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A decade of big bets: What comes next?
Ashif Shaikh and Gabrielle Fitzgerald
View related content by region and theme Article featured in the June 2025 issue of Alliance magazine
It will take new ways of working to continue progress in the biggest societal
challenges of our time
In 2001, Ruth Lilly, heir to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, pledged over $200 million to
the Poetry Foundation. Two years later, one of the biggest charitable gifts in history was made
by Joan Kroc—philanthropist and widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc—when she left
nearly half her fortune, $1.8 billion, to the Salvation Army. These women were admired, and at
times scrutinised, for a philanthropic practice that in the last decade has re-emerged with
newfound respect.
‘Big bets’, or large, philanthropic donations, have since become a persistent topic of
conversation in humanitarian circles, and attracted both unbridled optimism and deep
scepticism.
Ten years on, we reflect on the donors and recipients engaged in these practices, their lasting
impacts, and how unrestricted gifts can operate today within a turbulent funding landscape.
BIG BET FUNDERS AT A GLANCE
Blue Meridian Partners has pooled more than $4.5 billion since 2016 to provide flexible funding for
organisations driving national impact and improving economic and social mobility for young people and
families in poverty across the US.
Co-Impact has mobilised $685 million since 2023 to ‘transform health, education, and economic systems,
tackling inequality, and advancing gender equality and inclusion.’ Grantmaking in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America, its Foundational Fund offers funds ranging from $5 million to $20 million over a period of five to
six years, while its Gender Fund provides grants of up to $20 million over three to six years.
Lever for Change, an affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation, announced this spring that it has leveraged
$2.5 billion in funding since 2019. To do that, it held a range of global grantmaking competitions,
including 100&Change, as well as working directly with philanthropists to identify and support scalable
solutions to universal issues.
MacKenzie Scott is reshaping philanthropy with her quiet yet groundbreaking approach to giving. Since
2019, Scott has donated more than $19 billion across 2,524 unrestricted grants. In 2024, she contributed
approximately $2 billion, including 199 grants announced in the month of December alone. Scott
documents her global donations on Yield Giving, which lists each grant along with recipient-reported
focus areas and service geographies.
The Audacious Project has catalysed more than $5.9 billion since 2018, backing bold, high-impact ideas
to support global changemakers with far-reaching social impact. To date, it has awarded grants to more
than 49 projects addressing climate change, criminal justice reform, education, innovation, and economic
equity.
Big bets and the funders driving change
For our part, research from Panorama Global has found big bets significantly strengthened
organisations’ ability to do their work while People’s Courage International (PCI), which has
received three big bets, serves as a case study of an organisation that has successfully
channelled these gifts into impact.
Back in late 2015, however, the Bridgespan Group was among the first to analyse the amount
of funding dedicated to big bets each year. Calculating funding patterns between 2000 and
2012, it reported figures ranging from millions of dollars to $2.7 billion and defined the criteria
for big bets in the following: gifts over $10 million for an organisation dedicated to social
change (as opposed to education, health, or parts institutions).
In the decade since, the pace of big bet giving has increased significantly, in no small part due
to the efforts of singular philanthropist—MacKenzie Scott—and four funding collaboratives:
Blue Meridian Partners, Co-Impact, Lever for Change, and The Audacious Project.
Geographically, Blue Meridian grants solely to US based organisations while Co-Impact, Lever
for Change, The Audacious Project, and MacKenzie Scott provide funding to more dispersed
initiatives. For Scott specifically, this breaks down as 83 percent of donations to US-based
organisations, while 17 percent have supported international efforts. Since the Covid-19
pandemic, her focus can also be seen to have shifted from community organisations providing
urgent social services to those advancing economic security and opportunity, education, equity
and justice, and health.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a fair few organisations within this number have benefited from
multiple big bets. The Audacious Project and Scott share some 30 grantee organisations, while
Co-Impact and Scott share 13 despite each donor operating under distinct models of
distribution. Combined, however, these donors remain unrivalled catalysts for large-scale
social impact across a range of organisations, setting the precedent for a powerful, if still
imperfect, philanthropic practice.
‘Big bets’, or large, philanthropic donations, have since become a
persistent topic of conversation in humanitarian circles, and attracted
both unbridled optimism and deep scepticism.
Big bet, big impact?
Moving from donors to recipients, big bets can offer unrivalled financial flexibility and ripple
effects that extend well beyond an initial grant. Joan Kroc’s $1.8 billion gift to the Salvation
Army, resulted in 246 community, family, and youth ‘Kroc Centers’ being built, and 20 years
on, these centres continue to generate $258 million worth of positive economic and social
benefits annually.
Similarly, while Scott has only been giving publicly for the past five years, Panorama has
spoken to over 200 recipient leaders about the impact of those gifts on their organisations.
