In her 13th annual industry forecast, philanthropy expert and scholar Lucy Bernholz highlights the current landscape and challenges of the year, and big ideas and predictions for the coming year in Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint 2022. 

Bernholz, senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and director of the Digital Civil Society Lab, is a highly valued thought leader in the sector and has a long relationship with CMF, as a key partner and a presenter at CMF hosted learning opportunities. 

In the Blueprint, Bernholz digs into challenges our civil society faces on digital dependence, the need for protecting data, access, technology and our digital civil society. Organized in four sections – time, space and motion, plus a new section called “Collective Architecture,” which includes voices beyond her own.

Bernholz defines digital civil society as, “as collective action enabled by digital systems, about digital systems or that takes place exclusively on digital systems.”

Bernholz calls attention to the current landscape of digital civil society, climate change, equity and actions we must take for the future.

Highlights of Bernholz’s predictions for 2022:

•    Crypto donations will increase and more organizations than ever will accept donations of cryptocurrencies. 

•    Restrictions on the right to protest will increase.

•    Accountability for foundation pledges on racial equity will continue and some pledges are likely to become ongoing accountability practices.

•    NFTs (Non-Fungible Token), a means of making and selling digital artifacts, will continue for another year then “bust.”

•    More people from the tech industry will resign and establish their own nonprofit organizations.

Bernholz reflects on what she got right and wrong about the past year. She was correct on 9 out of her 16 predictions for 2021. Here are a few of the notable predictions that came true:

•    2020 will have the highest-ever level of grants from DAFs as percentage of assets.

•    Virtual volunteering will increase and maintain.

•    Corporate volunteering will decline and take a long time to recover.

•    Nonprofit organizations will increase their focus on the physical and digital security of their staff, volunteers and board members.

•    Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter will at least double their corporate spending on lobbying and charitable giving/community partnerships.

Here are a few highlights from the Blueprint with recommendations on what we can do to change our current digital structures:

•    Civil society and philanthropists can support “data activism” to shift the power of data from corporations to civil society in two ways. “By standing behind policy proposals that incorporate an individual’s right to access, either directly or through proxies, the data that is collected about them; and by supporting efforts led by marginalized communities to set boundaries and imagine practices for giving data,” Bernholz writes. 

•    Philanthropists can support and ensure that those most likely to be harmed by data sharing lead the development of new frameworks. “For everyone committed to racial equity, this is a chance to invest in an empowered multiracial future, forged from diverse knowledge practices and built for justice,” Bernholz said. 

•    Civil society can design systems that privilege people and communities, not corporations. “We can align efforts to repair past harms and pursue equitable futures with the challenges of governing data donations. This would include deciding how, when, and when not to enable, allow, incentivize or prevent data donations,” Bernholz said. 
 

Bernholz offers a summary of the 2022 Blueprint. She writes in part, “the door is open for the decade ahead to see very different dynamics between technology companies and regulators. The environmental impacts of the corporations, long secreted away, are being exposed, and the necessity of new social, legal, economic and political action about the fate of Planet Earth will include heightened fights over technology as problem or solution.”

Want more?

Read the full 2022 Blueprint.