Indirect Benefits from Social Sector Infrastructure Organizations 

Many Social Sector Infrastructure Organizations (SSIOs) wrestle with the longstanding challenge of measuring the indirect benefits they provide. For example, how do we measure the benefits produced when organizations such as Charity Navigator increase public trust by providing infrastructure to facilitate giving? As a second example, we know that social impact assets under management sit at approximately 2% of global markets. At the same time, SSIOs have held countless topic-related conference sessions and member-related educational programs. But how do we measure their contribution to this success?

This section makes a case that while indirect benefits are difficult to measure or attribute, they are extensive and critically needed to accelerate the social sector. Therefore, these benefits deserve more serious consideration.

Examples:

• Candid tracks where billions of nonprofit dollars come from and how they are spent every year.
• Confluence Philanthropy and its partners have attracted equity, inclusion, and diversity signatories with a collective $1.89 trillion of assets under management. The organization also brings members together to invest in a range of social impact-related causes.
• The Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support (WINGS) has motivated more than 950 signatories from foundations across 20 countries to agree to take urgent action on climate change. WINGS also builds relationships with high-level development intermediaries to adopt best practices. At the end of the 2022 Effective Development Co-operation Summit in Geneva, USAID and 14 governments expressed their commitment to support localized aid practices.
• The Council on Foundations and its partners motivated 806 foundations to pledge increased, less restrictive multi-year giving during the COVID-19 crisis.
• The United Philanthropy Forum serves more than 90 philanthropy support organizations representing more than 7,000 funders.
• Charity Navigator attracts 11 million annual users.
• Creative Visions Foundation’s Rock Your World Program educates and trains young people in filmmaking on social issues, reaching 650,000 students in 25,000 schools, involving 29,000 teachers across 72 countries.
• Emerging Leaders Foundation has trained 4,366 young people and reports reaching another 200,000 young people across the African continent.
• The Millennium Campus Network has graduated over 10,000 students in 450 universities worldwide on a shared sustainable development goals curriculum.

Voices from the Field: United Philanthropy Forum’s Covid-19 Crucible Report

“More than 9 in 10 PSO leaders believe their PSO’s response to the pandemic had a positive effect on how members perceive their organization’s value. … Our programming went from 80 programs in a given year to 120, a 50% increase, with no increase in staff. And it was member and sector driven.”

“For all the criticism that philanthropies are slow to change, funders in the study reported making changes in a wide range of areas, including philanthropic models and approaches, standards and ethics, diversity and inclusion, financial stewardship, governance, grantmaking, grants management, and learning and evaluation. More than half of funders (55%) who responded to the survey said they had adopted an idea or best practice in the last two years that was informed by practice knowledge, and 17% are in the process of making a change.”

“PSOs became clearinghouses of information and curated virtual convenings for action and learning tailored to member needs and interests. ‘Our members needed a centralized place to receive and disseminate information,’ one leader said. ‘We have received feedback from our members, both through feedback forms and directly through email, letting us know that they appreciated the peer learning spaces, issues expert presentations, collaborative opportunities, and other support we have offered during the pandemic.’ Another leader reported that even after the emergency calls stopped, ‘these calls were the most impactful thing we’ve ever done.’”

Spotlight: Unrestricted Funding in California

One notable example of SSIO impact comes from a foundation that provided unrestricted funding of approximately $1 million per year to several Philanthropy Support Organizations in California over a five-year period. As described in the *Making the Leap* report:

“California’s three regional associations collaborated to take promising regional strategies to the next level and gave a major boost to statewide efforts such as ensuring every Californian was counted in the 2020 Census, advancing trust-based philanthropy practices, and implementing the holistic budgeting and planning process known as full-cost grantmaking.”

Conclusions

The indirect benefits SSIOs provide may be difficult to measure, but cumulatively they are immense. Candid, for example, facilitates grant writing and fundraising for countless foundations and nonprofits, streamlining the funding process. Similarly, organizations like Charity Navigator bolster public trust and provide education on impactful giving. More broadly, SSIOs — also known as philanthropy support organizations — play a crucial role in guiding billions of dollars in funding annually, enhancing the equitability, ethicality, and effectiveness of giving.

Further indirect benefits emerge from sector-building organizations that boost nonprofit capacity. Some of these also engage in advocacy, working to prevent legislation that could hinder the nonprofit sector. WINGS’s success at mobilizing over 950 foundations to commit to urgent climate action is a compelling example of direct issue engagement. The same is true of many SSIOs working to advance equity and inclusion, democracy, and community development.

While the cumulative indirect impact of SSIOs is immense, supporting these organizations is not a panacea or a stand-alone solution. Many funders remain reluctant to support SSIOs directly, and that hesitation is understandable given the challenges of measuring indirect impact described above.

One complementary approach is to identify and strengthen linchpins — specific leverage points within organizations that are already achieving far-reaching results. These linchpins vary widely in scale: some are surprisingly simple and inexpensive to address, while others require more significant investment. However, the goal is the same: to unlock outsized impact relative to the resources required.

With this in mind, Propel Philanthropy and Catalyst Now evaluate listings that suggest to have the potential to produce catalytic results. These listings are offered to funders at no charge as our way of supporting the social sector ecosystem.