The early results from a survey called ‘Philanthropy for a safe, healthy and just world’ have been published in the latest issue of Alliance magazine revealing that conflict-transformation and peace building is bottom of the list of priorities for social change funders.

The survey, conducted by Centris and Candid and supported by PeaceNexus Foundation, is based on 823 responses to an open survey conducted in February and March 2019. It examined issues such as the extent of support for peace-building, the characteristics of peace-building organisations compared with others, and why some organisations engage with peace while others don’t.

Only 18.4 per cent of the respondents said conflict-transformation and peace building is ‘very important’ in their organisation, scoring below attitude change (61.5 per cent), improving social systems (54.3 per cent) and organisational development (52.8 per cent) and community resilience (51.1 per cent).

The reasons for not engaging in conflict-transformation and peace building included peace building being ‘too political’ (43 per cent) and difficult to measure progress (24 per cent and peace-building should be the preserve of official organisations (18 per cent).

However, the survey also points to potential for increased philanthropy in peace building with some respondents citing the involvement of women in the Colombian peace process, development of cross-community plans in Bosnia and a university centre for conflict studies in the US.

For more survey findings and analysis read about ‘The peace deficit’ in the June 2019 issue of Alliance.

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