A new report from J R McKenzie Trust (JRMT) and the Centre for Social Impact explores the philanthropic funding of advocacy. It shares JRMT’s experience in the last decade as well as views from other funders of advocacy and key messages from recent literature.
Included in these voices is The Tow Foundation. As the report notes, we believe that funding advocacy “does require a leap of faith. You may experience a fair amount of failure, but we think it is a bigger risk to continue to invest in things that have already been proven to fail. Governments are pouring billions of dollars into policies and practices, such as mass incarceration, that we know don’t work. Our board does not think it is high risk to invest in alternative strategies. In order to catalyze systemic change for whole populations, you need to support advocates to be the influencers.”
