Why Collaborative Funds Give Me Hope Right Now

It’s hard to talk with nonprofit leaders today without hearing some version of the same story: Policies are shifting, funding is more uncertain, and the demand for services keeps rising. And yet, the organizations closest to communities are being asked to do more with less, often under intense scrutiny. Recent research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), “A Sector in Crisis: How U.S. Nonprofits and Foundations Are Responding to Threats,” underscores the dynamic being experienced by nonprofit leaders.

Funders feel this tension too. Many are searching for ways to move money that responds to these times — ways that support not just programs, but the long-term strength of organizations and the ecosystems they work within. After years of watching different models up close, one approach continues to stand out to me as both practical and hopeful: high-impact collaborative funds. 

Collaborative funds are a fast-growing model in philanthropy, and, at their best, collaborative funds allow donors — both individuals and institutions — to pool resources while investing just as intentionally in relationships, governance, and learning. They offer access to trusted expertise and enable flexible capital to move through proven platforms. But what makes them truly high-performing isn’t the pooled funding model alone, it’s the specific design choices that shape how the collaboratives partner with grantees.

A recent report, “The Collaborative Effect: Grantee Perspectives on How Collaborative Funds Work Best,”produced by Hewlett Foundation grantee partner Philanthropy Together in collaborationwith Vital Impact and Redstone Strategy Group, illustrates how these intentional choices translate to impact — not from the funder’s point of view, but from the perspective that matters most: grantees. The study surveyed and interviewed grantees from 22 “bright-spot” collaboratives, benchmarking them against national CEP data from their Grantee Perception Report (GPR). 

What struck me most about the findings is that the highest-performing collaboratives aren’t flashy or oversized. In fact, many are the opposite. They often operate with lean staffs and relatively simple structures, yet grantees ranked them among the top funders for field impact, knowledge building, and policy influence.

The effectiveness of these high-performing funders comes from a handful of deliberate, consistently applied practices that make collaboration more than a funding mechanism. They streamline processes, prioritize flexible funding, and embrace shared governance — choices that create the conditions for trust, and ultimately, impact.  

Streamlined Processes

Let’s start with process. Grantees of the collaborative funds studied reported spending a median of just 12 hours across the entire grant lifecycle — roughly half the time required by a typical funder, compared to CEP’s GPR dataset. That’s not a marginal improvement; it’s a meaningful shift in how time and energy are spent. Less paperwork means more focus on mission. More partnership. Less friction. 

Flexible Funding

Funding structure matters too. Sixty-eight percent of grantees in the study received unrestricted support, and the collaboratives ranked especially high for offering multiyear, flexible funding. From what I’ve seen, this kind of capital doesn’t just help organizations survive — it gives them room to plan, adapt, and lead. It signals confidence rather than control. 

Governance That Leads to Trust

Then there’s governance. Among the high-performing collaboratives studied, many rely on co-governance models — advisory councils, grantee-led committees, community-majority boards. These structures can be messy and imperfect, but they serve an essential purpose: keeping strategy rooted in community priorities and renewing accountability over time. They make it harder for funders to drift away from the realities on the ground. All of this adds up to something philanthropy talks about a lot but too rarely delivers at scale: trust. 

At a moment when public trust in institutions, including philanthropy, is under strain, trust isn’t a soft value, it’s a hard requirement. While the sector has produced a growing body of research on trust-based and community-centered philanthropy, many funders still struggle to translate those principles into everyday practice. The collaboratives highlighted in “The Collaborative Effect” show what it looks like when trust is operationalized. 

The Relationship-Impact Correlation

From the grantee perspective, relationship quality wasn’t incidental; it was closely tied to impact. Grantees who felt comfortable approaching their funder when something went wrong were more likely to report stronger organizational and field-level results. A large majority said they felt genuinely cared for.

High-impact collaboratives in the study ranked highly for aligning stated values with day-to-day behavior, for being open to grantee ideas, and for not pressuring organizations to change their priorities. This is what trust looks like in practice: consistency, humility, and follow-through. 

Helping funders become more effective partners to nonprofits and communities is at the heart of Hewlett’s recently launched Future of Giving Strategy. “The Collaborative Effect” research, one of the many efforts we support across different segments of philanthropy and the ideological spectrum, reinforces why we see collaborative funds as a promising model for philanthropy.

A Promising Path Forward

Over the past two decades, Hewlett has supported a wide range of collaboratives across our many program areas. One example of a high-impact collaborative described in the study is the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity (CGRE). CGRE has intentionally simplified grant processes, adapted based on grantee feedback, and paired core funding with rapid-response support. Grantees described CGRE as a “gold standard” for transparency and responsiveness — a reminder that trust isn’t aspirational. It’s built through clear, low-lift (for grantees) practices that are sustained over time. 

Looking ahead, I don’t expect the disruption facing nonprofits and funders to ease anytime soon. If anything, the pressures of 2026 will demand more creativity, not less. In that context, collaborative funds built with purpose offer a compelling path forward. They allow significant resources to move through existing infrastructure while keeping funders closely connected to grantees and the communities they serve. They show that it’s possible to scale impact without sacrificing trust and relationships. 

Funders have real choices about how we practice philanthropy — especially in moments like this. High-impact collaborative funds aren’t just an effective model. They’re proof that intentional design — clear processes, flexible funding, and shared governance — can turn principles like trust into practice.  And they remind us that doing philanthropy differently, and better, is still very much within reach. 

Jehan Velji is director of the Effective Philanthropy Group at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She is also a member of the CEP Advisory Board.