By Thokozile Madonko, Researcher, Public Economy Project, The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
Philanthropy’s interest in crisis and disruptions
Crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, tend to disrupt life in profound and lasting ways. We see that floods, drought, civil unrest, and political upheaval can dramatically affect all aspects of socio-political and economic systems in which philanthropy and the development sector engage. This moment calls for a deeper recognition of philanthropy’s role in responding to today’s multiple crises. In order to rethink how philanthropy responds to unemployment, poverty, inequality, precarious work, excessive rates of violence against women and children, widespread disease burden and malnutrition, inadequate health systems, underfunded social safety nets and the climate crisis, we need to take up the invitation to journey to the past, the present and the future.
By reflecting on shared trials, current challenges, and advice for the future, new opportunities present themselves, encouraging experimentation, innovation, and a strengthened trust-based philanthropic and development sector better equipped to pursue social justice for the advancement of the communities they serve.
Learning from the ‘recent’ past
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, much has happened in the world. Back in 2020, the Africa Civil Society Organisations COVID-19 survey drew attention to the role that African social justice civil society organisations (CSOs) played in performing crucial developmental, humanitarian and advocacy functions across Africa under challenging conditions.
The pandemic provided the philanthropic sector with deep insight into how CSOs coped with and responded to the challenges they faced. This ‘coping’ highlighted the opportunities that emerge from a crisis and the lessons that philanthropy can learn for future crises. This, in turn, helps to strengthen solidarity and inform advocacy for greater recognition and support for the social justice sector. Over the short period of the pandemic, many CSOs experienced funding losses, leading some to reduce or cancel their work.
Critically, the survey showed that nearly all CSOs that were able to introduce new programme activities in response to COVID-19, with the vast majority of these activities being self-funded. Not only did these CSOs play a critical role in their national responses to COVID-19, but they also reported that they would have been able to do more if funding constraints had not been a barrier.
The impact of COVID-19 on the operations and programme activities of African CSOs was unprecedented. If philanthropy is to learn from the ‘recent’ past, then it must begin to operate with a world in crisis in mind. This is because philanthropy offers a unique bridge between community ambition and local action by connecting communities, CSOs, governments and business through innovation and shared purpose. While a disruption of operations and programme activities of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely in the foreseeable future, we must nevertheless plan and fund as if it could in the present and future.
Lessons for the present
Today, philanthropy, as a sector, has a strategic opportunity to evolve from being a mere ‘funder/donor’ to a co-creation partner – aligning efforts, amplifying local agency, and extending influence on issues of social justice. In 2021, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung – Cape Town identified a set of key lessons that their partners and allies learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first was that in responding to a crisis, small is good. This means that when resources are limited and/or movement is restricted, it is best to focus on what CSOs can do at the smallest scale possible. In doing so, you can set the patterns for the whole system, reminding social justice activists that relatively small interactions build into complex patterns and systems of change that have the potential for large-scale transformation. This lesson highlights how philanthropy can support, in creative ways, early nascent innovations by CSOs by serving as first responders, laying the groundwork for local insight and problem-solving by social justice partners.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, many CSOs had to figure out how to shift resources and activities to meet the needs of their communities and the environment, regardless of their organisational mandate. This led to the subsequent lesson: intentional adaptation and social innovation. Intentional adaptation and social innovation are how we live, grow and stay purposeful in the face of constant change. It asks CSOs to consider how they, as organisations, respond to change and how they can ensure their core purpose remains present during change. In light of this lesson today, philanthropic support must be agile, considering what it truly means to be a co-creation partner. Importantly, it calls for philanthropy to front-load the design of funding mechanisms in ways that empower partners to adapt when their environment changes.
Philanthropy has long played a catalytic role in translating local action into policy change and in moving locally rooted ideas into national implementation. On reflecting on their experiences of COVID-19, they stated that what was critical was that relationships are everything and that organisational resilience is key. To complement these values, philanthropy can strengthen CSOs’ external and internal ecosystems by contributing beyond financing through its convening power to bring diverse communities together and by supporting social justice – collective action increases reach and learning. In partnership with CSOs, philanthropy can resource and scale multi-stakeholder coordination mechanisms that foster relationships. Philanthropy must invest in people by empowering partners to have the resources to focus on wellbeing and care within their organisations, promoting resilience.
COVID-19 revealed deep racial, gender, class, and geographic inequities in South Africa and across the world. If CSOs are to draw meaningful lessons from the pandemic and prepare for future shocks, philanthropy must recognise the critical role it plays in supporting them. This includes enabling local CSOs to be agile, action-oriented, locally grounded, innovative, well-networked, and resilient actors in the pursuit of social justice.
Snapshot of the future
A recent landmark G20 2025 report, led by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, outlined the global state of inequality today. The report offers a snapshot of the future for those pursuing social justice in South Africa and internationally. The global increase in incomes and wealth at the top and the increasing challenges large parts of the population face in making ends meet create a perfect storm for further increasing poverty, unemployment, inequality, gender-based violence, climate change and biodiversity loss. Currently, one in four people worldwide regularly skips meals. Unfortunately, high levels of inequality are not good for democracy, are bad for social cohesion, and undermine climate change efforts. If the levels of inequality persist in South Africa, the future is likely to be one of a divided society, with higher levels of tension, uncertainty, conflict, and climate breakdown.
A final lesson that philanthropy can learn from COVID-19 is that another world is possible if we future-proof philanthropy. Those CSOs that were willing to create more possibilities were better able to connect the urgent humanitarian needs of their communities with their longer-term focus on social justice. Philanthropy can play a critical role today in shaping the future by co-creating interventions with partners. As a result, philanthropy must share power. To share power means that philanthropy needs to be conscious of who has power: who does what in our philanthropic ecosystems and how, who makes the decisions, and whose voices are heard (and whose aren’t). By becoming more conscious of these patterns, philanthropic actors can disrupt them. Sharing power in conscious ways makes philanthropy more resilient and, in turn, ensures relevance and effectiveness.
Philanthropy’s clear and urgent mandate
Taken together, the lessons of the pandemic, the realities of the present, and the warnings for the future offer philanthropy a clear and urgent mandate. Crises are no longer exceptional disruptions but defining features of our era, demanding that philanthropy move decisively beyond mere funding toward deeper partnership, flexibility, and shared power. By investing in organisational resilience, centering equity, amplifying local agency, and embracing co-creation, philanthropic actors can help build a South African social justice sector that is agile, networked, and future ready. The opportunity now is to transform the insights of the past into sustained commitments – ensuring that philanthropy not only responds to crises but also strengthens the systems and relationships capable of preventing, withstanding, and ultimately transforming them in pursuit of a more just and inclusive future.