Recent growth in violent conflict across the world means that philanthropy has little choice but to address it. While the world’s media are focused on Ukraine and the Middle East, other regions including Sudan, Ethiopia, and Yemen to name a few are also in the midst of civil war.

The Global Peace Index reports increased violence in 79 countries over the past decade. There are clear links between such conflict and the rise of authoritarianism across the world that now poses an existential threat to philanthropy and civil society everywhere. It is now abundantly clear that violent conflict is an integral feature of the global polycrisis we face, and the philanthropic community can no longer be missing in action.   These themes are brought out in the two surveys that examine philanthropy’s role in conflict transformation.

This article compares emerging results from a survey ‘Philanthropy for a Safe, Healthy, and Just World’ with a similar survey conducted five years ago.  The results tell us how philanthropy is evolving to address ever-increasing violent conflict in our world.

The survey conducted in 2019/20 showed that philanthropy was little engaged with the processes of conflict transformation. Despite a growing commitment to social justice – for example by funding issues of gender equality, human rights and environmental sustainability – the question of violent conflict was largely overlooked. The authors were surprised that funders often seemed unaware of the link between social injustice and the outbreak of violent conflict.  Supporting peace was typically seen as too political, too difficult to engage with and too hard to measure.

In the past five years the growth in violent conflict means that philanthropy has little choice but to address it. The 2023/4 survey was designed to support a convening organised by the Social Change Initiative (SCI).  This took place in Belfast in early February 2024 and results will be used to lift up the role of peacebuilding and philanthropy.

Since the survey was designed to have practical application for the field, questions were developed in partnership with organisations committed to building a system for funding for peace.  These include: PeaceNexus Foundation, Robert Bosch Foundation, Humanity United, Peace Direct, Peace and Security Funders Group, Social Change Initiative and Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace.

The survey was open from late November 2023 to early January 2024 and obtained a total of 345 responses.  With good representation from all areas of the world, the quality of both quantitative and qualitative data was high.  The analysis is underway and includes advanced data modelling of statistical data as well as stories of work being undertaken by the field. A full report will be available by July and the results discussed with people who filled out the survey and others who are interested.

At this stage, we are able to report seven headline findings:

1. Consciousness about the need for peacebuilding has increased.

While the 2023/4 survey received fewer responses than the 2019/20 survey, the desire to discuss the findings and to follow up on the results has been much greater. During the data collection phase, I received scores of messages suggesting that this was an important moment for philanthropy to review its role in addressing violent conflict.

2. On balance, philanthropy has increased its funding for peace in the past three years

While findings related to philanthropic investment shows that it is still low compared with overall philanthropic spending, there are positive indications that funders are increasing their levels of expenditure.  Grantmakers in the sample were asked whether their funding had increased, decreased or stayed the same over the past three years.  The results are in the following table.

3. Demand for funding has increased

While funding has increased, so has the effort of NGOs and other civil society organisations.  This leads to a sense of scarcity in the field because while the amount of funding has increased, NGOs and civil society organisations’ activity is outstripping the growth.

The relative extent to which different kinds of organisations engage with peace is measured in the following chart using a scale derived from work conducted by Candid and the Peace and Security Funders Group.

4. The closing of civil society space has become an existential threat everywhere

The survey finds a dramatic increase in closing space for civil society as toxic polarisation of populations rises and authoritarian leaders increase their control of civil society.

Five years ago, the problem of ‘closing space’ was largely seen as a problem concentrated in particular countries.  Data from the current survey suggest that this is now a global problem that increasingly transcends borders.

A majority of respondents suggest that closing space is a ‘major obstacle’ to their work and a growing minority cannot operate. The following histogram shows the distribution of responses.

5. Closing of civil society space is related to violent conflict

There is a high correlation between the closing of civil society space and the onset of violent conflict.  At the same time, a composite measure of ‘a disabling environment for civil society’ and ‘working in an area suffering violent conflict’ both act as spurs independently of one another for funders to become involved in peacebuilding.  This result was obtained by hierarchical regression modelling of data.  This identifies six factors that together increase the likelihood of organisations becoming involved in peacebuilding.  The distinctive contribution of each of the six factors is shown in the following table.

6. Philanthropy is reforming itself

On the bright side, the survey found that philanthropy is reforming itself by improving accessibility, increasing diversity and offering more flexible funding.  One particularly important change has had a direct effect on the propensity to support peacebuilding. This is the growing tendency in philanthropy to address racism and power imbalances.  The distribution of responses among the sample was as follows:

7. Philanthropy has an important role to play in peacebuilding

The survey probed what philanthropy is doing in the sphere of peacebuilding and some inspiring stories of effective philanthropic interventions emerged.  These involve support for community-based peacebuilding, strengthening the capacity of organisations engaged in conflict transformation, supporting gender-based responses, and providing independent analysis and policy advice.

These stories are a sound basis for further development of the field as the final survey report analyzes them in detail.  The survey will support President of Open Society Foundation, Mark Malloch-Brown’s exhortation at the Belfast conference in February 2024 that philanthropy should use its:

‘…wider privilege to deploy both the patient and urgent capital to remove obstacles that appear around every corner of the winding uphill road that is a peace process.  And the patient capital to stick with the road through the long years before the peace agreement is struck and the long years after.’

If you are interested in taking part in one of the discussions to learn more about the findings as more analysis is undertaken, and how to develop philanthropy in the light of them, please be in touch with barryknight@cranehouse.uk.

Barry Knight is Secretary to the Trustees of Centris, Adviser to the Global Fund for Community Foundations, and a Member of the Management Team of Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace