A New Vision for Faith-Inspired Philanthropy
The pain was visible on her face as she recounted the legal judgment that ominously declared: “Kids aren’t safe in this city.”
I was sitting with the child welfare director of a major American county. This committed public servant was trying her best to run a system charged with protecting and caring for the most vulnerable children. Like most places, her agency has made strides, but the system is broken and overburdened. She repeatedly referred to the 1,000+ children in foster care as “my precious babies,” and it wasn’t performative. I could tell she felt deep care and ownership as she asked, “How can we do better for these precious babies and their families?”
Leaving that meeting and driving through neighborhoods where hope is fleeting – part of me felt overwhelmed by the human brokenness, amplified by generational poverty and systemic injustice.
And yet, on a broader level, I came away fired up about the big opportunity in this city and how God might use our team and capital from generous givers to catalyze change.
Last year, God called me into a big new adventure around a question: At a time when there is greater prosperity and generosity than ever in human history, why are we not moving the needle on more issues that matter to the heart of God?
While there are no simple answers to this complex question, I’m convinced that part of the solution lies in where and how philanthropic dollars flow. Fundamentally, we can do a much better job of stewarding God’s resources, so that His Kingdom may come and His will may be done, here on Earth. This is why I’ve partnered with an incredible group of families and advisors to launch Flourish Fund.
Over the past year, I’ve spent time with NGO leaders, wise thinkers, and high-capacity givers – the kinds of extraordinarily generous people who donate six, seven, even eight-figure gifts to worthy causes. What I’ve learned is that being an effective giver is far more difficult than being an effective financial investor. And there’s a big opportunity to test new approaches to how we connect capital, at scale, to those doing good work in the name of Jesus.
Here are a few observations from our work this past year about what’s not currently working:
Giving is often highly individualized. While financial investments are often done in the context of collaborative relationships (e.g., co-investments, syndication, fund/partnership structures, club deals), giving tends to be highly individualistic. The result is that our approaches are usually fragmented, sub-scale, and low risk – and donors are missing out on the joy and encouragement that can come from giving in community.
Many high-capacity givers are disappointed with the scale of their impact. These are folks who have built successful ventures, proven new business models, or stewarded multi-generational companies. Many are hungry to fund scalable solutions or to affect change in a more transformative way than anyone can do individually.
Lots of dollars are still on the sidelines. Billions of dollars are sitting in donor-advised funds, waiting to be activated. Generous people have already chosen to give this money away – they want to write bigger checks – but they lack confidence that the organizations they care about are ready to steward larger gifts.
Traditional ways of giving create unnecessary burden for both donors and nonprofit leaders. Because most giving happens on a one-year time horizon, it’s hard for both givers and innovative organizations to think on a broader scale. Competition for short-term funding also reinforces a culture of scarcity among those in the trenches, with nonprofits vying for donations rather than collaborating to solve problems.
What might a better approach for activating and organizing philanthropic capital look like?
Flourish Fund is building and learning from several donor collaborative and venture philanthropy analogs that are less developed among faith-motivated givers. Through our first initiative, Flourish: Children & Families, we are refining a new approach to large-scale, Kingdom problem solving that is different in several ways:
Shifting from an organization frame to a problem frame: When it comes to complex challenges like reimagining the foster system, there are no silver bullets, and no single organization can solve the problem. So we need to build a portfolio of different organizations innovating around different parts of the problem and working together in new ways.
Taking a thesis-driven approach: Our model starts with articulating a redemptive vision that is bolder in considering what is possible. Pursuing this vision will involve taking bigger risks, shifting entrenched mental models and narratives, and experimenting.
Centering data and outcomes: People tend to give based on stories and relationships, more than data or outcomes. That’s partly because it takes a lot of time to vet worthy organizations and build the kind of rigorous strategy that can deliver results! To understand the opportunities in foster care, we spent 9 months in deep research and analysis, listening to those closest to the problem. We’ll spend months more translating these insights into a measurable plan.
Pooling capital to achieve greater scale: We see an opportunity to help generous families lever up their giving by pooling resources with others. For foster care, we are raising a 5-year, $40M fund that will advance a three-pronged strategy for strengthening families, accelerating the next great mobilization of the church, and cultivating local networks. Then we will provide growth capital and hands-on support to the highest-potential leaders and organizations.
Fostering collaborative ecosystems: I sometimes describe our model as a private equity approach to philanthropy. One key difference is that while traditional financial investors are seeking to pick individual winners, we are trying to change systems. Systems change involves advancing a collaborative vision for change, then helping people work together in new ways to shift the conditions that are holding that problem in place.
That’s a deeply relational process, and it’s hard. It requires individuals to model values and behaviors that Jesus talked about a lot. Like Generosity. Humility. Integrity. Vulnerability. We believe that acting in this way can unlock Unity and Trust to do something that wasn’t previously possible. As a funder, we need to model those behaviors and then deploy resources in a way that doesn’t just optimize the parts, but also optimizes the relationships between the parts, building denser networks and incentivizing collaboration. These are principles that will animate our approach.
This collaborative vision also extends to the community of givers that we are building. We believe that many generous families want to lever up their giving in this way – and to give in the context of a community where they can learn together and be shoulder to shoulder with friends who share the same passion for big challenges.
After our first push on vulnerable kids and families, we are excited to repeat this process on other major issues of our time – in what, God willing, will become a philanthropic “fund of funds.” We have a big, audacious vision to launch 5 ecosystem strategies over the next 10 years, with the potential to mobilize half a billion dollars for God’s kingdom.
Thinking back to my meeting with the child welfare director, I asked her:
“How do you think about the church – local houses of worship, people of faith, Christian non-profits – as part of the solution?” She described individual leaders and organizations engaged in this work that there were bright spots. But it was a patchwork picture. “What we need is to build a network that can come alongside these families differently,” she said.
That’s the big opportunity we see to change how we care for vulnerable kids and families. But pursuing this opportunity is not just a technocratic exercise. It’s an act of spiritual discernment, fueled by a God who wants all people and places to flourish. Our role is to be an effective steward, working in a way that balances bold imagination with humble servant leadership.
In the months to come, we will unpack these challenges and opportunities as we continue to refine a new approach. We are excited to have you on this journey and to gather your feedback as we sharpen this model together.