Be Less WEIRD: What US Funders Can Learn from Global Majority Philanthropic Practice

Social scientists in the United States have long wrestled with a fundamental problem: Most of the research about human behavior that they are taught has been conducted on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic populations—what psychologist Joseph Henrich and colleagues have dubbed “WEIRD” societies. These populations represent roughly 12 percent of humanity, yet their behavioral patterns are treated as central to understanding universal truths.

Philanthropy in the United States suffers from a similar form of myopia. We’ve built our sector on the assumption that US institutional models represent the pinnacle of philanthropic practice. We pride ourselves on “learning journeys” and “listening tours” while consistently overlooking many of the world’s most effective philanthropic innovations—not because they’re obscure, but because they exist outside the institutional frameworks we reflexively recognize as legitimate.

It’s time for the philanthropic sector to recognize that the most innovative solutions for sustainable social change aren’t being developed in foundation boardrooms.

The irony in the current historical moment is acute. As trust in US institutions declines and global challenges demand urgent response, philanthropy as we know it looks ill-equipped for the volatility and complexity ahead. Meanwhile, communities comprising the Global Majority—which includes people of African, Asian, Latin American, and Indigenous descent, who constitute approximately 85 percent of the world’s population—have spent generations navigating political instability, resource constraints, and urgent crises. Similarly disregarded communities closer to home have also developed their own models of collective care and mutual aid. These include Indigenous communities, Black communities, and poor communities.

Among them, these groups have developed philanthropic practices that are more flexible, crisis-tested, community-rooted, and effective at resource mobilization than many of our institutional approaches are ever likely to be. Yet the philanthropic sector regularly ignores them or treats them as mere curiosities rather than viewing them as compelling practices from which to learn.

It’s time for the philanthropic sector to recognize that the most innovative solutions for sustainable social change aren’t being developed in foundation boardrooms. Rather, they’re emerging from communities that have long understood how to respond to crises without waiting for strategic plans, how to mobilize resources with minimal bureaucracy, and how to center the leadership of those closest to the challenges they face.

Simply put: It’s time for philanthropy to be less WEIRD.

The Myth of American Philanthropic Exceptionalism

The philanthropic sector likes to tell itself a comforting tale: The United States is uniquely generous, our foundation model represents the apex of giving, and our approach to philanthropy is something the rest of the world should aspire to replicate.

While there is no final shared definition of “philanthropy” in the United States, practitioners in the field often default to models based on the US tax code. Broadly, the sector and understands philanthropy to be the specific practices of major donors, foundations, and various types of associations and other 501c3 nonprofit organizations, rather than defined simply as care for fellow humans. Case in point: Giving to these organizations is treated as “philanthropy”; remittances from one family member to another are not.

The data call into question the effectiveness of this narrow interpretation of philanthropy, as do our experiences as practitioners in the US philanthropic sector who are also members of Global Majority communities.

Consider the case of remittances—the money that immigrants and diaspora communities send back to family and friends in their home countries. In 2023, these transfers of money to low- and middle-income countries totaled $656 billion, nearly three times the roughly $223 billion that governments provided in official foreign aid that year. That flow of money from individuals to their communities of origin represents one of the largest and most consistent sources of financial support in the world, but most definitions of US philanthropy don’t count it at all. Many countries also give more equitably relative to their GDPs, including Indonesia and Kenya, and many communities provide support in ways that aren’t captured in our familiar Western definition of philanthropy. We focus on tax-incentivized, institutionalized giving and ignore how people around the world mobilize resources to support their communities and advance social good.

Consider a limited sampling of what we miss when we define philanthropy so narrowly, with such a clearly WEIRD bias.

• In Southern Africa, stokvels (community-based savings clubs) and burial societies have mobilized resources for generations through collective solidarity and the philosophy of ubuntu (translated as “I am because we are”), providing a vital social safety net independent of formal banking.
• In Latin America, compadrazgo (ritual kinship) networks of padrinos and madrinas (co-parents or godparents) have long stewarded community support through informal, trust-based systems of reciprocity that function as a flexible social safety net.
• In India, community foundations and pooled funding efforts center collective ownership and community-defined impact while operating at scales of impact that rival the reach of major American foundations.
• Since the late 1700s, African Americans have sustained a movement to provide economic support and assistance to their communities through mutual aid societies, funding everything from the Underground Railroad to the civil rights movement to social services needed to confront systems of oppression that kept their communities from accessing basic needs. According to the K. Kellogg Foundation’s Cultures of Giving report, African American households give 25 percent more of their income to charity than the national average.

These aren’t unsophisticated practices that need to be institutionalized, bureaucratized, or further legitimized via academic research. They’re practical approaches deliberately and effectively structured for local accountability, rapid response, and sustained impact.

Institutional US philanthropy isn’t the norm; it’s an outlier. Recognizing this fact is essential for two reasons.

