By Barbara Adams and Jens Martens
The United Nations Foundation (UNF) was established two decades ago principally to champion and support the work of the United Nations. In pursuing this aim, particularly over the last decade, the Foundation ap- pears to have developed a business model and growth strategy that pro- mote its own priorities, activities and expansion. In continuing to have a special relationship with the UNF, the UN must guard against the possi- bility that the Foundation has evolved from a net funder of the UN to a net competitor for both philanthropic and Member State funds.
With the aim to explore these developments, and the trends that give rise to them, this working paper builds on the analysis elaborated in the 2015 publication “Fit for Whose Purpose?”1 and puts it in the context of to- day’s re-evaluation of multilateralism.
The evolution of the UN Foundation should be seen in the context of much broader changes in the relationship between the public and private sectors, nationally and globally, and the approach of governments to their governance responsibilities. At both levels, this approach has shifted from the role of provider to that of manager; and more significantly, this has been accompanied by a major shift from regulator to “incentivizer” in the approach to the business sector. Some of the possible consequences of this policy re-orientation are now being manifest in increased unrest and inequalities of all kinds.
Confronted with these realities, the (still new) UN leadership has charted a comprehensive reform agenda which includes working to reset the re- lationship between the UN and the UN Foundation. Sustainable and just multilateralism requires sustainable and predictable financing for the mandate and core activities of the UN, and this can only come from a new Funding Compact with Member States. The resources needed will not be secured by uneven earmarked funding that comes from short-term and opportunistic patterns of finance that have characterized donor pref- erences – public and private.