Unlocking durable capital for lasting impact
In this guide, Lever for Change outlines how to use strategic investments to boost long-term stability, growth, and impact.
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Overview
Philanthropy’s scale must match its ambition. Powerful ideas need large-scale, long-term funding to flourish, yet, in the US, the average grant value is about $50,000, and lasts just over a year.
This guide by Lever for Change - a nonprofit affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation, which helps donors to discover and invest in organisations with transformative potential - explains why durable capital is needed and shares examples of global best practice.
At a time when many nonprofits have experienced twin crises—the COVID-19 pandemic followed by deep cuts in government funding for social services and the sciences—there is an urgent need for not only more funding but also strategic investments aimed at boosting long-term stability, growth, and impact.
Unfortunately, durable capital is the exact opposite of the type of financial support nonprofits typically receive. Instead, nonprofits generally receive most of their funding in small, short-term and one-time gifts, earmarked for specific projects, durable capital requires a different approach—long-term, flexible, and large-scale.
Such large, patient, flexible capital allows nonprofits to invest in the infrastructure— think financial systems, measurement and evaluation, staffing, and the capacity to engage in partnerships—that builds resilience and supports sustainable scaling.
In the private sector, this sort of funding is called “Series B” or “growth capital.” It is reserved for established companies looking to attract new customers and expand their market share. It speaks volumes that this sort of investment is still extremely rare and doesn’t yet have a name in the nonprofit sector.
This report aims to rectify this oversight by examining seven types of durable capital that can help organisations to strengthen their resiliency and sustainably deepen or expand their impact.
As the world around us—with its growing uncertainty— appears intent on demonstrating the use case for durable capital, the hope is that this report serves as an urgent and convincing call for increased investment in this often overlooked and under-appreciated philanthropic tool.
Below is an abridged version of the guide, reproduced by Circle with permission. Read the full, original guide here.
Introduction
If you didn’t know better, you might be tempted to believe that the nonprofit sector is a well-resourced and highly stable pillar of global society.
Consider the situation in the United States. More than 300,000 nonprofit organizations employ over 12.8 million people and, by many measures, they are generously supported. Individuals gave more than $370bn to nonprofits in 2023, according to Giving USA, while private foundations, corporations, and other institutions donated an additional $180bn.
Yet, anyone close to the sector knows such data can be misleading, particularly when it comes to sustainability. A vast majority of nonprofits— including many of the most familiar, brand-name charities—scramble every year to raise enough money to keep their doors open and fulfill their mission.
Amid a stormy political climate, many nonprofits are now faced with funding cuts affecting everything from homeless shelters to health care and the case for large-scale giving could not come at a more urgent or compelling time.
The tenuous nature of philanthropic support distracts these vital organizations from their core work and stunts their impact, whether they are trying to house people experiencing homelessness, improve global health, or combat climate change.
More money is always helpful, but for most nonprofits to truly maximise their potential, a different type of funding is needed. Instead of one-time, short-term gifts or project-specific grants, nonprofits need more durable capital that can elevate their impact, ensure their long-term sustainability, and enable their leaders to spend more time fulfilling their mission.
What is durable capital?
We define “durable capital” as long-term, flexible funding that allows nonprofits to build the infrastructure, capacity, and staff to achieve their most ambitious goals. It consists of large investments that support critical but often neglected needs, including strategic planning, fundraising, advocacy, and staffing, among others.
Durable capital is distinct from general operating support, which nonprofits need to keep the lights on and provide their day-to-day services, and project grants, which are usually time-limited investments to help organizations deliver specific, measurable outcomes.
Although the supply of durable capital is not sufficient in the charitable sector, we have been heartened to see many of our peers promoting its strategic value—most notably, in a series of articles on “big bet” philanthropy in the Stanford Social Innovation Review over the past year.
As many of these authors have pointed out, for any philanthropic investment to be truly transformative it needs to lead not only to greater impact, but to greater and more sustainable impact that an organization and its partners can maintain long into the future.
If a big bet investment is not designed with this goal in mind, it could be counter-productive by causing a nonprofit to ramp up its staffing and service offerings, only to face a “funding cliff” when the money runs out. In turn, that could lead to cutting jobs and slashing services.
Staving off this funding cliff often requires funding that endures and persists—or, funding that enables organizations to evolve so they can reliably attract higher levels of ongoing support and partnerships that make sustained impact possible.