First, treating US models as the default best practice has led us to export approaches that are often poorly suited to the contexts in which they’re imposed. Examples include efforts to export rice to rice-producing countries, work to produce mosquito nets that undermined local economies, and water well projects that ignored community needs and left behind well-constructed holes in the ground. From climate change to public health, US funders have too often been guilty of prescribing solutions while sidelining communities who are already doing the work, often more effectively.

Second, assuming our models are “normal” rather than WEIRD limits our collective openness and ability to learn from others who often know better. As we explain in more detail below, philanthropy among Global Majority peoples often works better than the more familiar US models. We have our own insights to share, but we also have much to learn.

Being open to this knowledge presents us with an extraordinary opportunity to move toward a set of better philanthropic models at a time when our communities—and, indeed, the entire world—desperately need us to do so.

What People Who Are Less WEIRD Know

Decades of navigating crises and resource constraints have led people in the Global Majority to produce philanthropic models that offer crucial lessons for a sector facing unprecedented challenges. Three of them feel particularly noteworthy in our current moment.

1. How to Respond to a Crisis with Agility and Resilience

When COVID-19 emerged, countries in West Africa drew on hard-won experience with Ebola to mount effective responses while better-resourced nations stumbled and struggled. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, communities and local funders mobilized quickly, leveraging networks and knowledge carried locally, not found in pandemic playbooks written in Geneva or Atlanta. 

Mobilization also happened at a continental scale: The Africa Medical Supplies Platform created a transparent marketplace that allowed 55 African Union member states to pool their purchasing power. It thereby helped ensure equitable access to diagnostic kits, PPE, and vaccines without relying on the fluctuating priorities of US or European donors.

African institutions even used the crisis to build lasting infrastructure for health security. The African Epidemics Fund, operationalized in 2025, now provides the Africa Centres for Disease Control with flexible, autonomous funding. When US government aid was suspended in 2025, the importance of such independent systems became even more acute.

During the height of COVID-19, some US funders demonstrated that they, too, could move quickly in response to a crisis: eliminating lengthy applications, trusting grantee partners, accepting sensible, community-defined success metrics, and more. But many have treated such practices as a temporary exception, missing the opportunity to fundamentally rethink US philanthropy’s cumbersome approach to due diligence.

Meanwhile, communities that have long lived with great uncertainty have continued to invent and innovate, often going further and faster than institutional philanthropy has been willing to go. As civil-sector infrastructure organization EPIC-Africa noted: “Africa is home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. While foreign funding plays a role, it is neither the only nor the most important driver of our progress. The real story lies in our homegrown generosity and innovation.”

2. How to Practice Community-Rooted Resource Mobilization at Scale 

US-based philanthropy has a long tradition of encouraging individual agendas and “philanthropic freedom,” which has too often led to top-down thinking and siloing of action. Among Global Majority populations, different social and cultural practices have helped pave the way for philanthropic efforts that are community-rooted and more consistently integrated (and/or interconnected) from the ground up rather than the top down.

In India, for example, philanthropic fund and systems builder Dasra has pioneered models that connect donors not to funder-driven strategies but to community-defined priorities, with intermediaries serving as bridges rather than gatekeepers. The approach enables a shift from transactional grantmaking to what Dasra refers to as ecosystem orchestration.

During the COVID-19 crisis, Dasra and the Tarsadia Foundation launched the Rebuild India Fund, recognizing that while large NGOs received significant funding, small grassroots community-based organizations were often excluded due to their lack of formal structures or Western-style reporting capabilities. The fund now supports 342 NGOs across 25 Indian states and five Union Territories, focusing on marginalized groups including scheduled castes, tribes, and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Critically, an investment committee of nonprofit leaders—not Dasra or the contributing funders—ultimately decides which organizations receive funding. This model addresses what Dasra identifies as a historic “trust deficit,” demonstrating that donors can step back from control without sacrificing impact.

Dasra’s model also aims to build “connective tissue” in the social impact ecosystem so donors aren’t left in solitary silos, endlessly searching for their own unique strategies and becoming vulnerable to analysis paralysis. The focus is straightforward and practical: moving money to make things better, trusting partners to handle deployment, and measuring success by community-defined outcomes rather than institutional metrics.

3. How to Make Collaboration Work

“Collaboration” has been a buzzword in the US philanthropic sector for decades, but we have a lot to learn about how to actually make it work. Following the Bridgespan Group’s deep dive into collaborative funds working in the Global South, Jeff Bradach observed, “If you’re an adviser, you can’t claim that you’re looking at the most powerful examples of any practice or organisation if you’re only looking at your own context….The Global North has much to learn from the Global South.”

For one thing, successful collaborative efforts are typically community-led. Bridgespan’s research found that “for most collaborative funds we followed up with, at least three-fourths of grantees are led by an individual representative of the communities they serve.” 

What’s more, organizations like EPIC-Africa, the Africa Women’s Development Fund, and India Development Review (IDR) serve as crucial bridging infrastructure. They share research, amplify community voices, and build connective tissue in ways that make entire systems more effective.

