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As global systems unravel and malfunction, does the sector have any solutions?
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Philanthropy’s role in a rapidly unraveling global system came under sharp scrutiny at the Global Philanthropy Forum Leaders Summit in San Francisco, California, this week. Across formal sessions and quieter side conversations, participants returned to the same underlying tension: The sector talks increasingly about trust, systems change, and shifting power, but many are still asking what, exactly, is changing in practice. |
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Philanthropy inside a system it can’t ignore
One of the clearest throughlines of the summit was that philanthropy doesn’t operate outside today’s systems — but is embedded within them.
Margot Brandenburg of the Ford Foundation described capitalism as “the water that all of our grantees swim in,” warning that if that system isn’t aligned, “it’s going to work against us.” She tied that directly to inequality and democratic erosion. “Economic inequality drives polarization,” she said. “You can’t feed your kids their democratic rights for dinner.” The implication: Philanthropy can’t just fund programs. It has to engage with — and potentially reshape — the broader system driving those outcomes. As trust in governments weakens and traditional donor assistance declines, philanthropic funders face a fundamental rethink of their role in ensuring services reach the most marginalized. Ana Patricia Muñoz and Maleine Niang of the International Budget Partnership, Ruth Levine of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and Joseph Asunka of Afrobarometer argued that philanthropy should move away from funding services directly and instead invest in the accountability and civic systems that help governments deliver. In the conversation, which I moderated, one theme stood out: Philanthropy’s role is not to replace the state, but to make it function better. Read: As government trust frays, philanthropy is pushed to rethink its funding Trust — and the limits of it That same tension surfaced in conversations about trust. Jessyca Dudley of Bold Ventures took issue with the framing of the session she appeared on — “Trust as Infrastructure” — calling it “highly aspirational.” Because philanthropy, she argued, was never designed for trust in the first place. In the business of philanthropy “that employs most of us,” she said, “the source codes and infrastructure of that system have very little to do with trust.” Instead, she pointed to a deeper assumption underpinning the sector: “We are inherently saying, ‘Those who do not amass wealth cannot be trusted to move capital, to have capital, to make decisions about capital.’” “The notion of trust has not gone far enough. We haven’t defined it correctly, and we need the courage to define it correctly,” she added. For Dudley, that definition must go beyond tweaks to address historical harm. “So in our work, we really think about repair. … How are we acknowledging the harms that are caused by wealth generation, the wealth extraction, the labor extraction, the environmental extraction?” She also highlighted the need for humility in a sector that often exports its models globally, drawing on a prior discussion of generosity on the African continent. Rather than assuming that American approaches should be adopted globally, she suggested that U.S.-based donors have more to learn than to teach. In a follow-up interview with Devex, Dudley framed this moment as a potential inflection point. With political and institutional pressures mounting, she sees an opening — but not a guaranteed one. “Because the current U.S. administration is actually challenging the system of philanthropy … we have a moment where crisis brings an opportunity to actually do some structural remaking,” she said. “It’s going to have to be a courageous moment for people to move beyond the language of change and actually changing practice.” Background reading: Public backs global cooperation as trust in institutions falters |
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From big ideas to real constraints
Philanthropy is experimenting with new tools — from blended finance to pooled funds.
