When the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) first approached TPI, they were facing a challenge not uncommon to many funders – especially those who have been working in a specific area for some time. The Foundation had reached a point where they felt their impact could be magnified by collaborating with other funders, but they were struggling to identify potential partners also working in their niche.
Finding others that share your objectives is easier said than done. In fact, navigating the potential for fruitful collaborations among funders with different priorities, perspectives, and methodologies is often more challenging than the collaboration itself. And yet, we believe the juice is worth the squeeze – donors can increase their impact through collaboration.
At TPI, we find a helpful starting point in trying to identify potential partners is a research study – or landscape scan – of funders or others already working in a specific issue area or geography. JTF came to us looking to identify opportunities for partnership and collaboration at the intersection of health and religion, spirituality, or faith – a pretty specific niche. While JTF knew there were other funders engaged in this area, it appeared each approached the issue through their own distinct terminologies, rationales, and philosophical frameworks, which often diverged from JTF’s own perspectives. Such divergences often make collaborative grantmaking or even sharing lessons learned particularly challenging.
Faced with these uncertainties, JTF engaged TPI to conduct a comprehensive landscape scan to uncover the underlying commonalities among those working in the field and determine if those commonalities could inform a cohesive direction for the Foundation’s future initiatives. For those who have never conducted a landscape scan before, let me tell you that they can be a lot of fun. But more importantly, they’re useful.
Whenever we embark on research like this, we discover passionate and engaged people doing amazing work in philanthropy. In the case of JTF’s landscape scan, TPI helped field a survey to more than 4,000 contacts across the country and heard from over 300 funders across a variety of backgrounds and intents about the kind of work they were doing. This was already revelatory on how diverse philanthropic intent is when it sits at the intersection of health and faith.
Our team complemented the survey with interviews with dozens of funders to gain a more nuanced understanding of their work and initiatives. Through this process, TPI and JTF uncovered valuable insights, including the type of projects most funders were engaging in, the language they utilized to describe their work, and their openness to partnerships and collaboration.
After conducting the national landscape scan and analyzing all that we heard and learned, we unearthed three key findings that JTF began using immediately to inform their own work and explore potential partnerships:
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The scan highlighted a growing trend among funders recognizing spirituality as an integral part of holistic healthcare.
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There is a widely shared belief that improving health outcomes among historically marginalized populations could be achieved through partnerships with faith-based organizations.
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There is a prevailing inclination among funders in this field to view their work as responsive to the needs of diverse grantee partners and target populations.
There is, of course, still much more to explore. The essential takeaway is that this scan allowed us to acquire a wealth of knowledge that empowers JTF to operate more effectively and strategically. This understanding paves the way for intentional collaboration and partnership across their whole ecosystem of funders.
While it’s not traditional, partnerships across different sectors of philanthropy can yield some of the most impactful results. But knowing who is doing what in your area can be difficult to uncover even if you’ve been deep in your work for a very long time. The reasons stem from a variety of issues. The people who might make the most productive partnerships aren’t talking about your issue the same way that you are. Or they’re heads down, at work, and aren’t talking to the world about it at all. Perhaps they aren’t even running within your primary networks. To remedy this, TPI suggests undertaking comprehensive landscape scans, which can help illuminate opportunities for partnership across varied terminologies, philosophies, and intents, and which open the door to deeper and more powerful work in philanthropy.
If you or your foundation seek to explore your current operating landscape, we invite you to connect with us by emailing info@tpi.org.
