Anyone who has worked in philanthropy for more than a few years has heard some version of the same aspiration: the problems we face are too large, too interconnected, and too complex for any one organization to solve alone.

As a result, funders, nonprofits, researchers, advocates, and community leaders are increasingly coming together through collaboratives to coordinate action across organizations and issue areas. In many cases, these efforts are producing some of the most promising work happening in the social sector today.

The visible outputs of these efforts are easy to see: pooled funding, joint initiatives, research reports, public commitments, shared strategies. But the strongest collaboratives also invest in something less visible: the people and practices that make collective action possible.

What Working Together Requires

Successful collaboratives do more than fund activities. They invest in the ongoing work to sustain relationships, build trust, navigate disagreement, coordinate action, and maintain momentum across organizations with different priorities, incentives, and cultures.

Lately, I've started thinking about this as the coalition tax.

Many may frame taxes negatively, as something extracted, avoided, or minimized. But at their best, taxes are an investment in things bigger than any one of us. The price we pay to support a stronger community. Roads, schools, public infrastructure.

The coalition tax is no different. It is the price of accomplishing things together that would be difficult—or perhaps even impossible—to accomplish alone.

We Already Know Collaboration Needs Infrastructure

The concept isn’t new. Fifteen years ago, John Kania and Mark Kramer identified backbone support organizations as one of the core conditions of collective impact, arguing that “the expectation that collaboration can occur without a supporting infrastructure is one of the most frequent reasons why it fails.”

This has since been echoed in research and thought pieces about philanthropic collaboration. A 2018 Bridgespan literature review found that the most frequently cited success factors for funder collaboratives were strong relationships, aligned goals and strategies, clear governance structures, and ongoing measurement. When collaboratives failed or faltered, they often lacked these same elements.  

The pattern holds true outside institutional funder collaboratives as well. A 2026 Johnson Center analysis of collective giving circles found that groups affiliated with a hosting or network infrastructure saw 83% of members participate in structured learning, compared to just 12% among unaffiliated groups. The infrastructure wasn’t incidental to how those groups grew and lasted. It was the reason.

Across my two decades of working in social impact, I've seen where groups have spent years aligning around a shared goal, only to stall because no one had clear responsibility for convening, decision-making, communication, or maintaining momentum between meetings. What appeared to be a problem of strategy was often a problem of stewardship.

The field has known for a long time that collaboration doesn’t sustain itself. It depends on the work behind the work. In our sector, we sometimes describe these functions as administration, coordination, or backbone support. But that language may obscure their true value. They are not ancillary or secondary to the “real” work. They are critical to what makes collective action possible.

The Best Collaboratives Budget for It

The strongest collaboratives I've encountered understand this. They recognize that meaningful collaboration requires more than a shared ambition. It requires stewardship.  

Someone has to convene the conversation, onboard new participants, facilitate decisions, manage communication, resolve tensions, and keep work moving between meetings.

These activities rarely attract the same attention as a new funding initiative or advocacy campaign. Yet they are often the very things that determine whether a collaborative generates lasting value or slowly loses momentum.

The organizations that seem to understand this best invest deliberately in the infrastructure of collaboration. Consider the Gender Funders CoLab, which has spent more than a decade creating space for learning, peer exchange, relationship-building, and shared action among funders working to advance gender justice. Its influence extends well beyond any single initiative because it has consistently invested in the connective tissue that allows collaboration to endure.

As another example, a funder group focused on global health supply chains had for years mostly existed in name. Its members had drifted apart, shared work was at a stand still, and the group had gone largely inactive. What made a difference wasn’t a new strategy or new round of funding for programs. It was the decision to fund a dedicated coordination function. A small team took on the behind-the-scenes work of facilitating meetings, aligning priorities, and managing the relationships between very large, very different institutions. Within a few years, the group had a renewed shared vision, stronger engagement, and aligned advocacy across funders who had beengoing their own way.

What can appear from the outside as overhead isoften the infrastructure that allows ambitious collective efforts to succeed.

The Return Isn't Efficiency—It's Resilience

We often justify collaboration in terms of efficiency. Sometimes this looks like less duplication, improved coordination, or shared resources. Those benefits are real and powerful. But, if I’m being honest, I suspect the greatest return may be resilience.

This is where the coalition tax pays off. Collaboratives that have invested in relationships and trust don’t have to build them under pressure. When a policy opportunity emerges unexpectedly, relationships already exist. If funding priorities shift, trusted channels are already in place. And when organizations confront new challenges, they know who to call.

The most effective collaboratives create a form of institutional and relational infrastructure that becomes especially valuable during periods of uncertainty.

And in today's environment, uncertainty is no longer the exception. It is the operating condition.

What Would It Look Like to Pay the Tax Intentionally?

Across the sessions I attended on the sidelines of the Skoll World Forum in Oxford this past April, a consistent theme was that collective problem solving depends on more than good ideas. Whether the conversation was about citizens' assemblies, health systems, pandemic preparedness, or AI investment, participants repeatedly focused on the structures, relationships, and processes that allow individual organizations to work together effectively. I captured this in a note to my team as “operational reality is replacing abstraction.”

As political, funding, and operating environments become more volatile, I wonder whether philanthropy should spend less time asking how to reduce the coalition tax and more time asking how to pay it intentionally.

What if we viewed stewardship, coordination, facilitation, and relationship-building not as overhead, but as part of the work itself?  

What if we evaluated collaboratives not only by the initiatives they launch, but also by the strength of the relationships they sustain?

And what if one of the most important investments a funder could make wasn't in a new program, campaign, or strategy, but rather in the connective tissue that allows collective action to succeed?

Because the question is not whether collaboratives incur a coalition tax. (They do.) The question is whether we are willing to invest in the people and practices that make collective impact possible.