Corporate capital
While sources of durable capital remain relatively rare in the nonprofit sector, in the private sector durable capital is highly valued and readily available. Indeed, a vast network of private sector institutions, from banks to venture capitalists, provide the durable capital companies need to evolve and grow.
In corporate finance, “seed funding” and “angel investing” refer to money provided to new companies to help them get off the ground in exchange for equity or partial ownership provided to investors.
As private companies prove themselves and mature, they can tap additional rounds of funding known as Series A, Series B, and Series C. Investors’ dollars—and expectations—grow with each round.
Series A funding is often provided by venture capitalists to companies that are ready to develop solid business plans that will generate long-term profit.
Series B funding, or “growth capital” as it known in the business sector, is for established companies that have demonstrated their viability but need significant additional money to attract new customers and expand their market share. Series B funding is the closest to what we mean by durable capital in philanthropy.
Series C funding is for companies that are already large and successful but want to jump-start growth by diversifying into new product areas, expanding into new markets, or even buying other companies.
MacArthur's early bet
The MacArthur Foundation experimented with durable capital in the early 2000s through a program called the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions (MACEI). The program provided one-time, institutional grants to reward exceptional MacArthur grantees and help ensure their long-term sustainability.
Between 2006 and 2016, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation made 102 grants totaling $67 million through the MACEI program. The one-time investments ranged from $200,000 to $1 million. Recipients were required to allocate at least 80 percent of the award towards strategies that would increase their financial stability—such as establishing an endowment, building a cash reserve, or purchasing real estate—while the remaining 20 percent could be directed to initiatives such as strategic planning, capacity building, or fundraising.
An evaluation of the program in 2016 concluded the awards were a “vital, all too unique source of institution-level support” that provided financial breathing room so recipients could make necessary but unglamorous investments, such as replacing outdated software. But many recipients indicated the awards’ value was limited by the grants’ emphasis on building and retaining resources to prevent a crisis, which limited the recipients’ flexibility.
Though the program was wound down, MacArthur incorporated the lessons learned as it expanded institutional support grants through much larger initiatives such as 100&Change and, eventually, Lever for Change.
Lever for Change was created by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2019 to embolden donors to think big and amplify their philanthropic impact by increasing the ambition, urgency, and scale of their giving. The organisation helps donors find and fund bold solutions to the world’s biggest problems—from racial and gender inequality to economic opportunity and climate change.
Yet the quantity of durable capital in the charitable sector remains far below the need. Many funders still prefer to provide modest, short-term grants. That is one reason the average U.S. foundation grant is about $50,000 and lasts just over a year. Other donors prefer to give large grants to well- known nonprofits, with funds earmarked for specific projects, to minimize risk.
The result? An abundance of nonprofits that have great potential to better support communities and individuals around the world—thanks to deep expertise, proven solutions, and strong relationships—that do not have the funding and long-term support to take their services and their organization to a new level.
Today, we have a more nuanced understanding of the types of durable capital that funders can provide to move the needle for high-performing nonprofits.
Based on our experience with Lever for Change and interviews we’ve conducted with many of our peers in philanthropy, we believe there are seven types of durable capital that can be especially helpful for nonprofits ready to grow the breadth, depth, or sophistication of their offerings.
Seven types of durable capital
- Traditional Scaling. The most common type of durable philanthropic capital enables nonprofits to expand their impact by growing their footprint. This means expanding to serve more individuals, communities, or geographies.
- Increasing Durability. Providing nonprofits with an endowment, once confined to education institutions, hospitals, and museums, can help nonprofits ride out sudden policy or funding shifts and give nonprofit leaders the stability to plan for the long term.
- Deepening Work. Durable capital can help nonprofits deepen their work by expanding the types of services they provide communities.
- Strengthening Partners. Durable capital can also help nonprofits build the skills necessary to engage with like-minded organisations and governments to achieve transformative systems change.
- Achieving Critical Mass. Extraordinary infusions of durable capital can help an organisation get to the tipping point where the services, behaviour, or product it promotes becomes mainstream.
- Bolstering financial systems. Nonprofits often underinvest in non-mission-critical expenses such as financial systems. They are, nonetheless, important for optimally tracking and effectively deploying funding.
- Experimentation and Evaluation. Durable capital can help both new and experienced organizations invest in the necessary experimentation, measurement and evaluation to determine the most effective way to achieve their goals.
