NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

You can be a generous philanthropist giving large amounts of money and still fail to deliver the social impact you have outlined with great passion in your mission statement. According to The Bridgespan Group, a Boston-based consultancy for philanthropists, only 20% of philanthropic commitments of $10 million or higher go to organizations or initiatives making a social change—such as improving public health, the justice system, the environment, or international development. There’s a disconnect here. Most donors rate social change as one of their top three priorities in their public mission statements. There are two principle reasons for their failure to deliver: Big donors can’t find enough impact-investing opportunities that absorb large sums of money, and many donors become frustrated with the time-consuming search process needed to find suitable opportunities.