More Than a Grant: How Philanthropy Can Use Its Full Financial Toolkit

As traditional aid recedes and pressure on philanthropic resources grows, funders are asking how their capital can do more without simply trying to backfill what has been lost. In some cases, the answer may be greater flexibility: combining grants with guarantees, recoverable grants, concessionary investment, technical assistance or other forms of catalytic capital that can mobilize additional finance. The opportunity is not to financialize every problem. Some work needs grants, full stop. The more useful question is how funders decide which tool is appropriate, when different forms of capital can work together, and where taking on risk can unlock resources that would otherwise remain on the sidelines. This session will explore what a more flexible philanthropic toolkit could look like in practice, including how capital can be structured around the needs of grantee partners rather than the conventions of funders. It will also ask how these approaches can strengthen locally led solutions and country-led systems, moving not only money but greater decision-making power closer to the communities doing the work. Discussion Group Leaders Euria Min is Director at Lipman Family Prize, advancing support for innovative organizations creating sustainable solutions to social challenges. Samuel Williams is Director and Head of Resilient Futures Fund at Resilient Futures Fund, mobilizing catalytic capital for locally led, climate-resilient enterprises that strengthen livelihoods, markets, and communities across Africa. What to Expect A practical working conversation built around real funding choices rather than abstract discussions of innovative finance. Participants will examine where grants remain indispensable, where non-grant instruments can add value, and how different forms of capital can be combined within the same strategy or transaction. The discussion will also confront the harder choices created by a changing aid landscape: what should philanthropy protect, what should it reinvent, and what should it resist trying to replace? Who This Is For This session is for foundation and faith-based funders, philanthropic advisors, impact investors, development finance practitioners, nonprofit and community leaders, and anyone interested in using philanthropic capital more flexibly and effectively. What You Will Get Out of It A clearer understanding of when to use grants, guarantees, recoverable grants and concessionary capital Examples of how grant and non-grant funding can work together Approaches to using philanthropic risk capital to mobilize additional finance A framework for deciding what philanthropy should protect, reinvent or let go as aid recedes Ideas for designing capital around locally led solutions rather than funder structures