Unlocking The Power of Partnerships for

Funders

The Challenge

Philanthropy and funders play a catalytic role in the current environment. Despite funding bold initiatives, efforts can remain fragmented, uncoordinated across sectors or disconnected from systems change.

What’s Possible?

Funding cross-sectoral programs and investing in building cross-sector partnering skills allows philanthropy to amplify its influence and unlock systemic change.

Invite Us for a Partnership Talk

Real conversations on what it takes to partner with purpose.

Complementary 1-hour presentation on topics like:

  • From Funding Projects to Fueling Systems Change: Supporting transformational partnerships.

  • Engagement as a Grantmaking Tool: Listening, aligning, and learning with stakeholders.

  • Strengthening Grantee Collaboration: Building partnering capacity in the field.

  • Systems Thinking for Smarter Giving: Identifying leverage points for long-term change.

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What’s Possible for Philanthropic Actors and Funders

Partnerships for Social Innovation

Philanthropy plays a vital role in seeding and scaling social innovation ecosystems, bringing together communities, entrepreneurs and institutions to co-create solutions that tackle root causes and shift systems.

  • Through initiatives like the FifthEstate, we designed multi-stakeholder models that bridged social innovation models with institutional decision-making processes.

    The approach included convening intergenerational coalitions, facilitating structured dialogue between community-based organizations and government bodies, and embedding youth-driven policy recommendations into formal systems.

    These partnerships enabled social entrepreneurs and grassroots leaders to influence governance structures, leading to programmatic uptake by public institutions and philanthropic actors, and shifts in national policy frameworks. 

Tech Transfer & Innovation Partnerships

Philanthropy can accelerate innovation for public benefit by supporting the translation of research into scalable solutions, especially in underserved communities and by investing in universities to build innovation pipelines.

  • At Purdue University, we contributed to the design of interdisciplinary tech transfer frameworks that connected engineering research with global development outcomes. Utilizing the endowed gift funds within the Shah Global Innovation Lab in the College of Engineering, we supported models that engaged faculty, commercialization experts, and development actors in co-assessing technologies for market viability, considering both low-resource community needs and private sector scaling potential. This approach informed licensing, open-access dissemination, and entrepreneurial spinouts for technologies targeting clean water, sustainable energy, health, education, and agricultural innovation.

Locally Led Community Partnerships 

Philanthropy especially community foundations plays a critical role in resourcing locally led partnerships. Trust-based and participatory approaches help funders support community-led partnerships that reflect lived experience and drive sustainable change.

  • Based on field research in Indiana communities, this model highlights what helps local partnerships move from planning to impact.

    Through the Hometown Collaboration Initiative, nonprofits, public agencies, and residents co-developed strategies to address housing, health, and equity.

    Success hinged on clear roles, adaptive structures, and communication routines, paired with leadership development and participatory planning processes.

    The model offers funders and nonprofit leaders a roadmap for building partnerships that are inclusive, actionable, and built to last. 

Purposeful Stakeholder Engagement  

Strategic convenings supported by funders create the conditions for alignment, learning and collaboration. Purposeful stakeholder engagement surfaces community priorities and drives more inclusive, actionable strategies.

  • This engagement applied a structured systems method, Comprehensive Success Factor Analysis (CSFA), to help USAID (donor), academic, NGO and local government partners in Colombia identify root challenges across youth development, rural livelihoods, and migration. This method combined pre-conference surveys, expert scoping groups, and in-workshop mapping to generate “issue trees” and narrow sector challenges to actionable research focus areas for policy or practice. By combining researcher-practitioner engagement with systems gap analysis, the model enabled USAID and its partners to align future research funding with high-impact, field-defined needs.

Bridging Research to Practice & Policy

In this model, funders support partnerships that co-define questions, co-create research and translate evidence into policy and practice. Funders can also strengthen the partnering capacity of grantees for better ROI.

  • Under the USAID funded LASER PULSE program, we developed the Embedded Research Translation (ERT) model to structure collaboration between researchers and development practitioners from project inception to implementation. The model includes a four-stage process: stakeholder co-definition of problems, joint development of research scope and methods, periodic evidence-use consultations, and co-creation of policy and practice products. This model was applied across 50 applied research projects globally and has been adopted by USAID and academic institutions as a framework for designing research that informs real-world decisions.

Multi-Stakeholder Systems Change

These are powerful models for funders seeking sustainable, long-term impact. By supporting initiatives that work across sectors and scales, funders can enable the coordination, trust and infrastructure needed to address interconnected challenges and drive systemic change.

  • The Asia Resilient Cities (ARC) initiative, funded by USAID, supported secondary cities across Bangladesh, India, Mongolia, and Kyrgyz Republic in building urban resilience through systems-based approaches.

    The model combined participatory diagnostics, city-led strategy development, and governance strengthening to address interlinked challenges in health, climate adaptation, and economic inclusion.

    Cross-sector learning agendas, municipal policy integration, and coordination platforms were central to enabling adaptive management and sustaining impact. Rather than implementing one-off interventions, ARC helped embed resilience thinking into local institutions, transforming how cities plan, prioritize, and collaborate for long-term change.