1. Traditional scaling
Definition: the process of expanding an organisation’s reach and impact by increasing its resources, programs, or geographic presence, often through fundraising, partnerships, or replication of successful models.
Benefits: allows the nonprofit to expand their services and scale impact.
Consider for: joint nonprofit programmes or collaborations or organisations ready to increase their reach.
The most common and readily understandable type of durable philanthropic capital enables nonprofits to expand their impact by providing their services
to significantly more individuals, communities, or regions.
Such scaling up is common in the private sector, such as when consumer brands with hot-selling products add manufacturing capacity so they can sell them in new countries or adapt them for new audiences.
Case study: Sesame Workshop
Convinced that such an approach could improve lives by bringing proven social-sector innovations to more people, the MacArthur Foundation
In 2016, the MacArthur Foundation launched its first 100&Change competition to provide $100m to fund a single proposal that promised real and measurable progress in solving a critical global problem.
The first 100&Change grant was awarded to the Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee to implement Ahlan Simsim, a five-year joint program to bring early learning and nurturing care to children affected by the conflict in Syria and displacement across the Middle East.
The core components of Ahlan Simsim (which translates to “Welcome Sesame”) are a locally-produced television show broadcast across the Middle East and North Africa and direct educational services to support vulnerable children and their caregivers in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan,and Iraq.
Ahlan Simsim vastly exceeded the initial scaling aspirations of the MacArthur Foundation. The original vision was to create four seasons of children’s television content to reach 6 to 9 million children, and direct educational services to support 1 million kids and caregivers.
Six years later, Ahlan Simsim has produced nine seasons of content that has reached over 27 million children across the region and provided direct services to more than 3 million children and caregivers.
Equally important, the Ahlan Simsim team has tried to ensure its long-term viability by securing additional partners and funders, such as local governments and USAID, who sustained portions of the program after the end of the 100&Change grant.
Over the course of the five-year grant, additional donors to Sesame Workshop and IRC have contributed over $300m in add-on funding to support deepening this work within the Middle East and North Africa region and to adapt content to other countries and crises. This includes two $100m grants from the LEGO Foundation.
2. Increasing durability
Definition: investing in endowments of long-term capital that can support nonprofits into the future
Benefits: Greater ability to implement long-term strategies; increased financial autonomy; more time and space to set bolder goals; improved organisational resilience.
Consider for: nonprofits dismantling inequity; nonprofits led by people of colour; nonprofits focused on ESG.
Annual giving cycles, which bias donors towards short-term, once-a-year gifts rather than long-term philanthropic investments, create instability for the charitable sector.
Nonprofits’ budgets can fluctuate widely from year-to-year depending on everything from the health of the economy to global conflicts, natural disasters, or policy shifts.
Donors can help social organizations ride these waves by investing in endowments that can support nonprofits far into the future. Endowments consist of long-term capital that can be drawn on annually to provide an ongoing source of revenue for an organisation.
Endowments are common in higher education and at hospitals and museums, but they are rare among social service organisations, particularly in organisations led by people of colour or that work to advance racial justice.
Case study: The Schott Foundation
John Jackson, president and CEO of the Schott Foundation, believes organizations that are working to dismantle long-standing structural and systemic causes of inequity are exactly the types of nonprofits that need endowments, so they can stay in the struggle for the long-term.
Towards that end, in 2022 the Schott Foundation launched the EndowNow campaign, to encourage foundations and individual philanthropists to create and fund endowments for organizations led by people of color.
Schott Foundation subsequently launched the Racial Justice in Education Endowment Collaborative Fund, which seeks to raise $30m to fund endowments to ensure the sustainability of three BIPOC-led national education justice alliances.
A 5 percent annual drawdown from the endowments would allow the alliances to spend less time on fundraising and more time developing their organising capacity and infrastructure. It would also increase the decision-making power of local leaders by making them less dependent on the changing interests of philanthropy.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched its own endowment grantmaking strategy in 2022 by giving endowment grants of $5m each to three racial justice organisations led by people of colours: UnidosUS, NAACP and Faith in Action (FIA).
The organisations have reported multiple benefits from the endowments, from greater ability to implement long-term strategies to increased financial autonomy and more time and space to set bolder goals.
3. Deepening work
Definition: an option that evolves and expands supports for populations already being served.
