Mulago Foundation

Last updated
Mulago Foundation
Founded1993 [1]
Founder
[1]
Type private foundation
Location
Area served
global
Key people
  • Kevin Starr (CEO)
  • Kristin Gilliss Moyer (COO)
[1]
Website mulagofoundation.org

The Mulago Foundation is a private foundation focused on high impact philanthropy: they fund high-impact organizations mostly through grants, sometimes with debt or equity. The foundation was originally envisioned by Rainer Arnhold, a San Francisco pediatrician and philanthropist, who taught at Mulago Hospital, Uganda. The foundation was officially created by his brother Henry Arnhold after Rainer Arnhold's death in 1993. [1]

Contents

Operations

Criteria for funding organizations

The Foundation's stated goal is to identify and invest in the highest impact giving opportunities. On their "How we fund" page, they write that they are looking for three things: a priority problem, a scalable solution, and an organization that can deliver. Once they identify an organization they wish to fund through their fellowships, they provide unrestricted and continued funding. The Mulago Foundation does not currently accept or solicit proposals. The foundation itself tries to locate organizations to give to through their own network and referrals. [2] The main way they start funding organizations is through their two Fellowship programs - the Rainer Arnhold Fellowship focused on poverty solutions and the Henry Arnhold Fellowship focused on climate solutions. [3]

Organizations funded by Mulago

As of May 2024, the Mulago Foundation website listed about 80 organizations include Babban Gona, Blue Ventures, Bridges to Prosperity, Dost, Development Media International, Digital Green, Educate Girls, Food for Education, Foundation for Ecological Security, Friendship Bench, Global Forest Watch, Kheyti, Medha, Noora Health, One Acre Fund, SaveLIFE Foundation, Ubongo Learning, Urgewald and Youth Impact. [4]

Reception

Mulago's CEO Kevin Starr is a regular contributor to the Stanford Social Innovation Review. [5]

Charity evaluator GiveWell described the Mulago Foundation as an "impact-focused" grantmaker (alongside the Gates Foundation, Skoll Foundation, Children's Investment Fund Foundation, Jasmine Social Investments, and Peery Foundation). GiveWell stated in 2011 that it would consider the list of Mulago Foundation grantees (along with those of the other impact-focused grantmakers listed above, as well as the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation) as part of its list of charities to review to see if they qualified for GiveWell's highest ratings. [6] [7]

The Mulago Foundation was also mentioned on the Tactical Philanthropy blog, and Kevin Starr of Mulago wrote a guest post for the blog. [8] [9]

Kevin Starr of Mulago wrote an article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review describing Mulago's definition of impact and some of the subtleties associated with the concept. [10] His piece was referenced on the Acumen Fund blog. [11]

On March 11, 2014, Kevin Starr and Laura Hattendorf of the Mulago Foundation wrote a lengthy article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review skeptical of cash transfer charity GiveDirectly's accomplishment so far, saying that the evidence so far was underwhelming, though there might still be bigger gains a few years down the line. They contrasted GiveDirectly with other charities that they felt delivered more bang for the buck: One Acre Fund, VisionSpring, KickStart International, and Proximity Designs. [12] Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell wrote a lengthy response countering that GiveDirectly's impact had been more rigorously established, and that Starr and Hattendorf were using flawed metrics to judge impact. [13] The GiveDirectly board independently published a response on the GiveDirectly blog. [14]

Similar resources

Related Research Articles

Omidyar Network is a self-styled "philanthropic investment firm," composed of a foundation and an impact investment firm. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, Omidyar Network has committed over US$1.5 billion to nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies across multiple investment areas. According to the OECD, Omidyar Network's financing for 2019 development increased by 10% to US$58.9 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Skoll</span> Canadian engineer, internet entrepreneur and film producer

Jeffrey Stuart Skoll, OC is a Canadian engineer, billionaire internet entrepreneur and film producer. He was the first president of eBay, eventually using the wealth this gave him to become a philanthropist, particularly through the Skoll Foundation, and his media company Participant Media. He founded an investment firm, Capricorn Investment Group, soon after and currently serves as its chairman. Born in Montreal, Quebec, he graduated from University of Toronto in 1987 and left Canada to attend Stanford University's business school in 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charity Navigator</span> Charity assessment organization that evaluates charitable organizations in the U.S.

Charity Navigator is a charity assessment organization that evaluates hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations based in the United States, operating as a free 501(c)(3) organization. It provides insights into a nonprofit's financial stability, adherence to best practices for both accountability and transparency, and results reporting. It is the largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities in the United States. It does not accept any advertising or donations from the organizations it evaluates.

A giving circle is a form of participatory philanthropy by a group of individuals who form a voluntary association to donate their money or time. The group then decides how to allocate these resources to charitable organizations or community projects. Groups may also seek to increase their awareness of and engagement with the issues covered by the charity or community project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skoll Foundation</span> US philanthropic foundation

The Skoll Foundation is a private foundation based in Palo Alto, California. The foundation makes grants and investments intended to reduce global poverty. Jeffrey Skoll created the foundation in 1999.

GiveWell is an American non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentage of the organization's budget that is spent on overhead.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Innovations for Poverty Action</span>

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is an American non-profit research and policy organization founded in 2002 by economist Dean Karlan. Since its foundation, IPA has worked with over 400 leading academics to conduct over 900 evaluations in 52 countries. The organization also manages the Poverty Probability Index.

