Recently, a handful of leading philanthropists and grantmakers have made important moves to support global governance reform. Some have focused on the structural elements of governance, while others have focused on specific issues.
To help grapple with the structural challenges of globalization, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress of Switzerland supported the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World “to invent, to share, and to practice new forms of collective action, from the local to the global scales, so that together we can exercise more control, together and with Nature, over the future of an increasingly complex and interdependent world.” The process included a 2001 World Citizen’s Assembly. Now 20 years later, a few funders are working through the Iswe Foundation to support a new coalition for a Global Citizens Assembly as part of the UNFCCC process. In addition, Missions Publiques manages a fellows program to strengthen the participation of ordinary citizens in transnational decision-making.
In 1997, Ted Turner, founder of CNN, pledged $1 billion to support the United Nations through the United Nations Foundation. Originally a grantmaking body focused on direct aid for key UN issues, the organization evolved to become a strategic partner for the UN, mobilizing private resources from others to support many UN efforts.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s president, Stephen Heintz, has pointed out the obsolescence of the nation-state system. Correspondingly, the foundation created a Democratic Practice – Global Challenges program in 2003 to “advance transborder democratic practices for social and environmental justice.”
The Global Challenges Foundation, based in Sweden, is dedicated to strengthening global governance to address catastrophic risks. Founded in 2012 and endowed by the Hungarian-Swedish investor Laszlo Szombatfalvy, the Foundation launched the New Shape Prize in 2017 offering $5 million in support for the best ideas for global governance.
A few other philanthropists of note have also focused on the structural elements of global governance. In 1956, the industrialist and entrepreneur C. Maxwell Stanley and his wife endowed the Stanley Foundation to address “global challenges that present a profound threat to human survival and well-being.” In 2001, Jim Balsillie, the former CEO of Research in Motion (makers of the BlackBerry) co-founded the Center for International Governance Innovation to support research, form networks, advance policy debates and generate ideas for multilateral governance improvements. In 2010, the investor Nicholas Berggruen founded the Berggruen Institute to help transform social and political institutions. Its program The Planetary explores new forms of global governance to address interconnected planetary challenges — such as climate, technology, and migration — beyond the limitations of nation-state politics. In 2016, the family of former President and Chairman of Honeywell, James Binger, endowed the Chair in Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations through the Robina Foundation to promote independent scholarship on issues of global governance.
Perhaps more than any other philanthropist, financier George Soros has supported efforts to improve governance globally. Through the Open Society Foundations (OSF), the Soros family has invested over $32 billion to promote justice, human rights, and democratic governance around the world. These efforts have aimed to create more transparent and accountable societies, often supporting watchdog and anti-corruption efforts that serve as deterrents to organized crime. One significant OSF partner is the Paris Peace Forum, a key convener in the world of multilateral gatherings, with a specific focus on global governance issues, complementing the exploration of economic and financial issues at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the focus on security issues at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
In 2019, oil industry tycoon Charles Koch joined his ideological opposite, George Soros, to support the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The institute advocates for diplomacy, realism and restraint in foreign affairs, promoting a “less militarized and more cooperative foreign policy.” The institute operates as a think tank that hosts scholars, participates in debates, and publishes analysis pieces by journalists and academics.
More donors have focused directly on the issues of the global commons and other select global governance concerns.
Former New York City Mayor and founder of Bloomberg LP, Michael Bloomberg has supported several key issues of the global commons. In January of 2025, after US President Trump withdrew support for the UN climate work, Bloomberg stepped in to provide funding for UNFCCC operations. Other related efforts include the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative to support ocean sustainability and the C40 global network of cities and mayors to promote climate action. The founder of the yogurt brand Chobani, Hamdi Ulukaya, created the Tent Partnership for Refugees and became one of the largest donors to the UN High Commission on Refugees. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos created the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020 as the largest philanthropic commitment to date dedicated to fighting climate change and protecting nature. The Moore Foundation, founded in 2000 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife Betty, has been one of the largest historic contributors to tropical forest conservation. Jeff Skoll of eBay created the Skoll Global Threats Fund in 2009 to address climate change, pandemics, water security, nuclear proliferation, and conflict in the Middle East. While back in 2015 Tesla CEO Elon Musk donated $10 million to support work on responsible AI, the co-founder of Facebook, Dustin Moskovitz, and his wife Cari Tuna created Open Philanthropy to take on global catastrophic risks such as rogue AI and asteroids. Giving Pledge signers Marcel and Cynda Arsenault have also tackled governance issues related to outer space and other global commons. Cynda co-founded the Secure World Foundation to promote peace in outer space and the sustainable uses of space for the benefit of all nations, and together with Marcel she created the One Earth Future Foundation to create ecosystems of support in select fragile states, bringing together local wisdom with national authority and international expertise to support local-level economic development.
Collectively these donors have done a great deal to advance global governance and address the issues of the global commons, but much more philanthropy is needed.
As we’ve seen, the deficit of global governance holds back human progress and stewardship across numerous vital domains. So addressing it offers extraordinary leverage, especially relative to more established and crowded verticals. Think of it as a high-reward contrarian social investment.
| There are a handful of donor groups operating at the global level that are worth mentioning here. The Foundations Platform F20 is a global alliance of philanthropic foundations working to align G20 policies with the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals by advocating for sustainable finance, climate action, and just transitions. The Global Commons Alliance unites donors, scientists, civil society, and business leaders to protect Earth’s life-support systems by setting science-based boundaries and promoting accountability for nature and climate. The Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support (WINGS) is a global network that strengthens the capacity and collaboration of philanthropy support organizations to improve the effectiveness of giving worldwide. The Global Governance Philanthropy Network is an emerging affinity group of donors interested in advancing more inclusive, transparent, and accountable systems of global governance. Together, these four institutions represent a growing convergence between philanthropy, planetary stewardship, and systems change – advancing a more equitable and sustainable global order. |