Latin American Philanthropy Is Building Its Own Agenda
Across Latin America, civil society has been asking important questions: How can resources move in ways that strengthen community power? What practices can help sustain movements and organizations over the long term? And how can philanthropy adapt to the political, economic, and social realities of different territories?
These are not new questions. Across the region, civil society organizations, funders, networks, and movements have long been advancing their own visions for more inclusive societies and developing philanthropic practices rooted in the realities of their communities.
HIP saw in this an opportunity to leverage our power of connection and convening across borders. In early 2026, HIP launched the Latin American Laboratory for Philanthropic Innovation and Collaboration, or Laboratorio, to bring together 15+ philanthropic organizations based in or working across Latin America for strategic dialogue and collective action.
Over the last year, this initiative has grown to something greater than just our network. Partners of the Laboratorio have worked to connect and learn from each other, understanding that there isn’t a need to develop a philanthropic agenda from scratch. What the Laboratorio offers is a space to identify where there is shared ground and bring a more coordinated Latin American perspective to the global stage.
This work comes at what feels like a tipping point. Global funding structures are shifting. Civic space is shrinking. Longstanding philanthropic models are being tested. And decisions about resources, participation, and power increasingly move across borders.
For Latin American philanthropy, this is a moment to bring the region’s own knowledge, priorities, and vision into the conversations shaping philanthropy globally.
Building on what already exists
Foundations and peer-support organizations across Latin America surfaced both a need and an appetite for a different kind of philanthropic coordination model, one grounded in shared knowledge, candid exchange, aligned narratives, and strategic convening.
Within the Laboratorio, HIP serves as a facilitator, incubator, and bridge between U.S. and Latin American philanthropy—helping create the conditions for partners to shape a collective agenda while elevating Latin American philanthropy’s own voice and priorities.
We bring together organizations including Alianza de Fundaciones Comunitarias de México, A.C.(Comunalia), Asociación de Fundaciones Familiares y Empresariales (AFE Colombia), Centro Mexicano para la Filantropía (Cemefi), Ford Foundation, Grupo de Fundaciones y Empresas (GDFE Argentina), Grupo de Institutos, Fundações e Empresas (GIFE Brazil), Latimpacto, Open Society Foundations, RedEAmerica, and others to explore what becomes possible when philanthropic institutions learn and act together.
The realities shaping philanthropy do not stop at national borders. Resources move across countries. Communities and movements build relationships across territories. The Latin American diaspora connects experiences in the region with those in the United States and beyond. And global philanthropic decisions can have profound consequences for local organizations and communities.
A transnational approach allows philanthropic actors to see those connections more clearly. The Laboratorio is creating a space to translate regional knowledge into conversations that influence the broader philanthropic field.
Four ways the Laboratorio is working
The Laboratorio’s first phase centers on four interconnected areas of work:
Understand the conditions shaping philanthropic impact.
Participants are building a shared, evidence-based understanding of the structural, political, and economic conditions influencing philanthropy’s ability to act across the region.
Create space to share dilemmas openly.
The Laboratorio offers a space for candid and safe conversations about shared strategic and operational challenges—including how philanthropy can respond to shrinking civic space while advancing better and more innovative practices.
Align narratives across the region.
Partners are working toward a collective statement that articulates shared concepts and language around philanthropy’s role in sustaining participation, inclusion, and civic life in Latin America.
Strengthen capacities and build common agendas.
Participating institutions are identifying shared priorities including knowledge gaps, capacity needs, and opportunities for coordination that can serve as the foundation for a broader regional agenda.
Together, these efforts are about more than producing a document or convening a series of meetings. They are about building the relationships, shared understanding, and connective infrastructure that allow existing knowledge and collective power to move across borders.
Bringing Latin America to the global stage
Since January, Laboratorio participants have met monthly, with each conversation building on the last. And the work is already moving beyond the room.
Members have collaboratively shaped sessions for HIP’s 2026 Annual Leadership Conference and developed three parallel events for the United Nations General Assembly focused on protecting civic space, the Latin American diaspora as a strategic partner for development and democracy, and the next architecture of philanthropy in Latin America. The Laboratorio will also have a dedicated session at the upcoming WINGS Forum.
These spaces are an opportunity to bring regional knowledge and priorities into conversations shaping the global philanthropic agenda, not as an afterthought or a perspective added along the way, but as a source of knowledge and leadership in its own right.
The Laboratorio is a dynamic initiative grounded in relationship-building, shared learning, and collective action. As this work continues, we are deepening the partnerships and coordination that make a transnational agenda possible, developing regional knowledge and analysis, documenting lessons, and creating more opportunities for the region’s perspectives to shape hemispheric and global conversations.
To expand the Laboratorio’s contributions, HIP continues to seek partners to help convene high-impact spaces with diverse actors and accelerate the development of shared knowledge. Investing in the Laboratorio means strengthening the connective infrastructure that can help philanthropy act with greater coordination across borders, strengthening the conditions for participation and pluralism, and amplifying the power already present in our communities.
Join us in strengthening the relationships, knowledge, and connective infrastructure that can carry Latin American ideas and collective power further—across borders and onto the global stage.
For more information, reach out to Gracia Goya, [email protected]