The global challenges of 2020 and 2021 led more than one-third of philanthropies surveyed to accelerate their spending and several more to consider revising their philanthropic timelines, a study from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) finds.

For the report, the second biennial Global Trends and Strategic Time Horizons in Philanthropy (37 pages, PDF), RPA received responses from a total of 150 philanthropies in 30 countries and found that education, community, and economic development was the top programmatic priority overall, followed by health. When comparing differences among the time horizons, political, civil, and human rights was cited as the third leading area of focus among those considering a time-limited model, fourth for time-limited respondents, and fifth for in-perpetuity organizations.

Expanding on RPA’s previous research in 2019 and 2020 to understand the factors that affect a philanthropy’s considerations in choosing the length of time for which it will remain active, the report also found that 76 percent of respondents cited a desire to influence social change as their top motivation for philanthropic giving, 64 percent wanted to “give back to society,” and 57 percent cited “urgent need” as their motivating factor. Although in-perpetuity remained the dominant time horizon for 74 percent of respondents, the survey found a growing adoption of time-limited philanthropy in the past two decades. And 54 percent of family-led foundations in the survey reported being led by the second generation of the family.

“Time is as critical to philanthropy’s impact as are resources. Faced with urgent economic, justice and climate crises around the world, funders are accelerating philanthropy for a just world,” said Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors CEO Melissa A. Berman. “This global survey illustrates willingness to reimagine what philanthropy can achieve by adjusting the time horizon of giving.” 

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