Atlas Learning Project

For funders working to create big change on a tough issue, collaboration is key. Working with other, like-minded funders can bring more resources, expertise and energy to an advocacy campaign, with a resulting impact much greater than the sum of its parts. But funder collaborations can be tricky; conflicts over decision-making power and competition for resources can become sticking points that can derail an entire campaign. The Atlas Learning Project, in collaboration with Foundation Center, created a set of resources that provide insights into the value of multi-party advocacy, common sticking points and how to work through them. This includes a content series from GrantCraft that captures insights and reflections from foundation leaders about advocacy-focused funder collaboratives as well as an IssueLab collection of more than 40 publications on lessons learned from past funder collaborations.

Advocacy Funder Collaboratives

GrantCraft captured the insights and wisdom of philanthropic leaders who have participated in multi-party advocacy collaboratives, and explored both the common sticking points and signals of success for collaboration in the advocacy space.  

This series of bite-sized articles is intended to make these insights and lessons easy to reference, share, and apply in whatever ways it's useful and relevant to funders' work.

Issuelab Collection: Multiparty Advocacy

For many foundations, collaboration is key to advocating for policy and practice change. These kinds of partnerships can be challenging to execute well. This IssueLab collection brings together more than 40 reports and reflection pieces about multi-party advocacy efforts; providing valuable perspective on sticking points and how foundations can avoid or move through them.