When talking about grantmaking and civil society funding, there’s a tendency to talk about the ‘hows’ rather than the ‘whys’. What mechanism or approach works best – community philanthropy, venture philanthropy, social investment? How do you identify good organizations to support when you’re making a grant to another country? My starting point is generally that we all know why we’re doing what we do, so we just need to jump straight into the discussion of how to do it best. Social justice philanthropy defies this approach. It is inescapably about the ‘why’ – about poverty and exclusion, about rights and …

This issue of Alliance looks at social justice philanthropy: what it is, how it is distinct from other forms of philanthropy, who supports it, and what it looks like in different country contexts. While there are funders based in the United States that focus on social justice philanthropy and among whom the term is commonly used, the phenomenon is more nascent outside the United States for a number of reasons. In some countries, philanthropy itself (outside perhaps religious giving) is uncommon; in others there is a certain expectation about the government’s role in providing safety net services and addressing issues …