hen the lines between philanthropy, investment, enterprise, and government are blurring, which distinctions still matter? The Philanthropy Futures Forum, hosted at Diplomatic Courier’s Signals House during UNGA 81, picked up where a smaller table had left off a year earlier. The clearest conclusion from that first meeting was that philanthropy needs better coordination. This year, the question moved beyond coordination to something more fundamental: what philanthropy is intended for, and what responsibilities come with its growing role in public life.
Ana C. Rold, Diplomatic Courier's CEO and founder, opened by tracing the arc from the Millennium Development Goals to theSustainable Development Goals. The MDGs were a top-down agenda for heads of state and ministers, while the SDGs made solution-making everyone's business.With government funding shrinking in many places, she argued, philanthropy is where that broader table matters most. Sarah Howard, managing director of theGlobal Philanthropy Forum, framed the afternoon around purpose, power, accountability, and legitimacy. She asked participants what they would build differently if they were designing the ecosystem of public purpose in 2035.
Jessie Krafft of CAF America grounded the discussion in data from the World Giving Report, which surveyed people in more than 100 countries. Six in ten people gave money in 2025, and one in five of them gave internationally. The most striking finding upended a familiar assumption. Eight of the ten most generous countries are in Africa and the other two are in Asia. All ten are low- or lower-middle-income countries, and their citizens gave more than twice the global average as a share of income. Krafft said the strongest predictor of giving was belonging: countries where those sentiments and sense of connection run highest were three times more likely to give.
Meanwhile, the organizations turning that generosity into impact are stretched thin. Two-thirds of charities report rising demand, and fewer than two in five feel able to sustain themselves over the next three years. Their leaders spend nearly two-thirds of their time simply keeping up.
Princess Jahnavi Kumari Mewar of JPM Capital, the 77th generation of her family, argued that our definition of philanthropy has grown too small for the world. She drew on the Indian tradition of daan, which treats giving as stewardship rather than transaction, to propose what she called convergence philanthropy. It starts from a defined human outcome and matches each type of capital to the obstacle it is suited to clear.Once a solution becomes commercially viable, the philanthropic money moves onto the next hard problem. The world, she said, has enough well-intentioned capital; what it needs is consequential capital. She suggested that family offices keep two balance sheets, one financial and one civilizational.
Blair Glencorse of Accountability Lab took up the harder question of who holds private actors accountable when they shape public outcomes. Philanthropy, he noted, enjoys a kind of borrowed legitimacy through public tax subsidies. Yet it lacks the elections that discipline governments and the markets that discipline firms. He argued that risk should be proportional to power, and that consultation, however well meant, is not the same as accountability.
John Goodwin of the Learning Economy Foundation, a former CEO of the LEGO Foundation, described how hard it was to move a traditional grant maker toward system change. That shift, he said, requires shared strategy, shared attribution, and shared control. He also made the case for “impact consolidators” to reduce duplication among sub scale organizations.
Elisabeth Carpenter of Circle described a foundation funded with one percent of pre-IPO equity. It makes grants only for technology adoption and is designed to be run by two people, with AI doing much of the work. For Carpenter, that lean model is also about legacy and building something others can carry forward without requiring a large institution to sustain it.
When the tables reported back, the most vivid image came from Glencorse's group: tide pool infrastructure. The political and financial tide has gone out, and the task now is to sustain the pockets of talent and networks left behind until it returns. Other tables called for a common language of measurement and for collaboration that is deliberate rather than incidental. Howard closed by pointing to Andrew Carnegie's public libraries as the scale of ambition the moment requires. Rold left the room with a reminder that giving is at once the most selfish and the most selfless thing people do.
Editorial note: This article was adapted from the Philanthropy Futures Forum at UNGA 81, an annual event hosted by Diplomatic Courier’s Signals House. The Statements of Signals from the Forum will inform new efforts, including a deeper Signal Brief to carry the work from UNGA 81 toward Davos 2027.
AI disclosure note: AI [Claude Opus 5.5] assisted in the distillation of transcripts from the event. These were used to outline the article before it was drafted by a human.
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Consequential Capital: Philanthropy Rethinks Its Purpose
Photo by Chris Barbalis via Unsplash.
