New Money, New Moment: Getting Next Wave Philanthropy Right From the Start

About the session Something significant is happening in philanthropy. Enormous amounts of wealth are moving between generations. Technology founders are converting equity into giving. New family foundations, donor vehicles, and giving strategies are emerging around fortunes built through technology, finance, private markets, and entrepreneurship. A new generation of philanthropists is arriving with fresh capital, fresh questions, and different ideas about what impact looks like. That is an opportunity. New philanthropists can bring curiosity, appetite for risk, analytical rigor, and a willingness to question practices that established institutions may have stopped questioning. Much of the infrastructure built to help them give effectively focuses on two questions: What should you fund? And: Who should you fund? Effective altruism and other evidence-based approaches have brought greater rigor to questions of cause prioritization, cost effectiveness, evidence, and partner selection. But there is a third question that receives far less attention. Once you've decided what and who to fund, how should the money actually work? The mechanics of philanthropic deployment can look remarkably conventional. Lump sums. Fixed grant periods. Predetermined milestones. Familiar reporting structures. Funding relationships in which most of the financial flexibility and decision-making power remains on one side. Those choices are not administrative details. Capital structure shapes what organizations can do. It affects their risk appetite, determines how they respond to changing circumstances, influences their ability to learn and iterate, allows them to plan beyond a fixed grant period, and drives alignment with other forms of capital. New philanthropists have an opportunity to think about these choices from the beginning rather than automatically inheriting the structures that came before them. Recoverable grants can recycle philanthropic capital when circumstances allow. Outcomes-linked approaches can connect funding with results in different ways. Longer-term partnerships can give organizations the confidence to build rather than continually fundraise. Different governance and accountability structures can create healthier incentives and stronger relationships between funders and the people doing the work. None is automatically better. The interesting question is when to use what. This session will explore what the next wave of philanthropists should know about the mechanics of giving, which approaches are already working, and how advisors, intermediaries, practitioners, and peers can help new donors make these decisions well. The goal is not to make philanthropy more complicated. It is to make sure that after doing the hard work of deciding what matters and who can make a difference, we pay equal attention to designing capital that actually helps them do it. Discussion Group Leaders Aude Anquetil is Chief of Staff at Livelihood Impact Fund, strengthening organizational strategy and execution to advance sustainable livelihoods and social impact. Kirsten McDowell-Barnett is Expert Institutional Partnerships at Light for the World International, building strategic partnerships that advance disability inclusion and scale systemic change globally. Rob Mills is Executive Director at Social Finance, advancing innovative funding partnerships that help philanthropy, investors, and social enterprises improve social and sustainability outcomes. Vid Micevic is Advisor Manager at Redwoods, guiding philanthropic leaders and donors toward high-impact climate solutions and building systems that accelerate effective climate funding. Zack Braunstein is a Fellow at Renaissance Philanthropy, where he's building the Climate Deals Accelerator, which uses philanthropic capital to advance large-scale investment in climate infrastructure in the Global South. Krista Riddley is Senior Philanthropic Advisor at Nia Impact Strategies, helping foundations, families, and donors advance meaningful social impact across gender, children’s well-being, humanitarian issues, and global development. What to expect A welcoming, practical conversation bringing together new philanthropists, advisors, intermediaries, practitioners, and organizations working with emerging donors. Participants will explore the journey from what to fund, to who to fund, to how to fund them, examining where existing evidence-based approaches have strengthened philanthropy and where the mechanics of capital deployment deserve greater attention. The conversation will use practical examples to explore recoverable grants, outcomes-linked mechanisms, longer-term funding relationships, governance and accountability structures, and other ways of designing philanthropic capital. This is not about finding one new model for philanthropy. It is about giving donors a better toolkit and helping them understand which tool fits which problem. Who this is for This session is for next-generation philanthropists and their advisors, wealth managers, foundation leaders, philanthropic intermediaries, outcomes-based and innovative finance practitioners, development and climate organizations engaging new donors, and anyone helping new philanthropic capital enter the sector thoughtfully and at scale. What you will get out of it A simple framework for thinking about philanthropic effectiveness across three questions: what to fund, who to fund, and how to fund them Practical perspectives on capital structures, accountability mechanisms, and partnership models that can make giving more effective and sustainable Insight into what evidence-based and EA-influenced approaches have contributed and where capital deployment deserves greater attention Examples of recoverable grants, outcomes-linked approaches, longer-term partnerships, and other tools available to philanthropists Ideas for strengthening the advisors, peer networks, and learning infrastructure that can help new philanthropists make bet