Unlocking Abundance: A New Philanthropic Status Quo

Communities all over the world are overflowing with abundance — abundance of talent, ideas and solutions.

The trouble is, for all the promise of this abundance, and remarkable and ready potential, we must unlock the resources needed to support talent, activate ideas and fund solutions for all of this abundance to have impact.

Unfortunately, the process of unlocking said resources evades us today. Those with resources hesitate to fund with trust and an abundance mindset. Resources remain stored away even as our most pressing challenges compound (and long after tax benefits have been received, in many cases). Restrictive and inefficient practices dominate our philanthropic ethos, permeating the very roots of our philanthropic infrastructure and undermining even the most committed do-gooders.

Unless and until those with resources embrace philanthropic practice with an abundance mindset, we simply cannot make the progress our people and planet need. We must commit now to a shift in our dominant worldview, or we will very soon run out of time.

An abundance practice doesn’t just mean doing more of what we are already doing. It might be built on a growth mindset, but it is more revolutionary — actually addressing the roots of philanthropic behaviors and practice. An abundance practice asks us to examine when we say we don’t have “enough” (time, resources or influence), examine where this perceived scarcity is coming from, and look for bolder alternatives that lead to more fundamentally just and immediate outcomes. The language of abundance in our sector has origins in Black feminist organizations, for whom it signaled a vision of a more just world. An abundance mindset is a beautiful and radical rejection of the status quo.

I have the privilege of working as the CEO of The Philanthropy Workshop, a global community of philanthropic funders, with donors who are not only willing to embrace an abundance mindset in their philanthropic practice — they are leading a fundamental shift and movement in the way we all experience philanthropy. Below are five ways that we have seen funders in our community unlock abundance. Collectively, their examples help illustrate what an abundance approach looks like in practice, providing a roadmap for anyone ready to join us in reshaping our impact and shared potential.

1. Systems-Focus

The first conversation a wealth holder typically has when coming into the social change world is often prompted by the question “What issue will you work on?” Immediately, we divide the world into separate issues (health, education, livelihoods, etc.), and pick a lane.

The act of narrowing focus isn’t itself problematic; what’s problematic is the process: assuming the funder's personal experience is what counts most, and that the only or best approach means limiting funds and curiosity to a specific issue area.

An abundance approach recognizes that the systemic crises we see today — particularly climate, human rights, democracy and unjust economies — are intersectional. In practice, a funder is able to retain focus on one deep root cause while remaining open to at least learning about, and potentially funding, other often complementary areas, and/or collaborating with others to do so. In addition, an abundance approach could lead the funder to invest not in projects, but in people and communities, knowing that people’s lives cannot be restricted to single issue areas. It might also lead to supporting collaborative pooled funds, like the Freedom Fund or Co-Impact. This approach allows for a clear articulation of values alignment which can become more important (or more impactful) than issue area box-ticking when choosing how to spend time and funds.

If this can become the new norm in our sector, we will move away from the narrow definition of philanthropy that centers the funder in a way that puts up barriers to collaboration and dialogue, and binds the funder’s own awareness and imagination. As an alternative, we move toward a sector where alignment, collaboration and learning between funders is easier and more normal.

2. Urgency

Wealth holders often follow a common path that slides into a scarcity mindset. Typically, the first step is to dedicate a pot of money to grantmaking. The size of this pot is typically based on personal comfort or administrative requirements like minimum disbursement quotas. When it comes to strategy development, ambitions are limited to the size of the grantmaking pot. Often, it is concluded that there is not “enough” to take on the root causes of social problems, and the funder focuses on symptoms instead. This is true for those who give annually from personal wealth, as well as for new and established endowments.

On the other hand, an abundance practice reveals a variety of pathways and tools. Many of our members take an “impact-first” approach, which begins by taking stock of all the financial and nonfinancial assets that an individual controls or influences, and then asks how these assets could be best mobilized for impact. In many cases, a change in investment strategy, in the way a wealth holder runs their business or in their approach to tax payment might be as urgent as the development of a grantmaking strategy. In this way, funders leave behind the idea of a separate social impact “pot” and come to a more accurate understanding of net contribution to wellbeing in the world.

The logical extension of this approach is to interrogate to what degree a funder’s resources are being actively mobilized for impact. For example, one of our members advocates for funders to ask themselves not how much to give, but how much is enough to keep. There is no judgment about what an individual considers enough for them to live a happy and secure life, or to leave to their children. But by flipping the question and then working with a wealth advisor to get to a number, philanthropists often conclude that the resources they can move toward philanthropy grow dramatically.