US philanthropists often express envy of such effective connectivity. Yet when presented with opportunities to fund similar infrastructure domestically or internationally, many US funders prefer either to fund direct services or to build entirely new institutions rather than strengthen existing ones. This is especially ironic since alternatives like mutual aid societies and giving circles have been collaborating effectively in US communities for decades.

Giving circles have attracted over 370,000 people who have collectively moved more than $3.1 billion in the United States, and the movement is on track to double again in the next five years. These circles tend to be more diverse in race and gender than traditional philanthropy and seek deep engagement with funding recipients beyond financial support.

Organizations like the New Generation of African American Philanthropists (NGAAP) in Charlotte, NC, exemplify this model. Since 2006, NGAAP has worked to reclaim the root meaning of philanthropy—love of humanity—through collective giving and strategic action, combining the tenets of mutual aid with opportunities for financially successful members to step in where institutional philanthropy has struggled.

Giving circles serve as both catalysts for capacity building and mechanisms to increase the visibility of the community organizations they support.

Streamlining and Rehumanizing Practice

The world of WEIRD philanthropy needs to reckon with the fact that a new game has begun. We need to learn to play it well, and quickly. Thankfully, the first steps are comparatively straightforward. Many are even familiar.

Learning from Global Majority philanthropy isn’t about importing specific models wholesale. It’s about adopting principles that make giving more responsive, community-directed, and human-centered. Whether funders are giving locally, nationally, or internationally, a similar set of lessons apply.

For Institutional Funders

• Rethink due diligence. The COVID-19 emergency revealed that funders could move quickly when they chose to. That capacity didn’t disappear when the emergency subsided. Drop the exhaustive compliance requirements and move to trust-based approaches permanently. Let partners define indicators of impact rather than imposing institutional frameworks that serve funders more than communities.
• Create more bridges, not more silos. When funders encounter a gap, the instinct is often to create something new. But infrastructure typically exists already; it just might not look familiar. Look to support existing community foundations, diaspora networks, and collaborative funds. Recognize that organizations serving as intermediaries aren’t overhead; they’re the connective tissue that makes the entire ecosystem more effective.
• Fund collaboratively, for real. Pool funds, simplify (and share) application processes, and reduce the time nonprofits have to spend competing for resources. This will make the entire sector more efficient while shifting power dynamics in meaningful ways. Models from organizations like Co-Impact demonstrate what’s possible when funders prioritize collective impact over individual attribution. Common application systems—similar to the Common App for college admissions—can reduce burden on grantees who shouldn’t have to customize proposals for each potential funder.

For Family Foundations and Individual Philanthropists

• Build authentic relationships. Think of diaspora organizations, community foundations, and locally rooted intermediaries as co-strategists who understand the context better than any external funder could. Engage accordingly. The Daphne Foundation’s approach during the Ebola crisis—reaching out to partners in Liberia to seek their ideas rather than crafting solutions from New York—provides a model worth emulating.
• Lead from behind. Contribute to community-defined priorities rather than pursuing individual agendas. Trust that collective wisdom almost always outperforms individual strategy. This doesn’t mean abandoning discernment or diligence. It does mean recognizing that proximity and experience lead to expertise and wisdom that should guide resource allocation.

For Philanthropy Professionals (Advisors, Consultants, Media, and Infrastructure Organizations)

• Create learning spaces for continuous exchange. Not one-off learning journeys but sustained platforms for knowledge exchange between US philanthropy and practice in the rest of the world. Philanthropy media in the United States should regularly elevate Global Majority voices and practices, treating them not as curious alternatives but as models worthy of serious engagement and potential emulation.
• Decenter the United States as the default authority. Recognize Global Majority practices as innovation, not novelties. Saviorism is narrow-minded and damaging. Shared humanity and empathy are not. Interrogate power dynamics in every interaction. Learn from initiatives like Native Americans in Philanthropy, Hispanics in Philanthropy, and the Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group (AGAG) Legacy Project that center non-Western approaches to giving.

The Margin Is the Center

Foundations and donors in the United States have resources and capacity that matter, and most want to do as much good as they can. Our goal is to help them recognize that effective philanthropy can, and already does, take many forms—many of which don’t resemble the WEIRD models we’ve elevated as universal standards.

We need to be less WEIRD. In doing so, we’ll become more effective, more accountable, and more worthy of the trust communities place in us.

The crises we face—including climate change, democratic backsliding, and growing inequality—demand the kind of adaptive, community-rooted, trust-based approaches familiar among Global Majority communities. Not because one community is inherently wiser than another, but because different communities have already developed practices that are more resilient, more responsive, and more human than our own.

The invitation here is to recognize that what we’ve treated as the margin might actually be the center, that what we’ve dismissed as informal might actually be more effective, and that the wisdom we desperately need may already exist.

The world doesn’t have time for US philanthropy to spend another decade in self-reflection. We need to be less WEIRD. In doing so, we’ll become more effective, more accountable, and more worthy of the trust communities place in us.