If governments are openly re-coding development around national interest, security, investment, and domestic political returns, then philanthropy cannot keep behaving like a softer version of the old donor model. The UK has now said this plainly: ODA is being cut to 0.3% of GNI by 2027, traditional bilateral funding is being reduced, some countries will shift to “partnerships for investment,” and the UK wants to be “an investor, not just a donor,” moving from grants toward expertise, finance mobilisation, and local-solutions language. At the same time, the OECD says the 2025 Seville financing agreement explicitly recognised philanthropy as a strategic partner in catalytic capital initiatives, precisely because ODA is declining and public money is being reallocated.
So the trend is obvious for philanthropy, as we are no longer being invited merely to fund projects. We are being pulled into the redesign of development finance, policy influence, civic infrastructure, and risk-bearing capital. That is a different game. It means the strategic question for philanthropy is no longer “how do we fund good work?” but “what part of the new architecture are we helping to build, and who gets power inside it?”
The strongest actors are already responding that way.
TrustAfrica is a good example from Africa. It is not just making grants. It is building regional infrastructure. Its West African Philanthropy Support Ecosystem is explicitly about bringing philanthropy networks, funders, and support organisations together to design mechanisms for cooperation and a roadmap for self-owned, sustainable regional philanthropy. At the same time, TrustAfrica has helped convene the West Africa Democracy Roundtable and Fund, and it now sits inside ECOWAS-linked consultation spaces on women and youth political participation.
That is philanthropy acting as ecosystem builder, agenda shaper, and political convenor, not just a pass-through funder.
African Collaborative is doing something similar from a funding-model perspective. It invests exclusively in African-led organisations with multi-year capital, open applications, tailored support services, and bridge-building to new funders, and it has now added sector portfolios so African-led organisations are visible not just as grantees but as domain experts. Their own framing is telling: they are trying to move philanthropy from funding solutions for Africa to funding solutions from Africa.
That is strategic because it changes who is seen as the producer of knowledge and solutions, not only who gets the grant.
FRIDA and Global Fund for Children show what it looks like when philanthropy creates real decision space for partners. FRIDA’s call process allows its own community and applicants to decide which groups receive funding, and in 2025 it went further with a reverse call for applications designed to push power back to movements. Global Fund for Children’s Spark Fund in Southeast Asia was co-developed with young leaders, uses participatory grantmaking, and combines flexible grants with leadership development because youth are often excluded from programme design and decision-making spaces.
Those are not just nicer grant processes. They are deliberate attempts to change who gets to shape the agenda.
Fundo CASA and the Global South House point to another strategic role: philanthropy as political-space builder. The Global South House was created by and for the Global South to influence climate and nature funding flows, explicitly aiming to put southern solutions at the centre of global debates on funding for climate, nature, and people. CASA’s COP30 presence stretched across the Blue Zone, Green Zone, People’s COP, Cas’Amazônia, and other spaces, with direct discussion of territorial funding, climate justice, and protection of environmental defenders.
That is a concrete example of philanthropy not just paying for attendance, but helping create the rooms in which local actors can influence finance and norms.
In Asia, Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation and AVPN show what connected philanthropy looks like. Shakti explicitly combines philanthropy, policy research, and stakeholder dialogue, and works with policymakers, civil society, industry, and academia to advance policy and market-based climate solutions. AVPN is doing something parallel at ecosystem scale: its recent work spans AI skills, collaborative philanthropy, climate action, health equity, and impact investing; its AI Opportunity Fund has expanded with new capital and a policy toolkit for governments; and its Climate x Health Lighthouse Fund provides unrestricted grants, capacity building, and ecosystem engagement for solutions at the climate-health intersection.
This is philanthropy reading the world as interconnected instead of funding in neat silos.
Latin America offers another useful pattern through Latimpacto. It is helping foundations, family offices, and ecosystem actors learn how to use catalytic capital rather than just talk about it. Its 2025 bootcamp was explicitly about designing catalytic-capital strategies and assessing risk and readiness, while its Green Catalytic Fund with IDB Lab and partners is using a systems approach that strengthens entrepreneurship support organisations, not just individual ventures, to help climate solutions scale in the region.
That is important because it shows philanthropy moving from project support to market architecture.
And at the larger philanthropic end, the new Climate and Health Funders Coalition tells us where big philanthropy is going. More than 35 philanthropies committed an initial $300 million at COP30 for integrated climate-and-health action, with a stated goal of unlocking longer-term public, private, and multilateral investment while shifting funding and power to the communities most affected.
Whatever one thinks of the coalition, it shows that serious funders are now treating climate, health, data, and systems resilience as one agenda, not four.
So what should philanthropy and advocates focus on now?
| 1 | fund infrastructure, not just activities. If the aid system is becoming more transactional, then what matters is who controls the rails: regranting platforms, community funds, pooled procurement, data systems, legal defence, policy shops, local research capability, and narrative infrastructure. The OECD’s FFD4 statement is explicit that local funds, community funds, giving platforms, research, advocacy, and philanthropy networks need to be strengthened, not treated as side issues. |
| 2 | create influence space, not just feedback loops. There is a difference between asking grantees for feedback and giving them real agenda-setting power. FRIDA, Spark Fund, TrustAfrica, and Global South House are useful because they move partners closer to decision-making, policy conversation, and capital allocation. |
| 3 | stop funding single-issue silos when the world is moving through intersections. Climate is now public health. AI is now labour-market policy. Civic space is now economic governance. Migration is now security, labour, and demographic policy. Philanthropy that still funds as if these are separate files will miss where power is actually moving. Shakti, AVPN, and the Climate and Health Funders Coalition are all examples of actors funding across those intersections. |
| 4 | use catalytic capital carefully, but do use it where it builds local bargaining power. The point is not to mimic DFIs. It is to help local actors get into the rooms where pipelines, standards, and investment logic are shaped. Latimpacto is useful here because it is not just mobilising money; it is training the field to understand risk, readiness, and the enabling environment. |
| 5 | advocates need to stop approaching this moment only as a moral argument. Morality still matters, but it is not enough. The strategic advocates will be the ones who can translate values into policy options, financing models, governance reforms, local-content arguments, procurement standards, and political coalitions. TrustAfrica’s ECOWAS engagement and Shakti’s bridge-building model both point in that direction. |
The simplest way for philanthropy and advocates to read the news now is this:
When a government says “investor, not donor,” ask what that means for who controls finance, expertise, standards, and implementation. When development rhetoric shifts toward security, migration, climate resilience, or AI competitiveness, ask which actors are being repositioned as partners, which are being demoted to delivery, and which new intermediaries are becoming important. When someone says “local solutions,” ask whether local actors are actually getting power, patient capital, and agenda-setting room — or only subcontracting opportunities.
That is the strategic test now.
Philanthropy that only fills gaps will become part of the old system’s slow decline. BUT Philanthropy that funds infrastructure, influence, proximate leadership, and cross-issue strategy has a chance to help build the next one.
Yop Rwang Pam
