Is philanthropy over?

Roche heir André Hoffmann was recently profiled in NZZ am Sonntag saying, “The traditional form of philanthropy has failed.” We agree with him on that point. But that doesn’t mean philanthropy is over. We’re actually at the beginning of a powerful new decade of philanthropy – philanthropy that is radical, catalytic and collaborative.

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Hoffman rightly highlights that simply transferring money doesn’t help. And he notes that projects that stop when funding is withdrawn are misguided. That’s why at UBS we advise our clients to focus on impactful philanthropy that searches for innovations with evidence of delivering results and accelerates those innovations to scale to a sustainable point where the philanthropist can exit.

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We also agree with Hoffman that philanthropists need to be more active and not just act as funders. He suggests that success of a project must be based on a business model. In the sense that funding only ought to be given when there is evidence of impact, we agree. But while we don’t think philanthropists ought to support projects that depend on them in perpetuity, many of the world’s most challenging social and environmental problems don’t have obvious market-based solutions. Philanthropists have an important role to play to co-invest in promising solutions to take them to the point where they are ready to scale either as a private-sector enterprise or with government funding.

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To support this we’ve been working for over a decade on an innovative outcomes-based funding model to help make government funding more accountable and evidenced based. This model allows philanthropists to work in partnership with government to leverage private capital and take these innovations to scale.

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Yes, the traditional philanthropy of writing a check to pay for services is over. But the impactful philanthropy of this decade is nothing like that. It’s radical in taking risks on promising solutions with potential for massive scale. It’s catalytic by actively focusing on expediting results and impact. And it’s collaborative by partnering with and for others, sharing lessons and eliminating go-it-alone resource waste.

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Traditional philanthropy of the kind Hoffman describes is dead (or should be). But this decade’s impactful philanthropy stands to permanently solve problems. When philanthropists come together to support solutions backed by evidence they can have exponential impact: Because philanthropists themselves actively engage collectively to drive results. And because their investment in solving problems can be used to draw in public and private funding for scale. If you would like to collaborate in this type of philanthropy, please join us .