But translating those ideas into practice remains uneven. Nadait Gebremedhen, founder and CEO of Hagush, which is focused on digital inclusion in Ethiopia, said philanthropy struggles with systemic inertia. “We’re very good at surfacing problems,” she said, “but much less effective at translating that into action.” Her diagnosis: a coordination problem — what she called “many well-intentioned actors operating within misaligned incentives,” such as low risk tolerance and a strong desire for control.  Nick Allardice, president and CEO of GiveDirectly, at the Global Philanthropy Leaders Summit.Nick Allardice, president and CEO of GiveDirectly, echoed that point, arguing that incentives are what keep more funders from directly transferring resources to the people they aim to serve — despite strong evidence that it works. His explanation: Institutions are incentivized to maintain control, avoid risk, and justify their existence.  Learn more from our quick video onsite at the Global Philanthropy Forum, and stay tuned for our upcoming interview with Allardice on the next episode of Devex’s Global Progress in the AI Era podcast. You can find all the podcast episodes here.The USAID aftermath Hagush was part of a roundtable that the Global Philanthropy Forum organized on community-led development, which convened San Francisco-based donors and investors together with donors and practitioners still reeling from the USAID shutdown. Some participants noted a gravitational pull toward the way things were before the shuttering of the agency and the overall decline in official development assistance. “A forced transition is upon all of us who work in global philanthropy. And transitions are painful. There’s been more than a year of processing the shocks that came with the dismantling of USAID,” said Jean Shia, managing director of the Autodesk Foundation. “But that shouldn’t delay whatever pragmatic steps we can take to focus again on the work. The previous infrastructure is basically gone, and we need to accept that we’ll be building the road again as we walk on it now.” Nasra Ismail, founder of Generative Connections, who also participated in the roundtable, said it’s possible to both process the loss of USAID while also paving the way forward. “The responsibility to continue cannot be shortchanged by the necessity of people to grieve,” she said. |
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Money on the sidelines
The idea of spending down — or at least accelerating — the flow of capital surfaced repeatedly.
Jen Risher, cofounder of the #HalfMyDAF campaign, pointed to billions sitting idle in donor-advised funds, or DAFs, charitable giving accounts where donors receive an immediate tax break but can choose when, or if, to distribute the money. “There’s a lot of money, and this is public money. It’s sitting,” she said. “The systems in place are not incentivized to actually move that money because they’re either making money on the money, or that money gives them status in terms of assets under management.” Risher described how the #HalfMyDAF campaign, which she started with her husband — David Risher, the CEO of Lyft and former CEO of the global education technology nonprofit Worldreader — has tried to shift behavior by pushing donors to commit at least half of the funds sitting in donor-advised funds. “We inserted into the system some inspiration in the forms of matching grants and also some urgency in the form of deadlines,” she said. The approach appears to be gaining traction: Last year, $2 million in matching funds helped spur $24 million in giving. Her work on #HalfMyDAF connected with a broader message from the summit: In a moment defined by overlapping crises, philanthropy may need to move beyond preserving capital — and toward deploying it at a scale and speed that matches the urgency of the challenges ahead.  For more content like this, sign up to Devex Invested — our free weekly newsletter that tracks how capital, policy, and innovation are transforming global development.From abstraction to urgency That gap between rhetoric and action came through in discussions on locally led development. Naghma Mulla of the EdelGive Foundation offered one of the most direct challenges at the forum: The sector may be talking about power shifts and resilience, but it’s still struggling to point to concrete examples. Reflecting on her session on south-south collaboration, she said her remarks “made people a little emotional” because they cut through the abstraction. “Trust cannot come from … good intentions,” she said. “Trust has to be supported by your processes, and philanthropy has to pay for those processes.” Her own example was practical: a pooled fund model EdelGive Foundation spearheaded that brought together 37 funders to contribute $12 million in unrestricted, nonprogrammatic funding to 100 grassroots organizations across India. What followed challenged conventional funding assumptions. Early spending went toward basics — “toilet repairs, carpets, cushions” — before evolving into stronger teams, leadership hiring, and strategy. Within two and a half years, more than half of the recipient organizations had gone on to raise significant additional funding themselves, demonstrating how internal capacity unlocks growth. At the forum, Mulla felt a sense of optimism and urgency. “There is a trying to make sense of this that is still happening,” she said, particularly as many in the sector grapple with shifting funding realities. But her message was clear: The moment calls for urgency, not paralysis. “If you really care … you cut that check, you make that move.”
