What is a Donor Collaborative?

A group of funders who work together to maximize their impact
A group fund or pooled fund

A donor collaborative is a group of funders with a shared interest who work together to increase their impact. It can be as intimate as a local giving circle made up of four friends or as big as the Jewish Funders Network, which has 2,500 members in 11 countries.

Donor collaboratives pool resources to make a bigger impact than any individual donor could make on their own. In addition to being pooled funds, donor collaboratives are also often places where funders come together to learn, share insights and develop strategies. Depending on the collaborative, members may be individuals and/or foundations.

Donor collaboratives come together around issues, identities and communities. Their missions and activities vary.

The Women Donors Network, for example, brings together progressive women funders to build a community within philanthropy and to learn how to be more effective donors, as well as making grants. Donor collaboratives at the Proteus Fund bring together donors and social justice leaders focused on specific issues (e.g., LGBTQ rights) and make strategic grants while also supporting leadership development. The Sex Work Donor Collaborative is a network of funders that coordinate grantmaking, research and advocacy to increase funding for sex workers’ rights. And sometimes, a donor collaborative comes together for a specific purpose in a limited period of time, such as when the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Intel Foundation and several other large donors came together to make a major combined impact as The Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education, a collaborative that sought to improve the quality of education for underserved children around the world.

There’s often overlap between donor collaboratives and funder affinity groups.