Cape Town - The third edition of the Annual Review of South African Philanthropy was launched on Tuesday.
The launch took place during the first day of Independent Philanthropy Association South Africa (Ipasa)’s two-day annual philanthropy symposium, yesterday, at the Suikerbossie Estate, Hout Bay.
This year’s theme was “Changing the Way We Change our World” and focused on changing mindsets and practises within philanthropy to allow for real transformational change.
The symposium included presentations, panel discussions and facilitated break-away sessions.
Ipasa executive director Louise Driver said the annual symposium is the only funder-only symposium in South Africa which brings together funders (private foundations, family foundations, corporation foundations, philanthropists and philanthropy advisory organisations and consultants) to learn, share and connect with each other.
Ipasa is a member-based forum with around 40 prominent philanthropic organisations such as the Ackerman Family Foundation, Allan and Gill Gray Foundation, Oppenheimer Generations Foundation, Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation, Raith Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
“An important new challenge for Ipasa members and other funders is to try to achieve a balance between providing immediate emergency support and also driving systems change to tackle the root causes of the many complex issues our country faces.”
Funded by the Ball Family Foundation through Ipasa, the review is the only publication of its kind in the country and showcases articles and thought leader opinion pieces on funding in South Africa.
The review is aimed at improving the awareness and transparency of philanthropy in the country and is available to anyone in the philanthropy sector including foundations, non-profit organisations, government agencies, universities and other tertiary institutions, intermediary funders, banks and other financial institutions.
One of the authors featured in the review, Linda Whitfield, from the Harry Crossley Foundation, said: “In today’s world of philanthropy, carefully formulated strategy drives most grant-making programmes.
“There is no ’let’s just give away some money’ approach to the work that the majority of philanthropists are doing. Time and effort is spent in determining what the individual objectives are, how those objectives will be achieved and, importantly, what the outcomes will be.”
shakirah.thebus@inl.co.za