TPW West

SUMMARY

TPW West is a distinctive provider of lifelong strategic donor education and networking, substantive engagement with philanthropic communities, and encouraging environments for philanthropic innovation.  Our programs provide forward-thinking philanthropists with a strategic framework and innovative set of skills, tools, investment models, and resources that yield an amplifier effect on their philanthropic giving and investing.

VISION

TPW West's Vision is a more just, fulfilling, sustainable and inspiring world actively fostered by philanthropy.

MISSION

TPW West’s mission is to educate, inspire, and activate a peer network of effective, engaged, and innovative philanthropists.

 BACKGROUND

Over the past decade, billions of new dollars from newly created and multi-generational wealth have become available for philanthropic investment in a wide range of efforts targeted at addressing global environmental and social problems. A majority of these funds are invested in the form of “checkbook charity,” where donors often make decisions with insufficient due diligence and no long-term strategy. At the same time, philanthropy has evolved, assimilating a host of new and powerful tools and strategies that can amplify the impact in one’s giving. Lastly, much of new wealth has been created by successful entrepreneurs who are eager to “give back” in a way that better aligns with their entrepreneurial values of effectiveness and innovation.

To address these challenges and opportunities, in 2001, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the TOSA Foundation, in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, launched The Philanthropy Workshop West (TPW West). For eight years, TPW West flourished successfully taking more than 100 alumni Network members through a rigorous program in modern philanthropy. Inspired by the impact of the program, in 2009 members of the TPW West Network transitioned the program out of the Hewlett Foundation and into an independent organization.