In 2015, Melissa Stevens had been at the Milken Institute, a nonpartisan think tank and research center focused on global issues, for roughly eight years. During that time, she’d come to see philanthropy as, in her words, “a really unique asset class… We’re greatly inspired by our founder, Michael Milken, who over the past five decades has reshaped the way medical research is conducted. From these experiences, Mike and the Institute developed a methodology to help other funders improve the impact of their own strategic philanthropy. We bring these decades of collective experience to each new partner so they don’t have to start from scratch and find their own way.” To see how philanthropy might be deployed in other areas, she co-founded Milken Institute Strategic Philanthropy that year. She continues to serve as its executive vice-president.
In the decade since, Strategic Philanthropy has extended its work in the original biomedical space, but now under the rubric of the Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration (SPARC), which focuses on more wide-ranging science and health philanthropy as well. Strategic Philanthropy has also established two new areas of focus: Environmental and Social Innovation (ESI) and the Philanthropy Leadership Collective (PLC)—the latter of which enables collaboration and community building across the other two portfolios and beyond. To date, Strategic Philanthropy has influenced the deployment of over $3.2 billion in assets and published more than 60 reports on topics from childhood brain cancer to gun violence prevention. In just a few short years, the team has gone from awarding its first grant in 2019 via SPARC, to helping launch more than $100 million in funding programs in 2025, from grants to innovation prizes—a testament to its deep partnerships and growing impact across the philanthropic landscape. It’s also contributed to the modernization of the philanthropy model which, although it’s been around since the turn of the 19th century, has never been simple. In the inimitable words of Andrew Carnegie, “It’s harder to give money away intelligently than to earn it in the first place.” In essence, it’s more than just writing a check. “Philanthropy can be nimble. It can play the long game. And it can be collaborative and bring different sectors together,” says Stevens.
To mark its anniversary, we highlight several innovative and unique-to-philanthropy strategies it embraces—and look at key projects which illustrate their value:
Philanthropy can fill crucial funding gaps.
The Breakthrough Discoveries for Thriving with Bipolar Disorder, or BD², project began as a collaboration between SPARC and three inaugural funders: Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Keystone Capital co-founder Kent Dauten, and Roblox founder David Baszucki. Following strategic planning led by Dr. Cara Altimus, PhD, SPARC managing director and a neuroscientist, it launched in 2022 with a commitment of $150 million to advance research and patient outcomes, and among its most notable achievements is stepping up when other funding is not forthcoming. This philanthropic support was desperately needed as funding specific to bipolar disorder has steadily decreased by 50% in the past decade, partially due to the National Institute of Mental Health funding research into individual symptoms rather than psychiatric diagnoses and conditions as a whole. As a result, gene sequencing for bipolar was held back even though samples had already been gathered for this purpose. BD² stepped in to fund it and nearly 30 new genes are being identified with the disorder through its work. The potential for intercepting bipolar’s development and treating it with precision medicine has been bolstered significantly.
Philanthropy can fund emerging fields that others may avoid – and contribute to their legitimacy.
When Strategic Philanthropy became involved in the study of misophonia—a disorder in which anxiety, fear and anger are triggered by clicking, tapping, or chewing sounds—it was misunderstood and even trivialized. “If you ask the public, ‘Do you hate chewing?’ 20% of people say yes,” says Altimus. “But 20% of people do not have the disorder.” Those that do can experience effects dramatic enough that they’re unable to attend school, maintain marriages, or even socialize. But when the Milken team, in collaboration with the REAM Foundation, got to work a half-decade or so ago to understand more about the disorder, it found something surprising. There was no agreed upon definition of it. That made it impossible to diagnose. “And if you couldn’t diagnose it,” says Altimus, “you couldn’t treat it. It was just totally off the wall.” Flash forward to this year: the team’s work led to a proposal for an official International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code for misophonia. With misophonia more easily diagnosable in practitioners’ offices, the field can continue building upon the foundation that the Milken and REAM teams helped to establish.
Philanthropy prizes can offer unusually flexible, nimble, and risk-friendly funding.
In 2021 Dr. Patrice Motsepe and Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe, the first Black billionaires in South Africa after the fall of apartheid and the founders of the Motsepe Foundation, wanted to create a prize for technical breakthroughs that could improve the standard of living in Africa. To do so, they, in partnership with Emily Musil, PhD, the managing director of ESI, formed the Milken-Motsepe Innovation Prize. Each prize has rotated its focus area—from agritech to green energy to AI and manufacturing—and given out $6.5 million in unrestricted funds to 60 companies across dozens of countries. It’s also benefitted a million stakeholders, including smallholder farmers and newcomers to financial markets. Part of the reason for its success: It’s able to regularly adjust not only its topics but its approach to prize design. Only adding to the argument for this approach’s success: finalists and winners have received 10 times the prize money from other investors since their participation.
The above, of course, is just a sampling of Strategic Philanthropy’s accomplishments. Other strategies include its commitment to making an impact even in areas where funding is plentiful. This is illustrated by its work—in conjunction with the Tullman Family Office and The Duchossois Family Foundation—on the military-to-civilian transition via the Veterans Community Initiative. Through interviews with an unusually wide range of experts, a report on philanthropic giving opportunities and an intensive retreat, it’s brought disparate stakeholders into the same proverbial—and literal—rooms to develop solutions. Another strategy of note is Strategic Philanthropy’s encouragement of philanthropist-to-philanthropist collaboration. Panelists at the Milken Global Conference this year shared about PepsiCo teaming up with Amazon to distribute critical aid during this year’s L.A. wildfires, among other examples, and more collaborations between companies are one of the Corporate Philanthropy Leadership Collective’s aims. (The group exists under the rubric of the Philanthropy Leadership Collective.) As the team looks ahead to deepening its impact over the next decade, they’re launching new initiatives such as the Future of Education, which will map how core systems must evolve to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world.
The Milken Institute is far from alone in this sphere. And Stevens is encouraged by what she sees in the larger philanthropy field, particularly as federal dollars for social issues are diminishing. “I’m heartened that the MacArthur Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation are stepping in in bigger ways,” she says. Also on the bright side: the biggest transfer of intergenerational wealth in history is occurring. Over the next two decades, $84 trillion in assets is slated to change hands when members of the Silent Generation and Boomers pass their assets on, and not only are a new crop of philanthropists set to be minted but attendant fresh ideas for giving will no doubt arrive. Then there’s the uptick in charitable contributions. 2024 saw it increase more than 6% overall and 9% in the corporate sphere. Stevens concludes, “Philanthropy can be an unrelenting North Star in turbulent times. It’s our society’s risk capital that’s advancing solutions, informing capital flows, and changing policies. It can crowd in the voices of those with lived experience. And it can be the connective tissue between ideologies and sectors.”
