Impact Report
This past year our membership grew not only in numbers but also as a collective. New members joined our network, continuing to add to the diversity of voices and perspectives that make our collective stronger. We also grew as leaders in philanthropy by spending our time together gathering data, creating powerful tools, and acquiring skills to improve our philanthropic practices. Keep reading below for an overview of all the different tools, trainings, and spaces that we shared this year.
This past year our membership grew not only in numbers but also as a collective. New members joined our network, continuing to add to the diversity of voices and perspectives that make our collective stronger. We also grew as leaders in philanthropy by spending our time together gathering data, creating powerful tools and acquiring skills to improve our philanthropic practices. Keep reading below for an overview of all the different tools, trainings, and spaces that we shared this year.
This past year our membership grew not only in numbers but also as a collective. New members joined our network, continuing to add to the diversity of voices and perspectives that make our collective stronger. We also grew as leaders in philanthropy by spending our time together gathering data, creating powerful tools and acquiring skills to improve our philanthropic practices. Keep reading below for an overview of all the different tools, trainings, and spaces that we shared this year.
Our 2024 Membership
Our Membership Services this Year
3 Member Meetups:
4 Member Brunches Hosted by:
4 Tools
2024 Annual Convening: Leading as a Collective
Our Membership’s Impact on the Archipelago
Top impact areas in Philanthropic Investment:
- Community development
- Arts and culture
- Education
- Human Rights
- Most philanthropic collaborations among our members focus on education and women’s rights.
- A majority of funders and our members work directly on projects
- Funders advocacy efforts have a diversity of methodologies.
Our membership growth in 2024
2024 Serving Highlights
We continued to have strategic conversations during our Action Dialogues. These meetings served as our consistent checkpoint for members to bring up topics of interest and identify where we can continue to build our capacity.
One of the highlights in our capacity building experiences was the Training to Support Fiscally Sponsored Projects. During this training we explored how to develop transparent and participatory relationships, address common challenges, and implement innovative approaches when supporting fiscally sponsored projects. The training, facilitated in partnership with Social Commons, offered practical tools and guidelines to promote and fund sustainable fiscal sponsorships for their grantees.
Additionally, we had another successful year of podcasting, offering diverse perspectives on philanthropic practices through 14 episodes that generated a total of 2,527 plays. Explore more insights in our 2024 Spotify Wrap for Somos Filantropía Podcast here.
As part of serving our membership this year, we also welcomed the Peter Alfond Board of Trustees in Puerto Rico. We participated in their planning session and offered them a broad perspective of Puerto Rico’s context to support their innovation and collaboration in the sector.
Last but not least, our Annual Convening was a complete success this year! Our convening was very inspiring and filled with valuable knowledge from our membership. From innovative philanthropic practices to key areas of impact to advance equity, all of our members showed that they are at the forefront of philanthropic investment on the island. We enjoyed two days filled with moments to deepen our relationships, reflect about ways in which we can continue to strengthen the philanthropic sector, and enjoy community building activities together.
This past year our membership grew not only in numbers but also as a collective. New members joined our network, continuing to add to the diversity of voices and perspectives that make our collective stronger. We also grew as leaders in philanthropy by spending our time together gathering data, creating powerful tools and acquiring skills to improve our philanthropic practices. Keep reading below for an overview of all the different tools, trainings, and spaces that we shared this year.
Collective Intelligence Initiative
Our Collective Intelligence Initiative positively impacted the social sector as a whole. While it has become an important tool for philanthropic entities that are a part of our membership, this initiative has also served non-profit organizations broadly over the past year. Our unique tools, informed by our role as a philanthropic serving organization, continue to support and strengthen the social sector more broadly. Our biggest tool launched through this initiative this year was the Data Facts for Systemic Change. With this tool, we compiled a broad range of data and categorized it by impact areas and areas of interest in the social sector. The tool includes valuable data from a diversity of sources, including public, private, and social sector entities. Another impactful tool we launched this year was the Social Sector Job Board. A platform that allows users to post job openings in the social sector. This platform has been useful for organizations and job seekers in the sector alike.
Collective Intelligence Initiative
Our Collective Intelligence Initiative positively impacted the social sector as a whole. While it has become an important tool for philanthropic entities that are a part of our membership, this initiative has also served non-profit organizations broadly over the past year. Our unique tools, informed by our role as a philanthropic serving organization, continue to support and strengthen the social sector more broadly. Our biggest tool launched through this initiative this year was the Data Facts for Systemic Change. With this tool, we compiled a broad range of data and categorized it by impact areas and areas of interest in the social sector. The tool includes valuable data from a diversity of sources, including public, private, and social sector entities. Another impactful tool we launched this year was the Social Sector Job Board. A platform that allows users to post job openings in the social sector. This platform has been useful for organizations and job seekers in the sector alike.
Collective Intelligence Impact:
3 tools developed
Collective Intelligence Hub
Job Board
Data Facts for Systemic Change
Words From Tools’ Users
- New message
From: Centro para Puerto Rico- Sila María Calderón
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Subject: Collective Intelligence Hub
“Como profesional con más de 15 años de experiencia en las sin fines de lucro, les extiendo mi más sincera felicitación y admiración por el trabajo que FIPR ha estado realizando. Una de las iniciativas que nos ha encantado es el “Collective Intelligence Hub”. Un verdadero tesoro para la profesionalización de las OSFL.”