3. Shared Power

The many worthy causes out there for funders to support can be overwhelming. The temptation can be to choose a narrow focus by picking a specific problem the funder feels passionate about solving, and then deciding on the solutions to support. This approach is often contrasted with random giving and described as “strategic,” but it often leads to a feeling of scarcity (usually of the funder’s time or knowledge) that leads to lack of impact.

A truly strategic approach involves much more than zeroing in on a specific area to support — it requires an interrogation of everything that influences how likely it is that the mission will be achieved, including who is doing the decision-making. The science is clear on the superior outcomes achieved by diverse decision-making teams over individuals, and on the risk that excluding people with lived experience leads to inequitable and less effective solutions. Funders can learn more about their area of interest, but rarely reach the levels of expertise of practitioners, and even if they do, they cannot “learn” lived experience and cannot provide diverse input on their own. Site visits are not a substitute for proximity; an abundance practice requires the sharing of power.

This means shaking the assumption that the funder decides on the problem and the solution. Instead, they bring others to the decision-making table. Many funders in our community have taken steps to diversify their boards, or build a diverse committee including people with lived experience, who are paid either to advise or actively decide on where funds go. Many also choose to support collaborative, community-led funds directed by people with lived experience. These participatory and collaborative processes might take an additional early investment of time and energy, but the sharing of power ultimately leads to more efficiency and better outcomes, helping funders break out of the scarcity that inevitably comes when trying to go it alone.

4. Trust

Much has been written about the harm that scarcity does in the social impact sector. At different points, the problem has been called the nonprofit starvation cycle and the hamster wheel of philanthropy. We believe that trust-based philanthropy can address many of the root causes of this scarcity, both in the ways that funding is distributed (the importance of unrestricted, core funding), and in the importance of nonfinancial support and reducing the bureaucratic burden put on partners.

While we see some backsliding in the sector after an encouraging shift in practice during the pandemic, most of our members have embraced trust-based practices. We have discussed what is most challenging, including the process of building trust while getting started. Some funders have found the answer with learning grants — one-year grants with a partner that have the intention of graduating into multiyear core support based on learnings from the first year.

When it comes to expanding and finding new grantees, one of our community members has taken a “+1” approach, where existing grantees can recommend other grant recipients. This not only builds trust, but diversifies the voices contributing to decisions around grantmaking, increasing both equity of access and effectiveness of outcomes.

5. Impact

When it comes to learning and impact assessment, a simple growth mindset that seeks to “improve” rather than “prove” can be sufficient to mitigate most harmful practices. Most of our community members are focused on systemic change, and so have accepted that the question of any one funder’s impact is one of contribution, not attribution. Impact assessment therefore takes a longer-term perspective, guided by intermediate outcomes and indicators with partners, and the understanding that qualitative information can be as rigorous and informative as quantitative data.

An abundance practice to impact at scale recognizes that funders are, by definition, part of a philanthropic ecosystem that holds power across a range of issue areas. It recognizes that best practice is a long way from becoming common practice, and that funders are often most influenced by peers. More and more funders are therefore actively engaging across the sector and sharing what has and hasn’t worked. Some of our members have written articles and books, others have spoken at events, and many share openly within our community, all in the spirit of shared learning, transparency and accountability. This reinforces all of the aforementioned practices, recognizing that an abundance practice emphasizes outcomes across the full sector, not just for the specific individual.

Ultimately, “unlocking abundance” cannot mean just doing more of everything. Every individual has real limits, and has to prioritize and set boundaries. And yet, the practice invites us to re-examine where to set these limits and why. It acknowledges that the status quo of philanthropy, where funders act in isolation and move insufficient resources with lots of strings attached, is an approach based on flawed assumptions, scarcity mentality and fear of change.

The activist Mariame Kaba said, “Hope isn’t an emotion… hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline… we have to practice it every single day.” The same could be said for abundance. We cannot wait to wake up one morning and feel it, or trick ourselves into thinking we have attained it in a moment of spiritual epiphany. An abundance mindset must be proactively imagined, explored and built.

Abundance is more than just a concept, and the argument that it is insufficiently practical to be useful is losing traction. The barriers to taking an abundance approach are not about time or money, but about ambition, courage and imagination. With those ingredients, there is no reason that the sector cannot learn to practice abundance, in the words of Mariame Kaba, every single day.

Renee Kaplan is CEO of The Philanthropy Workshop, a global community of philanthropic funders.

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