Benefits: Increases efficiency by building on existing infrastructure.
Consider for: healthcare-focused organisations and direct service organisations.
Serving ever larger numbers of individuals and geographies is not the only way for nonprofits to increase their impact. Another option is to evolve and expand supports for populations already being served.
Durable capital can be extremely helpful for social organisations that want to deepen their work in this way.
Case study: The Lone Star Depression Challenge
In 2021, Lyda Hill Philanthropies awarded $10m to the Lone Star Depression Challenge, run by the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute in Texas to expand the diagnosis and treatment of depression and other mental health disorders in Texas.
The money was awarded through the Lone Star Prize, a competition launched in early 2020 to attract bold ideas to improve the lives of Texans and their communities. Lever for Change managed the competition on behalf of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.
Historically, fewer than 1 in 15 of the more than 1.5 million Texans suffering from depression each year received sufficient care to recover, according to the Meadows Institute, and more than 3,000 people in the state died each year from suicide. Through the Lone Star Depression Challenge, the Meadows Institute hoped to increase the rate of recovery from depression to more than 50 percent.
The Meadows Institute’s strategy was to build on the strengths of the state’s existing health care infrastructure by increasing the training and expertise of primary care providers across Texas in order to improve their ability to detect and treat their patients’ mental health challenges.
They also enlisted the support of employers to reduce the stigma around depression and increase access to mental health resources for diverse workforces.
Early data indicates the objectives of the Lone Star Depression Challenge are within reach: baseline remission from depression is at 42 percent for those who have received treatment from the Meadows Institute’s model or approaches based on it.
The Meadows Institute’s original plans called for working in two of Texas’ eight health care regions. The collaborative now works in six. And initial proposals to work with eight health systems have grown to a total of 18 health systems, serving 4.3 million people.
4. Strengthening partners
Definition: support for public sector partners to improve government services and deliver them more effectively.
Benefits: coordination with government agencies can make lasting progress on intractable social issues; by partnering with governments, nonprofits can achieve unparalleled scale; By partnering with governments, nonprofits can work upstream and change systems to better meet community needs.
Consider for: Healthcare-focused nonprofits; low- and middle-income countries; nonprofits working on cross cutting issues.
Few nonprofits can make lasting progress on intractable social issues alone. Cooperation and coordination with like-minded organisations and government agencies is usually essential.
Durable capital can empower nonprofits to support their public sector partners to improve government services and deliver them more effectively. It can help communities develop the training, skill development, and structures to address more of their own needs.
Case study: Universal access to healthcare in Liberia
An example of using durable capital to strengthen partners was a $20m grant from Co-Impact to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Last Mile Health in 2019 to support the government of Liberia’s vision to provide universal access to primary health care for all Liberians through the country’s professional community health workforce.
More than 1.2 million people in Liberia live more than 5km from a health facility. That distance limits access to basic health services, lifesaving treatment for common childhood illnesses, family planning, and prenatal care.
With support from Co-Impact and other funders, Last Mile Health worked in partnership with Liberia’s Ministry of Health, The Global Fund and a broad coalition of government entities and nonprofits to expand Liberia’s National Community Health Program, bringing essential care within reach of every rural household.
Today, more than 5,000 community and frontline health workers have been recruited, trained, supervised, equipped, and deployed by the Liberia Ministry of Health. The national community health program is fully scaled and has expanded access to contraception and care for childhood malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia.
After a gender assessment conducted in 2021 determined that only 17 percent of Liberia’s paid professionalized health workers were women, Last Mile Health and the Ministry of Health also made a commitment to increase gender parity in the community health workforce. In a recent round of recruitment, the number of new female community health workers had increased from 20 to 36 percent.
5. Achieving critical mass
Definition: an infusion of durable capital can help an organization, program, service, or idea break through and achieve scale.
Benefits: as concepts gain popularity, offerings can expand, and this can help a programme or service achieve a breakthrough.
Consider for: Healthcare-focused nonprofits and nonprofits working on behaviour change
When new nonprofits introduce effective social innovations, slow, steady growth can occur as they gradually build awareness among new users and communities.
But the exponential growth needed to achieve critical mass usually requires either an extraordinary infusion of durable capital or a dramatic shift in demand for the product or service.