The Everychild Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation based in Pacific Palisades, California. It awards a single grant of up to $1 million each year to a non-profit organization within Los Angeles County that helps children affected by disease, abuse, neglect, poverty or disability by launching or expanding a new innovative, replicable project. The Foundation has awarded more than $19 million in grants that served over 1 million Los Angeles children. The idea is to leverage the grant dollars in order to have a wider impact with replication.

VillageReach is a registered 501(c)(3) that works with governments to solve health care delivery challenges in low-resource communities. Its headquarters are in Seattle, Washington with international offices in Mozambique, Malawi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa. The VillageReach approach includes developing, testing, implementing and scaling new systems, technologies and programs that improve health outcomes. This is achieved by extending the reach and enhancing the quality of health care. The benefits are manifested through supply chain and logistics improvements, information and communication technology, human resources for health, private sector engagement and advocacy.

mothers2mothers International nonprofit organization

mothers2mothers is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV by providing education and support for pregnant women and new mothers living with HIV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holden Karnofsky</span> American nonprofit executive

Holden Karnofsky is an American nonprofit executive. He is a co-founder and Director of AI Strategy of the research and grantmaking organization Open Philanthropy. Karnofsky co-founded the charity evaluator GiveWell with Elie Hassenfeld in 2007 and is vice chair of its board of directors.

Good Ventures is a private foundation and philanthropic organization in San Francisco, and the fifth largest foundation in Silicon Valley. It was co-founded by Cari Tuna, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and her husband Dustin Moskovitz, one of the co-founders of Facebook. Good Ventures adheres to principles of Effective Altruism and aims to spend most or all of its money before Moskovitz and Tuna die. Good Ventures does not have any full-time staff, and instead distributes grants according to recommendations from Open Philanthropy.

Living Goods is a non-profit organization headquartered in Nairobi, with core operations in Uganda, Kenya, and Burkina Faso.

Jasmine Social Investments is a New Zealand-based private foundation started by the entrepreneur Sam Morgan in 2006 following the sale of his company Trade Me to Fairfax Media.

<i>Stanford Social Innovation Review</i>

Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) is a magazine and website that covers cross-sector solutions to global problems. SSIR is written by and for social change leaders from around the world and from all sectors of society—nonprofits, foundations, business, government, and engaged citizens. SSIR's mission is to advance, educate, and inspire the field of social innovation by seeking out, cultivating, and disseminating the best in research- and practice-based knowledge. With print and online articles, webinars, conferences, podcasts, and more, SSIR bridges research, theory, and practice on a wide range of topics, including human rights, impact investing, and nonprofit business models. SSIR is published by the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University.

The Peery Foundation is a private foundation based in Palo Alto, California, US. According to its website, it "primarily invests in early to mid-stage social entrepreneurs who are effectively addressing the issues of poverty." It funds local organizations in the Bay Area as well as organizations working to combat poverty and its ill-effects worldwide.

Root Capital is a nonprofit organization operating in poor rural areas of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. According to its website, Root Capital "seeks to maximize the positive social and environmental impact of [its] work through a three-pronged strategy: finance, advise, and catalyze."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Development Media International</span> UK-based non-governmental organization

Development Media International (DMI) is a non-governmental organization with both non-profit and for-profit arms that "use[s] scientific modelling combined with mass media campaigns in order to save the greatest number of lives in the most cost-effective way".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The BOMA Project</span>

BOMA  is a U.S. nonprofit organization and Kenyan NGO that works to provide poor women living in the arid and semi-arid lands of Northern Kenya with the educational, financial, and technological resources to lift themselves out of poverty. Its mission is to “empower women in the drylands of Africa to establish sustainable livelihoods, build resilient families, graduate from extreme poverty and catalyze change in their rural communities.”

Charity assessment is the process of analysis of the goodness of a non-profit organization in financial terms. Historically, charity evaluators have focused on the question of how much of contributed funds are used for the purpose(s) claimed by the charity, while more recently some evaluators have placed an emphasis on the cost effectiveness of charities.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "About Mulago". Mulago Foundation. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  2. ↑ "How we fund". Mulago Foundation. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  3. ↑ "Mulago Foundation | Rainer Fellows Program". www.mulagofoundation.org. Retrieved 2024-05-24.
  4. ↑ "Our Portfolio". Mulago Foundation. Archived from the original on 2022-08-12. Retrieved 2022-12-18.
  5. ↑ "Kevin Starr | Bio". ssir.org. Retrieved 2024-05-24.
  6. ↑ "2011 international aid process review". GiveWell. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  7. ↑ Karnofsky, Holden (February 21, 2011). "GiveWell's plan for 2011: specifics of research". GiveWell . Retrieved March 26, 2014.
  8. ↑ "What is Impact All About?". Tactical Philanthropy. 2010-11-12.
  9. ↑ Starr, Kevin (2010-07-27). "A Different Kind of Philanthropy". Tactical Philanthropy.
  10. ↑ Starr, Kevin (2012-01-24). "The Trouble with Impact Investing". Stanford Social Innovation Review.
  11. ↑ Dichter, Sasha (2012-01-25). "Your chance to shape a sector". Acumen Fund blog. Archived from the original on 2012-07-31. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  12. ↑ Starr, Kevin; Hattendorf, Laura (March 11, 2014). "GiveDirectly? Not So Fast. We are mistaking an important experiment for a proven solution". Stanford Social Innovation Review . Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  13. ↑ Karnofsky, Holden (March 20, 2014). "Big Impact vs. Big Promises". Stanford Social Innovation Review . Retrieved March 21, 2014.
  14. ↑ "What's the hype evidence?". GiveDirectly (blog). March 17, 2014. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.