Some of P4NE’s funding partners who joined for our Board meeting
Lunch set the tone for an afternoon of open conversation and strategising in our Funder Exchange workshop, exploring new economic ideas and openings for change — from global to local, across sectors, in collaboration with each other. Four of our collaborators, representing distinct approaches to change and parts of the new economy ecosystem moved our conversation from from ideas to practice. Representatives from the European Macro Policy Network, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, Movement Hub, and Prosper shared insights from their work and facilitated table conversations to be as honest as they were hopeful.
Marie Paglinghi of NILO Foundation reflected: “The simple fact that new economy practitioners were in a room with 40 funders purely on the basis of knowledge exchange and shared intentions was itself a demonstration that collaborative philanthropy can break barriers and help redress power imbalances.”
Anna Herlin of TAH Foundation shared one takeaway, that: “Both structural macro-economic moves and grassroots activism are needed as we move towards an economy more safe and just for all.”
After a full day, the group gathered for dinner at Tivoli Gardens with Sage Lenier, activist and founder of next-generation environmental think tank Futureline, who left the table with a crucial question to consider: in a world where AI acquires a media platform for hundreds of millions to build narrative infrastructure, is new economy philanthropy putting enough effort into strategic communications?
The Philea Forum itself delivered on huge ambitions this year, bringing together more than 700 attendees from more than 60 countries under the theme ‘Philanthropy for People and Planet’.
Their opening keynotes made a bold statement from the outset: that philanthropy must be willing to engage with fundamental questions about how our economic system needs to change, not just how to work within it. We heard powerful speeches from Margrethe Vestager — the former EU Commissioner who reshaped how Europe holds market power to account, and Mariana Mazzucato — whose work has fundamentally challenged assumptions about value, growth, and who the economy should serve.
“What has brought us all here today is probably very similar to what motivated Oak, KR, Marisla and MAVA Foundations to start P4NE more than a decade ago.
Every foundation in that room funds important work – work that saves lives, protects ecosystems, and supports communities in crisis. And yet the crises keep deepening. The reason is that philanthropy has spent decades funding the symptoms, not the root cause: the economic system itself. The rules, the assumptions, the metrics that produced these crises in the first place.
What P4NE has shown is that this work is fundable. It is concrete. It has practitioners. It has a growing field. And it is stronger when funders do it together.”