Case study: Project ECHO
Launched in 2003 by Dr. Sanjeev Arora, a Professor of Medicine at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Project ECHO was created to enable health care professionals in rural areas to regularly consult with and learn from specialists at larger hospitals and clinics over video so those frontline health workers could provide life- saving Hepatitis C treatments to their patients.
ECHO turns training on its head by providing an innovative, sustainable way to upskill frontline health workers. Unlike traditional, in-person training, ECHO mentors health care workers over the long term, not only increasing their knowledge, but holding their hand until they build the confidence needed to implement best practices. Project ECHO facilitated video telementoring sessions with 1,000 to 2,000 practitioners annually in its first few years. As the concept gained popularity, Project ECHO added new health disciplines, new partners, and new geographies.
By 2019 its platform was delivering video trainings to more than 230,000 attendees in 158 countries annually with content related to 70 disease areas, from HIV and TB to opioid addiction and mental health.
Co-Impact provided $10m of durable capital to Project ECHO to expand its offerings in India. Today, working with partners such as India’s National Health Missions and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Project ECHO’s platform is delivering training to tens of thousands of nurses, community health workers, and physicians across the country to improve detection and treatment of tuberculosis, blood disorders, cancer, mental health disorders and other illnesses.
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, the Project ECHO team understood its platform was well positioned to help the world respond. Moving quickly, Co-Impact, in March 2020, launched a Systems Response Fund to channel additional investments to Project ECHO to help the organisation pivot.
The Audacious Project followed in May 2020 with a substantial grant with the aim of helping Project ECHO equip more than 350,000 frontline clinicians and public health workers across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America to respond to Covid19.
Project ECHO surpassed those targets. More than 1.1 million people attended Project ECHO trainings in 2020, followed by 1.4 million in 2021, 1.2 million in 2022 and 1.0 million in 2023. As of September 2024, an additional 1 million people have attended Project ECHO sessions.
Cumulatively to date, more than 6.3 million health workers have attended Project ECHO trainings, benefiting the care of more than 150 million patients globally.
6. Bolstering financial systems
Definition: develop strong financial systems and processes so nonprofits can receive, track, and effectively deploy grants.
Benefits: strengthening internal operations can help organisations build their capacity to absorb and manage large grants.
Consider for: small nonprofits and young organisations.
Attracting new funding can be vitally important for nonprofits, but even when fundraising targets are achieved there are no guarantees an organisation will maximise the utility and longevity of new investments.
Nonprofits need strong financial systems and processes in place so they can receive, track, and effectively deploy grants from donors. This is especially true for younger organizations that receive larger infusions of capital than they are used to.
Case study: The END Fund
The END Fund was launched in 2012 and began funding nonprofits in Africa to treat and prevent neglected tropical diseases.
Beyond conducting standard due diligence on new grantees, the END Fund takes a comprehensive approach to assessing and strengthening their partners’ internal operations to improve their ability to receive new funding and expand over time.
The process does not end once a grant is awarded; financial systems are reviewed every two to three years to assess how the organisation is evolving and what new tools or structures may be necessary as it grows.
Few END Fund grantees have the time or budgets to conduct such reviews or to invest in upgrading internal tools. So the END Fund adds durable capital for such expenditures into the majority of its grants, usually around 10 percent of the overall award, which can enable grantees to leverage cloud-based payroll systems and other advances that can reduce costs and increase the quality of their work.
Louise Makau-Barasa, senior director, programs at the END Fund, has seen many of her grantees benefit from such assistance.
One is the Mission to Save the Helpless (MITOSATH) based in Lagos, Nigeria. The END Fund began funding MITOSATH in 2015 to support its work to combat neglected tropical diseases such as lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness.
When the END Fund began supporting MITOSATH in 2015, the organization had 12 staff members in the states of Lagos and Niger. Since then, the END Fund has provided $6 million to the organisation, with a portion of each grant dedicated to organisational strengthening.
In 2022, the END Fund engaged an independent institution to conduct a financial review of END Fund grants to MITOSATH, which indicated a need for strengthening internal control procedures and financial reporting.
The END Fund has worked with MITOSATH to strengthen procurement policies, improve internal controls, and financial reporting processes, including shifting to cloud-based enterprise software.
Today MITOSATH has more than 30 full-time and 60 part-time staff members working in six states in Nigeria. It has expanded onchocerciasis treatments in each of the states and supported the governments of four of those states to reach requirements to cease lymphatic filariasis treatments.