October 5, 2026
As government funding retreats and charities strain under rising demand, funders at UNGA 81 asked what philanthropy is for. They found answers in unexpected places, from the generosity of lower-income nations to the case for capital that clears obstacles and then moves on.
W
hen the lines between philanthropy, investment, enterprise, and government are blurring, which distinctions still matter? The Philanthropy Futures Forum, hosted at Diplomatic Courier’s Signals House during UNGA 81, picked up where a smaller table had left off a year earlier. The clearest conclusion from that first meeting was that philanthropy needs better coordination. This year, the question moved beyond coordination to something more fundamental: what philanthropy is intended for, and what responsibilities come with its growing role in public life.
Ana C. Rold, Diplomatic Courier's CEO and founder, opened by tracing the arc from the Millennium Development Goals to theSustainable Development Goals. The MDGs were a top-down agenda for heads of state and ministers, while the SDGs made solution-making everyone's business.With government funding shrinking in many places, she argued, philanthropy is where that broader table matters most. Sarah Howard, managing director of theGlobal Philanthropy Forum, framed the afternoon around purpose, power, accountability, and legitimacy. She asked participants what they would build differently if they were designing the ecosystem of public purpose in 2035.
Jessie Krafft of CAF America grounded the discussion in data from the World Giving Report, which surveyed people in more than 100 countries. Six in ten people gave money in 2025, and one in five of them gave internationally. The most striking finding upended a familiar assumption. Eight of the ten most generous countries are in Africa and the other two are in Asia. All ten are low- or lower-middle-income countries, and their citizens gave more than twice the global average as a share of income. Krafft said the strongest predictor of giving was belonging: countries where those sentiments and sense of connection run highest were three times more likely to give.
Meanwhile, the organizations turning that generosity into impact are stretched thin. Two-thirds of charities report rising demand, and fewer than two in five feel able to sustain themselves over the next three years. Their leaders spend nearly two-thirds of their time simply keeping up.
Princess Jahnavi Kumari Mewar of JPM Capital, the 77th generation of her family, argued that our definition of philanthropy has grown too small for the world. She drew on the Indian tradition of daan, which treats giving as stewardship rather than transaction, to propose what she called convergence philanthropy. It starts from a defined human outcome and matches each type of capital to the obstacle it is suited to clear.Once a solution becomes commercially viable, the philanthropic money moves onto the next hard problem. The world, she said, has enough well-intentioned capital; what it needs is consequential capital. She suggested that family offices keep two balance sheets, one financial and one civilizational.
Blair Glencorse of Accountability Lab took up the harder question of who holds private actors accountable when they shape public outcomes. Philanthropy, he noted, enjoys a kind of borrowed legitimacy through public tax subsidies. Yet it lacks the elections that discipline governments and the markets that discipline firms. He argued that risk should be proportional to power, and that consultation, however well meant, is not the same as accountability.
John Goodwin of the Learning Economy Foundation, a former CEO of the LEGO Foundation, described how hard it was to move a traditional grant maker toward system change. That shift, he said, requires shared strategy, shared attribution, and shared control. He also made the case for “impact consolidators” to reduce duplication among sub scale organizations.
Elisabeth Carpenter of Circle described a foundation funded with one percent of pre-IPO equity. It makes grants only for technology adoption and is designed to be run by two people, with AI doing much of the work. For Carpenter, that lean model is also about legacy and building something others can carry forward without requiring a large institution to sustain it.
When the tables reported back, the most vivid image came from Glencorse's group: tide pool infrastructure. The political and financial tide has gone out, and the task now is to sustain the pockets of talent and networks left behind until it returns. Other tables called for a common language of measurement and for collaboration that is deliberate rather than incidental. Howard closed by pointing to Andrew Carnegie's public libraries as the scale of ambition the moment requires. Rold left the room with a reminder that giving is at once the most selfish and the most selfless thing people do.
Editorial note: This article was adapted from the Philanthropy Futures Forum at UNGA 81, an annual event hosted by Diplomatic Courier’s Signals House. The Statements of Signals from the Forum will inform new efforts, including a deeper Signal Brief to carry the work from UNGA 81 toward Davos 2027.
AI disclosure note: AI [Claude Opus 5.5] assisted in the distillation of transcripts from the event. These were used to outline the article before it was drafted by a human.