- New message
From: Grantmakers in the Arts
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Subject: Data Facts for Systemic Change
“This is such important work! Congratulations!”
- New message
From: Arte Terapia PR
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Subject: AI Workshop
“Gracias por la invitación y el ofrecimiento llevado a cabo este pasado martes de ‘IA en acción’, fue de gran ayuda.”
- New message
From: Red por los Derechos de la Niñez y la Juventud de Puerto Rico
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Subject: Social Sector Job Board
“Excelente herramienta para las organizaciones, especialmente para el área de recursos humanos en donde el trabajo es tan continuo. La plataforma tiene una buena estética, es fácil de usar y nos facilita el trabajo enormemente.”
Robusteciendo la Justicia Social
Robusteciendo la Justicia Social concluded in 2024 and we are excited to share all of our experiences from this community of practice with you. Between 2021 and 2024, Filantropía Puerto Rico committed $3,000,000 to consolidate a collective of eight organizations driving systemic change and equity on key issues such as housing, recovery, land use, environment, governance, transparency and civic participation. The RJS initiative strengthened the infrastructure for social justice and just recovery in Puerto Rico through a cohort focused on capacity building, peer to peer learning, strategic connections and enhancing their fiscal health.
Our goal as field builders has been to promote the growth of the participating organizations by promoting key strategic conversations. Through this process, they have challenged and expanded their perspectives to tackle common challenges, strengthened their operational, and programmatic capacity, and advanced their individual agendas. Over the past three years, these organizations have taken greater risks into their proposed objectives, leading to innovative initiatives, and large scale projects. Furthermore, the RJS community of practice has solidified its position as a reference in the social sector, both individually and collectively addressing social justice challenges and driving systemic change across the archipelago.
After three years of commitment, the initiative has come to an end. We have compiled key insights, lessons, and effective practices on an impact report of this initiative. You can read about our lessons learned from the past three years in the recently published piece below:
Adelante Puerto Rico
Our Forward Puerto Rico Initiative focused on collecting and reviewing insights from our grantees throughout 2024. The fund’s mission continues to be the same while Puerto Rico’s context continues to change and becomes more stable. In 2024, we spent a great portion of our time actively listening to our grantee partners as their grants come to an end and they report back on the impact the funding had on their organizations. Our team has also actively participated in capacity building spaces that widen our perspective and have allowed us to ideate new ways to support the sector. We participated in the UPF Rural Cohort Learning Community, where we exchanged lessons learned with other philanthropy serving organizations dedicated to fund entities in rural areas of the United States. We learned about how they combine private and federal funding for more equal access to funding support. Additionally, we participated for the second and last year in Fund for Shared Insight – Funders Listening Community of Practice, where we collectively worked on a roadmap of listening tools and practices for funders. We were able to share this with our membership as well as integrate in our own process of refining our listening practices. As the year came to an end, we participated in the Global Giving Roundtable to keep cultivating the space for continued learning and sharing our strategic partners’ purpose and motivations as we continue to build new alliances.
The Forward Fund will continue to share power, lean into trust based approaches, and put community voices at the center of our work as we have done since its inception. In 2025, we plan to add new tools and instruments that further expand its mission. We are an organization that plays a unique role in providing infrastructure to organizations safeguarding our social sector. The Forward Fund has been and will continue to be one of the key tools that allows us to further this role.
Raising Awareness through Our Networks
Finally, our leadership and staff continued to bring visibility to our efforts and Puerto Rico’s philanthropic efforts through different engagements with other entities. Our Operations Manager Virginia Quiñones attended the United Philanthropy Forum (UPF) 2024 conference in July, where she was able to gain valuable insights on a diversity of philanthropic practices for systemic change. While at the National Assembly of State Arts Agency, our Executive Director joined a panel with Nido Cultural, Flamboyán Foundation y Mellon Foundation. During this panel we discussed our involvement in the co-creation of Nido Cultural, an entity that offers managerial services to artists and organizations. Glenisse was also a part of the Grantmakers in the Arts Board of Directors and through this role was able to participate in days of learning with fellow board members as well as bring visibility to Puerto Rico’s needs to the entity’s work.
- New message
From: Instituto Nueva Escuela
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Subject: Anaquel de Palabras
Pasando a felicitarles por esta iniciativa, me encanta. Además de repasar los términos, brinda una forma dinámica de adentrarse en la conversación.”
As part of our visibility efforts, our team also participated in the Cooperative Impact Lab 2024 AI Cohort, brought together by Cooperative Impact Lab during the months of January through April. We were able to connect with other organizations and exchange knowledge on how to best use AI to support organizational efforts. We learned about the biggest opportunities and risks that AI creates for our organization. We also studied the workflows of a functional team to identify points of friction AI can solve and how senior staff can integrate AI for more effective leadership. Finally, we were part of an open mic where we were able to present how our organization uses AI to make our workflows more efficient.
Thanks for a Great
Our biggest impact above all others this year was to continue to serve the social sector in sustainable and innovative ways. We thank our membership for being an integral part of Filantropia Puerto Rico’s mission and continuing to contribute to strengthening the sector in creative ways. We also celebrate our grantees, strategic partners and other allies’ enthusiasm to keep working alongside us to advance equity in Puerto Rico.
We are ready to continue growing in 2025 and we hope you continue to join us in this journey!