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Join us on Monday, March 23, for a Devex Pro Briefing with Naghma Mulla, where she will discuss EdelGive’s philanthropic asset manager model and explore how intermediaries can better connect capital to organizations on the ground. |
Betting on artificial intelligence
At a hands-on workshop at the forum, Shannon Farley, cofounder and executive director of Fast Forward, also pushed funders to move beyond abstract conversations — this time those dealing with AI — and start making real investment decisions, a message she reinforced in a follow-up interview with Devex. “Nonprofits can only do what funders allow them to do,” she said, arguing that while interest in AI for social good is growing, “the biggest barrier to using AI is money.” Farley emphasized that philanthropy has a critical role to play as “the ultimate risk capital” in helping nonprofits experiment with and scale AI tools. The session moved quickly from theory to practice. Farley presented a sample pitch for an AI-powered chatbot addressing refugee mental health, then asked participants to break into small groups and decide whether they would fund it. The exercise revealed a familiar tension: While the application itself was imperfect, “that doesn’t mean the idea is bad,” she said, urging funders to focus on asking better questions rather than defaulting to rejection. “We get dozens of some version of this application,” she noted, pointing to the global shortage of mental health services and the potential for AI to help fill the gap. Most participants hesitated to invest, but one group said they’d be willing to provide some initial funding to help the organization test the idea. “Our hope is to get funders more comfortable with the technology, understand the technology, and hopefully starting to experiment with investing in the technology,” Farley said. AI, instability — and who shapes the future If earlier conversations focused on philanthropy’s role within today’s systems, the closing sessions pushed further: What responsibility does philanthropy have in shaping the systems that come next? That, of course, leads to AI, which is not emerging in a vacuum; it is being built, funded, and governed in real time. Dex Hunter-Torricke, former communications lead at Google and Meta, who recently left Big Tech to start The Center for Tomorrow, warned that the biggest risks ahead are not technical, but societal. “This is not mostly a story about the technology itself,” he said. “It will be a fundamental mistake to think these are problems which are mostly technical with technical solutions.” Instead, he laid out a broader picture. Advanced AI and automation could drive tremendous economic gains — but could also deepen inequality, concentrating power among those who control the technology. “You might see an extraordinary gulf between the winners and losers,” he said. And that’s unfolding in a world already under strain — with rising inequality, democratic backsliding, and growing instability. “If you don’t understand that we’re in collapse … you’re asleep.” His warning wasn’t just about the dangers we face — but about the potential agency we can exert. Too often, he said, the future is framed as inevitable, like a tidal wave or an avalanche. It isn’t. “The future is the future, and we have choices now. We can choose a different future entirely.” But that depends on who gets to shape it. Right now, he warned, too many of the decisions about AI are being made by “a tiny sliver of the least representative people in the world.” For philanthropy, that creates a clear challenge — and opportunity: to step in not just as a funder of technology, but as a force shaping how its benefits — and risks — are distributed. Listen: Mind the AI gap — the urgent need for inclusive global governance Plus: Is artificial intelligence a superpower or a weapon? 
A sector in transition On a lighter note, Ella Gudwin, CEO of VisionSpring, said one of the defining features of the Global Philanthropy Forum is its intentional “no pitch zone.” In other words, don’t ask for money. Rather, it creates a space where funders and implementers are “shoulder to shoulder,” looking at problems and opportunities together, “on the same team.” While many other forums are shaped by fundraising pressures, this model aims for a rare environment built for trust, not transactions. “I know funders who will take their badge off at a certain point,” she said. “There are people who will just be like, ‘I need to just be me. I need to not be asked for money, and I need to not be an ATM.’” On a more serious note, by the end of the forum, one thing was clear: Philanthropy is trying to evolve. It is experimenting with new tools, new language, and new roles — from shaping markets to influencing governance to engaging with frontier technologies. But for all the talk of new operating systems, trust, and transformation, is philanthropy actually shifting power, or just updating how it talks about it? That answer will shape not just the future of the sector — but its relevance in what many here described as a post-aid world. 
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Thank you for reading today’s Newswire, edited by Anna Gawel, copy edited by Sheri-kae McLeod, and produced by Mariane Samson. Have a news tip? Email [email protected].
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