Following the devastating 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye, Turkish Philanthropy Funds and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy came together around a shared belief: an effective disaster response must do more than move resources quickly. It must connect those resources to local knowledge, trusted organizations, and a longer-term understanding of recovery.

The partnership brought together two philanthropic institutions with complementary strengths.The Center for Disaster Philanthropy contributed deep expertise in disaster philanthropy and an understanding of how philanthropic capital can support communities across the full arc of disaster response, from immediate relief through recovery and resilience.
TPF contributed something equally essential: longstanding relationships across Türkiye’s nonprofit sector, deep knowledge of the local landscape, and the trust built through years of working alongside civil society organizations and communities.

Neither organization needed to replicate the other’s role.

Instead, the partnership created a way to combine national and local understanding with specialized disaster philanthropy expertise. Local relationships informed where needs were evolving. Disaster expertise helped place those needs within a longer recovery horizon. Together, the organizations could make more informed decisions about where philanthropic resources could have the greatest value.

That collaboration also created efficiencies behind the scenes. Knowledge could be shared. Due diligence and learning could be coordinated. Partners could focus on their comparative strengths rather than duplicating one another’s work.
But perhaps the most important result was a change in perspective.

The earthquakes demanded an immediate response, yet communities would live with their consequences for years. The partnership helped create space to look beyond what was most urgent in the moment and ask a different question:
What will communities need next?

That question helped shift the focus from relief alone toward recovery, resilience, organizational strength, and the capacity of local institutions to continue serving their communities.

For TPF, the partnership became an example of what effective disaster philanthropy can look like when funding is accompanied by trust, expertise, and collaboration.

The grants mattered. But the relationships and knowledge surrounding those grants mattered too.
Because the strongest disaster response is not only about what philanthropy can deliver during a crisis. It is also about what remains when the immediate crisis has passed: stronger organizations, deeper relationships, better-informed philanthropy, and communities with greater capacity to shape their own recovery.

THE POWER OF CONNECTION
Local Knowledge + Disaster Expertise + Strategic Philanthropy
By connecting complementary strengths, TPF and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy helped turn emergency generosity into a longer-term investment in recovery and resilience.

Looking ahead, the partnership will carry this same commitment into preparedness by supporting some of the region’s strongest community-based models that are built on lived experience and local leadership. From disability inclusion and youth spaces to volunteer networks, trauma support, and teacher solidarity, these efforts will help turn what communities have learned through recovery into greater readiness for whatever comes next.

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.