Foundations making an active decision to engage with governments:

Aman Foundation - Ayrton Senna Institute - Chandaria Foundation - Chen Yet-Sen Foundation - EdelGive Foundation - Siddiqui Foundation- Praekelt.org - Yellowwoods

Foundations making an active decision NOT to engage with governments:

Vebhi Koç Foundation

Does working with government augment impact or increase scale?

There is no clear-cut or off-the-shelf answer to this question! In the United States and Europe, governments and philanthropists have spent centuries working out their respective roles. Philanthropic initiatives have developed their own space, clearly separated from governmental activities:

• In the US, there is a clear division of roles between the state and the third sector. The third sector provides services to the needy that the state fails to provide. It also acts a counterbalance to state power, advocating for public policies that advance the interest of a charities’ beneficiaries.
• In many countries in Europe, the NGO sector has historically been less developed, as large welfare states cater to a much broader range of social needs than in the US. Today, the philanthropic sector in Europe plays a niche role in experimenting with innovative models of meeting social needs, thereby providing a check to government power.

Frontier Philanthropists have no such default answer to fall back on, but many, in spite of significant drawbacks of engaging with the state, find it worthwhile to do so, including:

• GOVERNMENT CAN REMOVE BLOCKAGES TO A PROJECT’S SMOOTH RUNNING. In the aftermath of Pakistan’s earthquakes in 2005, the Mahvash and Jahangir Siddiqui Foundation ran camps for internally displaced people near the disaster area. They were well organised to equip the camps but ensuring their security was a challenge. They formed an alliance with the local police, convincing them to have guard posts and security patrols in their camps.

See also the Chandaria Foundation.

• GOVERNMENT HAS A UNIQUE POTENTIAL TO BRING THE INITIATIVES TO SCALE. The Aman Foundation’s strategy is to fund preventative health and education services itself for a limited time period and in a limited geography. The goal is that, having witnessed their impact, the Pakistani government will take on responsibility for the continuation and roll out of these services. Investing time and resources in persuading the government and other funders to come on board is so important to the Aman Foundation that the organisation’s founding Chief Executive has recently quit his post to focus exclusively on this task.

See also the Aman Foundation - Ayrton Senna Institute - Chen Yet-Sen Foundation - EdelGive Foundation -Mahvash and Jahanghir Siddiqui Foundation - Praekelt.org and Yellowwoods

• GOVERNMENT CAN PROVIDE SIGNIFICANT FUNDING. For many years, Farrokh Captain was chairman of Pakistan’s Human Development Fund, a public-private partnership drawing on both public and private funding. One of its key areas of activity was in building and running primary schools. With the funding that came from private donors to build the schools, and federal government to fund, 15,000 primary schools were built.

See also the Aman Foundation - Chen_Yet Sen Foundation - Praekelt.org and Yellowwoods