s rights organizations and feminist movements worldwide.) But these same donors also have hesitations. They seek tighter strategic alignment with their own goals and greater clarity about how best to evaluate a collaborative’s impact. In fact, because interest in forming collaboratives is high and barriers to starting them are low, some donors and fund leaders wonder if their supply exceeds demand. Such a bubble could duplicate existing social change efforts and reduce their overall impact.

Advancing the Impact of Collaborative Fund

The social sector has seen an explosion in collaborative funds over the last 15 years, representing a significant shift in the philanthropic sector. This article series, sponsored by The Gates Foundation, invites practitioners, donors, and advisors to reflect on the impact of collaborative funds—what has worked well? What could work better? And how can the field advance even greater positive change?

Based on Bridgespan research, and our experience supporting dozens of collaboratives through launch and growth, we’ve identified several ways fund leaders and donors can work to help ensure that their collaboratives achieve the impact they seek.

What Is Spurring Growth?

Three donor trends, particularly in the United States, are spurring the growth of collaboratives. First, the wealthiest donors are moving toward leaner giving models. For example, only a handful of the nearly 200 US Giving Pledge signatories have giving organizations (foundations or otherwise) with more than 50 staff. Meanwhile, wealthy donors are open to multiple means of giving; three quarters of the people on the “Forbes Top-25 Givers” list use a range of giving mechanisms, which may include collaboratives, rather than relying on a single private endowed foundation.

Second, endowed foundations are increasingly fundraising from other donors so that they can mobilize more funding to advance their sophisticated strategies—a method philanthropy advisors Valerie Conn and Sofia Michelakis described in a recent SSIR article as “funders fundraising.” While this approach can be distinct from funder collaboratives, in our experience, the lines can blur.

Read the full article about collaborative funding by Alison Powell, Chris Addy, and Gayle Martin at Stanford Social Innovation Review.