Co-Impact In partnership with Co-Impact, Orr Group successfully mobilized nearly $700 million towards a $1 billion goal, demonstrating the power of collaborative philanthropy in addressing gender inequality and promoting equitable and inclusive impact in the Global South.
Challenge Co-Impact, a global philanthropic collaborative, is dedicated to transforming large-scale systems in health, education, and economic opportunity to attain equitable and inclusive impact at scale in the Global South. In its initial Fund, Co-Impact united over 40 funders from 16 countries and pooled hundreds of millions of dollars. However, a significant challenge emerges due to the COVID-19 pandemic: the exacerbation of gender inequality and the added burdens borne by women and girls. Programs and systems persist with gender blindness, and women’s representation in leadership roles within institutions providing essential services remains inadequate. To address this pressing issue of gender inequality and other forms of exclusion, Co-Impact embarked on a mission to rally leading philanthropists, foundations, and donors to commit over a billion dollars. This funding would be channeled towards promoting women’s voice, influence, agency, and gender-transformative programs at scale. Co-Impact’s vision was to support large-scale programs in health, education, and economic opportunity, all designed with gender equitable outcomes and inclusivity at their core.
Solution To provide Co-Impact with the development capacity needed to achieve the Fund’s philanthropic goal of raising $1 billion, Orr Group provided outsourced fundraising support. In this role, we partnered with Co-Impact’s Executive Office and Philanthropy team, providing strategic guidance and day-to-day management. This work included validating existing prospects and identifying and researching new prospects, leveraging existing relationships for introductions to the Fund, overseeing the moves management process, developing Fund collateral, and refining and enhancing the organization’s cultivation and solicitation processes. As part of this work, we identified and qualified over 160 priority prospects with a potential value of over $1 billion.
Impact Over the course of our engagement, Orr Group played a pivotal role in supporting Co-Impact’s fundraising efforts, resulting in the successful mobilization of nearly $700 million towards the Fund’s ambitious $1 billion goal. This substantial financial support underscored the effectiveness of Co-Impact’s mission and the collaborative approach employed by Orr Group, which marked significant strides towards achieving equitable and inclusive impact at scale in the Global South. This achievement stands as a testament to the potential for collective philanthropic efforts to address pressing global challenges and create a more equitable and inclusive future in the Global South and beyond.
“ It's been really wonderful to have the Orr Group team as a thought partner because we're thinking through different strategies with respect to bringing in new funding partners as well as how we build engagement with those partners that we already have on board. We are a funder collaborative, so the way that we actually engage with our partners in their service of our work to advance gender equality is just so crucial in terms of how we achieve the greater impact. I've just really appreciated that in terms of our collaboration.” “It's been really wonderful to have the Orr Group team as a thought partner because we're thinking through different strategies with respect to bringing in new funding partners as well as how we build engagement with those partners that we already have on board. We are a funder collaborative, so the way that we actually engage with our partners in their service of our work to advance gender equality is just so crucial in terms of how we achieve the greater impact. I've just really appreciated that in terms of our collaboration.” Anna-Marie Harling, Managing Director, Philanthropic Collaboration, Co-Impact