Updated: Aug 22
$200 million isn’t enough. And that’s not the point.
Leonardo DiCaprio and the Bezos Earth Fund have recently announced $200 million for the Phoenix Species Project, an effort to protect 100 of the world's most endangered species.
It's a huge number, however the global biodiversity financing gap is estimated at $700 billion a year, according to this article published by VITA, which means $200 million barely makes a dent.
I can hear a lot of poeple just saying: "philanthropy is too small to matter." My own reflection is however different: maybe we're asking philanthropy to do the wrong job.
Philanthropy was never meant to solve everything
Climate change, biodiversity loss, global health, inequality. These problems are too big for any donor, however generous, and governments, businesses, researchers and communities all have a part to play too.
That's not a knock on philanthropy; in fact, it's where philanthropy gets interesting.
Money that isn't trying to solve everything can move faster, take risks that institutional funders can't, and back an idea before there's enough evidence to convince anyone else. It can go where politics and markets simply don't look.
A single gift, used this way, can matter far beyond its size, funding the first pilot, generating proof it works, bringing the right people to the table, or unlocking money from others who were waiting to see someone go first.
Maybe we're asking donors the wrong question
In major donor fundraising, we spend a lot of time on "how much." What could this person give? What ask level makes sense? What would €1,000 or €100,000 fund, versus €1 million?
These are fair questions, however there's a better one underneath them: what could this donor make possible?
The answer is often bigger than the number on the cheque. A donor's early backing can give an organisation the confidence to test something ambitious, their name attached to it can bring credibility or bring other funders along, and their multi-year commitment can buy an organisation the freedom to plan past the next grant cycle.
What this means for how we ask
We shouldn't pitch a gift as the thing that will "solve" the problem, since for anything this complex, that claim won't hold up, and donors know it.
A better pitch is more specific: here's the change we're working toward, here's what has to happen, here's the role philanthropic capital can play in it, and here's what your support would unlock.
That's the shift, from funding gap to partner in change. However, to make that case honestly, we have to actually understand the problem, our organisation's strategy, and where we sit in the wider picture, not just the number we're hoping to raise for the sake of hitting fundraising targets.
Both things are true at once
$200 million is extraordinarily generous but $700 billion a year shows that philanthropy alone will never be enough. We don't need to resolve that tension, we simply need to understand it.
Our job with major donors was never to convince them they can fix everything alone; it's to help them see exactly what their support can make possible that wouldn't happen otherwise.
That, in fact, is a far more honest reason to give, and a far more compelling one too.
This post was inspired by VITA's reporting on the Phoenix Species Project. [Read the original article here.]