Some of the most complex challenges facing communities cannot be addressed by philanthropy, academia, or local organizations working alone. They require different kinds of knowledge and collaboration.
In the aftermath of the 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye, TPF and Columbia University’s İstanbul Global Center began building a partnership around that idea. The TPF-Columbia Global Resilience Fund brought together two institutions with very different strengths, but a shared commitment to supporting long-term resilience in earthquake-affected communities.
Columbia brought the research capacity, academic expertise and global perspective, of a major university. TPF brought nearly two decades of experience across Türkiye's civil society landscape, longstanding relationships with local organizations, philanthropic resources, and a deep understanding of the communities and institutions responding on the ground.
The partnership was designed such that both organizations used their competencies to deliver impactful solutions.
Instead, each could contribute what it did best.
That distinction became one of the partnership's greatest strengths. Academic expertise could be informed by the lived experience and priorities of communities. Local organizations could engage with new research and institutional resources. Philanthropy could do more than finance projects by helping connect knowledge, institutions, and local leadership.
In the process, the collaboration began creating value well beyond individual grants.
Research became more closely connected to practice. Local knowledge helped shape the questions being asked. Relationships developed across institutions that might otherwise not work together.Learning moved in more than one direction: from academia to communities, but also from local organizations and philanthropic practice back into the university.
The experience reinforced something fundamental to TPF's approach to philanthropy: lasting impact often comes not from asking one institution to solve a problem, but from creating the conditions for institutions to solve it together.
That is the deeper promise of the TPF–Columbia Global partnership. It is not simply about the projects supported today. It is about building relationships, knowledge, and ways of working together that can continue strengthening communities long after an individual grant has ended.
THE POWER OF CONNECTION
Philanthropy + Academia + Local Knowledge
When different forms of expertise meet around a shared purpose, a grant can become something larger: a platform for learning, stronger institutions, and long-term resilience.