Three great ways to amplify your impact as a donor

If you’re a grant maker, you’re probably hoping to make both a short-term and a lasting impact.

No single strategy can ensure that you’ll leave your mark with charitable giving. Impact can encompass the issue area you choose, the organizations you select, how you give and with whom you partner.

Today, we’re seeing clients pursue several strategies to achieve these goals: joining with other donors, understanding the short- and long-term aspects of the issues they care about, and deepening their knowledge of the organizations they support.

Here’s how donors like you are turning to interesting approaches, in education, climate change and economic mobility.

Collaborate: The power of joining with other donors 

Across the country, we’re seeing many philanthropists partnering with likeminded individuals to scale their effectiveness.

Donor collaboratives are growing in popularity because they allow philanthropists to be more strategic, a recent study found.¹While aligning with partners takes work, we’ve seen evidence that affinity groups pooling their funds to make larger gifts can have significant impact.² 

We’re also seeing another side of collaboration: between clients and the nonprofits they fund. Meaningful discussions with development and leadership teams are helping philanthropists discover new ways to support these organizations. Sometimes this means adding intentional and frequent conversations to their relationships. Sometimes partnerships produce unexpected learning—for example, an organization may derive an even greater benefit from your human, intellectual or social capital than your financial support. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. 

• Case study: Supporting first-gen college students
  
  After connecting at a college alumni event, four first-generation graduates, all donors to their alma mater, realized they shared a goal: providing students who share similar backgrounds to theirs with financial support to accomplish their education goals.
  
  They found power in numbers by pooling their funds: Their investment grew faster, and their negotiating power with the institution strengthened. And since the donors were well known in their communities and had the collective force of the group, their combined effort gained extra credibility. Others were moved to donate. Through the partnership, they have roughly tripled their impact, reaching more students than they ever expected.

Mitigation and adaptation in a changing environment

One question we hear frequently from clients involved in philanthropy is, “Can I have both short- and long-term impact in an issue area?” The answer is yes, and climate change offers one of many examples.

Climate change adaptation (minimizing harm to communities and nature in the future) and mitigation (tackling the causes of greenhouse gas emissions now) are two vital, connected areas that need support. As climate-related philanthropy has surged in recent years, mitigation efforts focused on the present have received about half of all donations.³And that short-term work also affects the long term.

• Case study: When an issue impacts the neighborhood
  
  Concerned about the growing threat of climate change and the pressing need for adaptation, a client, an entrepreneur by trade, established a private foundation to address the issue comprehensively. Its focus: supporting vulnerable communities in developing countries disproportionately affected by global warming. The foundation works through partnerships with local organizations and governments, building resilient infrastructure, providing access to clean water and disseminating climate-resilient farming techniques.
  
  After the first year, when the founder saw her grants producing successes unfolding over a medium-term time horizon, she realized a parallel goal was to seek to mitigate further climate harm in the present. The foundation’s efforts then began shifting toward investments in renewable clean energy projects and technologies to reduce carbon emissions.
  
  Now, several years later, she and her family are funding research and development into clean energy solutions, supporting policy advocacy for renewable energy adoption, and promoting sustainable practices in industries such as transportation and agriculture in developing countries.
  
  With this dual approach, short and long term, the foundation is addressing the climate crisis’s immediate impacts and the underlying causes of greenhouse gas emissions, helping to create a more sustainable future.

Historically Black colleges and universities

If you’re like many people, you may thank your education for much of your success. The power of education—especially to create economic mobility—makes it a perennial top-two giving area for philanthropists.

Across the country, we are witnessing more support being given to educational institutions with track records of creating economic mobility. With that goal in mind, donor funding is growing for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

HBCUs make up just 3% of U.S. colleges and universities, but have an outsize impact, for example, graduating in recent decades 80% of Black judges, 70% of Black doctors and dentists, and 50% of all Black teachers.⁴Yet HBCUs receive far fewer donations than the Ivy League. The Ivy League universities received a combined $5.5 billion in philanthropic dollars from 2015 to 2019; HBCUs just 5% of that: $303 million.

After two decades of declining donations to HBCUs, charitable support has risen sharply since 2020.⁵This includes the JPMorganChase Foundation’s five-year, $30 million commitment to HBCUs, expanding on the firm’s Advancing Black Pathways initiative.

• Case study: Building a more equitable future
  
  The JPMorganChase Foundation’s commitment to HBCUs is designed to enable students to chart clearer pathways toward economic success, and to promote empowerment within the diverse communities. Funded activities include curriculum development, scholarships, mentorship programs and financial education on 19 HBCU campuses. 
  
  The commitment’s ultimate goal: breaking down barriers to economic opportunity, addressing some of the key drivers of the racial wealth divide, and helping the next generation acquire the tools and resources to get ahead.
  
  Since the partner HBCUs are located where JPMorganChase does business, the firm is leveraging its business expertise, partnerships and philanthropic efforts—especially in support of low-income, first-generation diverse students and other students of color. As grantees, HBCUs are uniquely positioned to accelerate economic mobility.
  
  Said Matthew Muench, Head of Jobs and Skills, Global Philanthropy at JPMorganChase, “HBCUs are uniquely positioned to accelerate economic mobility.”
  

We can help

If giving back is essential to you, our representatives can help you in articulating your goals and leaving your mark, on short-term needs and through long-term systemic change. Euromoney named J.P. Morgan Private Bank the 2024 World’s Best for Philanthropic Advisory.