7. Experimentation and evaluation
Definition: Building the infrastructure for experimentation, measurement, and evaluation
Benefits: allows nonprofits to evolve and endure - diversify existing services, and expand to support new communities; supports evidence based decision-making; optimises impact through data-driven analysis.
Consider for: organisations ready to scale or those expanding to new programmatic areas.
Whether an organization hopes to diversify its existing services or expand to support new communities, it is rarely obvious how to do so.
Testing and experimentation are essential to figure out what will work. Yet, many nonprofits cannot afford the trial and error that will enable them to evolve and endure.
Durable capital can fill the gap by allowing grantees to try new approaches and determine the best ways to achieve their highest aspirations.
Case study: The Studio @ Blue Meridian Partners
Blue Meridian Partners was one of the first philanthropic organizations created specifically to provide durable capital to nonprofits. Blue Meridian pulls together the resources, energy, and insights of like-minded funders to make large, long-term grants to support the most promising strategies to reduce poverty and increase economic mobility in the US.
Recognising that few resources were available for social sector leaders to experiment and iterate upon on their existing platforms, Blue Meridian introduced The Studio to provide flexible capital and tailored advisory support to organisations ready for transformational growth.
The Studio launched with an initial cohort of seven nonprofits that each received
up to $10m in funding as well as strategic assistance.
One member of their second cohort was Per Scholas, which prepares individuals for tech careers by providing skills training and access to employer networks. Per Scholas aims to improve economic equity through its programmes and has an explicit focus on serving low-wage workers without a bachelor’s degree.
Per Scholas had been in existence for more than two decades and was serving more than 2,000 learners annually when it was selected in 2021 to receive an investment from The Studio. Per Scholas was well-established and the success of its Immersive, in-person training model had been validated by external research.
Indeed, in 2020, Per Scholas was selected as the recipient of the $10m Economic Opportunity Challenge, funded by an anonymous donor, to scale its efforts to propel low-income people into the middle class by helping them launch tech careers.
The investment from The Studio enabled Per Scholas to test part-time, virtual, hybrid, and satellite variations of its in-person training, building on lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Through successful experimentation, Per Scholas was able to expand its reach to more than 5,000 learners annually in just three years, after taking more than two decades to reach 2,000 learners annually.
The Studio grant also enabled Per Scholas to develop and test a new program called the Career Accelerator, to help existing tech workers continue to update and evolve their IT skills as their careers progress. The Career Accelerator has grown organically and expects to serve 2,000 learners in 2024 with a goal of supporting 10,000 learners annually by 2030.
Since 2019, The Studio has provided more than $200m of capital to support R&D at 30 nonprofits, with many experiencing success similar to Per Scholas.
Conclusion
Durable philanthropic capital can take many forms and advance a wide array of social causes.
The seven categories we’ve highlighted—traditional scaling, increasing durability, deepening work, strengthening partners, achieving critical mass, bolstering financial systems, and experimentation and evaluation—have a strong track record and are increasingly common, though they are not the only options.
Based on our case studies we’ve identified four important commonalities among effective durable capital investments:
- Time and flexibility. They tend to be larger and last longer than typical grants, which gives grantees much needed time and flexibility to plan for sustainable growth.
- Optimisation. They tend to be larger and last longer than typical grants, which gives grantees much needed time and flexibility to plan for sustainable growth.
- Readiness. Durable capital is most beneficial for nonprofits that have established their viability and utility and are ready to expand the breadth or depth of their services.
- Strength. Durable capital helps strengthen organisations and makes them more resilient and durable.
The vehicle for delivering durable capital is less important than the size, scope, and momentum of the funding. Indeed, we need to increase the flow of durable capital to the social sector with greater urgency to meet the moment.
We hope these examples of bold philanthropists investing in durable capital and the highly effective organisations that have leveraged this funding inspire others to give more and give more strategically.
About the guide
Lever for Change provides services to help catalyze philanthropy and discover new potential. Download the full version of this guide here.
The report authors were: Cecilia A. Conrad, Ph.D., CEO, Lever for Change; Kristen J. Molyneaux, Ph.D., President, Lever for Change; David Bowermaster, Founder, Fireside Strategy; Marc Moorghen, VP Marketing Communications, Lever for Change; with contributions from Apoorva Baheti and Lana Halima
