We have reached a milestone moment for ICONIQ Impact and our community. As of December 2023, ICONIQ Impact has mobilized over half a billion dollars in philanthropic capital for more than 200 grantees around the world. They deserve every penny and so much more. The last few years have been defined in no small part by a rise in complex and urgent challenges. Climate change has caused an increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, leading to unprecedented climate migration. The youth mental health crisis has hit an all-time high, with one in four young adults around the world experiencing depression or anxiety. Violent conflict has continued to take a brutal toll on civilians, with 339 million people now in need of humanitarian assistance. But amid this darkness, there is a bright spot—organizations and individuals all over the world are stepping up in new ways to meet this moment.
We've partnered with experts and visionary leaders tackling everything from protecting the land sovereignty of Indigenous groups to increasing participation in the United States' democratic process
The world faces challenges today that are too complex and urgent for individual philanthropists, nonprofits, or organizations to tackle alone. These issues demand a collaborative approach in which resources are pooled, expertise is leveraged, impacted communities are centered, and learnings are shared. Philanthropy is too often practiced in a silo, with donors and nonprofits not connecting with each other or the wider system. As a result, philanthropic capital isn't reaching its full potential to address these critial issues.
We connect philanthropists from our community and beyond who have a shared impact goal–from mitigating climate change andprotecting our ocean to safeguarding democracy and ending racial and gender inequity
We convene an extraordinary community of families, founders, and organizations to tackle some of the world’s most complex challenges. Here are a few examples of the philanthropists in our community:
Philanthropic interests: climate, democracy, community
Philanthropic interests: education equality and youth development around the world, improving youth mental wellbeing, investing in next generation social change makers, engaging young leaders in developing climate solutions, storytelling and narrative building for youth movements
Philanthropic interests: New York City, social justice, education, climate change, human rights
Philanthropic interests: collaborative philanthropy, trust-based philanthropy, human-centered philanthropy, climate justice, social equity, global health
Philanthropic interests: healthy oceans, sustainable food and agriculture, clean energy
Philanthropic interests: Cambodian culture, mental health, rural Khmer schools, refugee support, climate change (CDR, Left/Right climate divide, zero emission fuels, methane, legal support), public safety, city governance, and CSAM
Philanthropic interests: climate, education, human trafficking
Together, we build a deep understanding of a problem area by listenig and learning from experts, peer philanthropists, and impacted communities. We partner with experts to help our community identify, vet and fund innovative nonprofit organizations and leaders working on promising solutions.
We partner with expert groups that have a specialized, nuanced understanding of certain subject areas, as well as deep, established roots in their respective sectors. Here are a few examples of the partners we work with:
Through co-funding, we maximize efficiency for both philanthropists and grantees, enabling donors to pool resources preventing the duplication of philanthropic efforts, and simplifying the reporting processes for grantees so they can focus on their missions.
We focus our philanthropy on areas where it can be catalytic. This could mean supporting overlooked and underfunded groups, mobilizing funding for a new technology or approach that has huge potential but needs support to get off the ground, or partnering to support hyper-local initiatives. Here are a few of the grantees we support:
Our initiatives enable philanthropists togive collaboratively as they learn from expert and impacted communities. [3]
Our Co-Labs are collaborative philanthropy funds where donor communities make multi-year grants to a portfolio of nonprofit organizations addressing the most urgent challenges facing the world today. Each Co-Lab enables donors to maximize their efficiency through co-funding while learning from inspiring experts and leaders of impacted communities. [4]
Our awards enable philanthropists to identify leading nonprofit organizations of all sizes through open, transparent, and rigorously-evaluated challenges that address some of the greatest social issues of our time.
Our philanthropic advisory services help philanthropists begin or scale their giving through connections, resources, and one-on-one support.
Our team is dedicated to continually improving our approach so that we can be the best possible to our grantees. Since launching in 2019, we've leared many valuable lessons, including:
Speed and diligence aren’t mutually exclusive. Our collaborative model allows us to leverage the knowledge of trusted issue-area experts and impacted communities to help source and vet organizations with rigor. This helps us quickly and efficiently determine grantee effectiveness and scalability. Importantly, we also aim to shift the onus of due diligence onto us and our expert partners, saving grantees from onerous, unnecessary paperwork so they can stay focused on their missions.
We know our grantees are the real experts. They have a deep understanding of the challenges they’re working to solve and the communities they serve. That’s why we routinely provide grantees with unrestricted, multi-year grants, simplify the due diligence process, and minimize the reporting burden. For our Co-Labs, we co-create impact reporting frameworks with grantees, trusting them to develop and track the metrics that correctly capture their impact. By developing genuine relationships with our grantees and jointly evaluating impact, we’re able to assess real-world change without undermining their independence.
Our model helps foster this by enabling seasoned philanthropists to shepherd new donors, and new donors to provide a fresh perspective to those who are further along in their giving journeys. Most importantly, it enables philanthropists and grantees to connect as people. When donors listen to grantees’ experiences, learn from their expertise, and engage with their projects, it helps build mutual trust and respect, upending the inherent power imbalances that too often exist in philanthropy.
[1] Global Health includes: Mental Health, Reproductive Health, Health Research & Development, and Global Health & Wellbeing.
[2] The “Other” category includes issue areas like Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WaSH), Gender Equity, Maternal Health, Poverty & Inequality in the U.S., and more.
[3] For illustrative purposes only. The types, level and terms of services actually provided may vary.
[4] ICONIQ Impact serves as a philanthropic advisor to the third party sponsoring the Co-Labs.
