Learning across borders: How shared learning can strengthen philanthropy in Europe

Europe’s philanthropic sector holds a wealth of knowledge, expertise and perspectives. For me, one of the greatest opportunities lies in how we connect and share that knowledge, across organisations, sectors and borders – between those funding change and those driving change.

Across the world, philanthropy is responding to an increasingly complex set of challenges. Climate-impacted disasters are increasingly more frequent and severe, and geopolitical instability continues to drive humanitarian need. Across the continent, organisations are adapting funding models, testing different approaches and finding new ways to approach global challenges. That means a considerable amount of knowledge is being generated all the time. The question I find increasingly interesting is how much of that knowledge travels beyond the organisation or context in which it originated.

Throughout my career, working across sectors and geographies has shown me how much can be gained when those different experiences are brought into the same conversation. The most useful exchanges have not necessarily provided an answer to take away and replicate. They have surfaced something less tangible but often more valuable – a different way of framing a problem, an assumption that needs revisiting or a question that had not previously been asked. This is something I want to build on for GlobalGiving, strengthening the exchange of knowledge between our networks in the UK, across Europe and globally.

At GlobalGiving, working with locally-led organisations across more than 175 countries gives us a valuable perspective on how knowledge and experience can travel across different contexts, and contribute to conversations taking place elsewhere without losing the context that gives them meaning.

Our position as an intermediary gives us an opportunity to help those insights travel, bringing our partners’ perspectives into wider philanthropic conversations and using what we learn to inform our own practice. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s work with Europe-based funders offers a useful example of why this matters. Its research draws directly on grantee feedback to identify where funders themselves can improve, demonstrating what becomes possible when the experience of funded organisations is treated not only as feedback on individual relationships, but as knowledge that can inform wider philanthropic practice.

We saw this in practice through our Assets, Agency & Trust programme in the Philippines, funded by USAID and in partnership with the Center for Disaster Preparedness and a range of local organisations. Listening to partners challenged assumptions about how funding should reach grassroots organisations. Rather than applying conventional due diligence processes that could create unnecessary barriers, local expertise informed a more contextually appropriate approach, using conversations to understand organisations’ capabilities and identify where support was needed. This enabled funding to reach community organisations that would otherwise have struggled to access institutional funding, while still meeting funder requirements.

Learning was central to this programme. Local partners’ knowledge of their communities shaped decisions about priorities, capacity support and how success should be understood, making the programme more responsive and resources more effective. Ultimately, $390,000 in grants helped mobilise more than $529,000 in additional resources. The lesson was not that this model could simply be replicated elsewhere, but that listening to those closest to the work can reveal where processes are creating friction, and where adapting them can allow resources, expertise and decision-making to work more efficiently.

This raises a broader question about whose knowledge travels furthest within philanthropy. Some organisations naturally have greater access to networks, conferences and decision-makers than others. Locally-rooted organisations may hold deep experience of the issues philanthropy is seeking to address, but that does not automatically mean their insights reach conversations happening elsewhere. There is an opportunity to help bridge some of that distance, not by speaking on behalf of others, but by creating more routes through which different perspectives can enter and shape the conversation.

European networks are particularly well placed to create those connections. They bring together organisations working within different philanthropic practice, regulatory environments and social contexts, often while confronting similar questions. The value of those networks is therefore not only in bringing people together, but in what becomes possible when experience moves through them. Comparing how a familiar challenge is understood elsewhere can expose assumptions that are difficult to see from within our own context. Equally, bringing perspectives from locally-rooted organisations into conversations between funders can widen the evidence and experience on which decisions are based.

The opportunity is to make better use of the knowledge and experience that already exists across the philanthropic sector, creating stronger connections between what is being learned across different countries, organisations and communities. When those insights have more opportunities to travel and inform thinking elsewhere, the sector as a whole has more to draw on as it responds to shared and emerging challenges.

For me, the value of learning across borders lies in widening the perspectives that inform our thinking and strengthening the connections between what is being learned locally and in the sector more broadly.