Immediate impacts include increased flexibility to strengthen organisations’ staff or technology
capacities, the ability to create endowments or ‘rainy day’ funds for greater long-term financial
sustainability, and opportunities to strengthen partnerships, re-grant resources to peer
organisations, and build collaborative networks that amplify collective impact.
In the case of PCI, flexible funding was also key for its ability to accelerate growth and impact
in tandem. Early flexible funding from donors like the Skoll Foundation played a pivotal role in
establishing PCI’s foundation, navigating challenges, and building a team deeply rooted in the
communities it serves. Later, as PCI grew, larger grants from Scott and a design grant from Co-
Impact, provided the resources to strengthen institutional capacity, test new ideas, and develop
sustainable programmes.
Building on this momentum, PCI later secured grants from Co-Impact and Audacious to scale
these initiatives further and, today, collaborates with more than 60 organisations to support
climate-affected communities and migrants with social protection while addressing gender-
based violence.
Big bet blind spots
Despite these stories of success, a significant perception gap remains between donors and
organisation leaders on the risks associated with big bets. A study by the Center for Effective
Philanthropy on the impact of Scott’s giving, found that while more than three-quarters of
interviewed funders expressed doubts about nonprofitsʼ ability to manage large grants, less
than two percent of nonprofit leaders reported major challenges in doing so.
This perception may be driven by the public failures of a small number of organisations rather
than the quiet progress of the majority, with Benefits Data Trust being a case in point. Closing
down after receiving a $5 million grant from the Ballmer Group in 2020 and a $20 million
grant from Scott two years later, the Trust reminds us that not all large, unrestricted funds are
magic bullets but ultimately its demise is evidence of an exception, and not proof of a given
rule.
Instead, data from the Center for Effective Philanthropy, alongside our own qualitative reports
at Panorama, have identified a different kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: donor concerns about
organisations’ management capacity causes them to discontinue gifts to big bet recipients
while this fear-induced behaviour creates the very financial instability they were afraid of.
On the other end of the financial spectrum, there are also the many grassroots organisations—
especially those in the Global South—that face systemic barriers to accessing big bets in the
first instance. Before qualifying for big bets, there are often significant evaluation requirements
for records, evidence, operations, teams, and systems that, for many, simply don’t exist in the
desired form. In addition, language and accessibility are regularly overlooked and too often
grant applications require technical expertise and are typically tailored to English-speaking
organisations that ‘present’ best to a donor audience.
As cases like PCI highlight, this style of due diligence process tends to favour older, established
organisations with longer track records. This results in a trust gap, where donors question the
financial and operational capacity of grassroots organisations despite their deep community
ties, significant capacity, and local expertise.
To compound effects, grassroots organisations face the dilemma of pursuing big bets
independently or as part of a coalition. While independent funding can offer autonomy,
working in coalitions can enhance credibility and broaden access to resources but both
approaches come with trade-offs that impact long-term growth and sustainability.
In the decade since, the pace of big bet giving has increased significantly,
in no small part due to the efforts of singular philanthropist—MacKenzie
Scott—and four funding collaboratives: Blue Meridian Partners, Co-
Impact, Lever for Change, and The Audacious Project.
Moving from big bet to system change
In earlier years, receiving a big bet gift was seen as a metric of success—a sign that an
organisation had achieved a major milestone. Yet, as big bets have become more frequent,
receiving them has become a key step on a journey to solving large-scale problems. Some
organisations are fortunate enough to receive multiple big bet gifts while the remainder
grapple with new revenue models to support their work in the long term.
Another portion have traditionally pursued lasting systems change by working alongside
governments, trailing, scaling and embedding programmes but in 2025 this route has
narrowed. Governments are slashing domestic services and foreign aid budgets are
disappearing. As budgets shrink, there are greater constraints on the governments that depend
on these funds, and therefore less ability to implement new programmes.
While some philanthropies have indicated they will expand their giving to respond to this new
context, there is also a consistent refrain that philanthropy will not be able to fill the gaps being
left by governments. We are faced with a paradox. As governments decrease support for the
most vulnerable, not-for-profit organisations become even more essential. Yet the funds to
support their work have never been commensurate with the need, let alone a need that is now
greater than ever.
As this article goes to press, global nonprofit leaders are facing these challenges and rather
than aiming for systems change, many organisations are fighting for survival with mergers,
acquisitions, and operations under alternative legal structures or geographies.
While the big bet givers referenced here have given no indication that their approach will
faulter in the absence of government funding, it will take new ways of working, along with
many more big bets, from many more philanthropic funders, to continue making the progress
necessary to address some of the biggest societal challenges of our time.
Gabrielle Fitzgerald is founder and CEO of Panorama Global. LinkedIn/GabrielleFitzgerald
Ashif Shaikh is president and CEO of People’s Courage International.
ashif@peoplescourageintIernational.org
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Special feature
3 June 2025
Authors…
Ashif Shaikh
Gabrielle Fitzgerald
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