Mulago Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Mulago Foundation supports both for profit and nonprofit organizations that benefit poor people in developing and least developed countries around the world. The Mulago Foundation’s funding areas include agriculture, energy, health and primary education to help the rural poor throughout the world. The foundation mainly funds early-stage organizations taking proven solutions to scale. In Mulago’s words, it “[o]perates like a philanthropic venture fund.”
IP TAKE: Taking the view that organizations know best how to use their funding, Mulago awards unrestricted grants rather than making project specific awards. Instead, it finds its grantees through its own network. So, the key for grantseekers here is getting noticed.
The foundation does not accept proposals. Indeed, as Mulago’s website states, the foundation finds its grantees through its own network. Mulago’s grantmaking portfolio largely consists of startups, both nonprofit and for-profit. Mulago, however, seeks organizations that “show real progress toward lasting change at scale.” Mulago insists that it fund organizations, not projects: “Impact at scale doesn’t come from projects, it comes from the work of organizations.”
PROFILE: The Mulago Foundation was established in 1993 by Henry Arnhold in honor of his brother Rainer and “funds high-performance organizations that tackle the basic needs of the very poor.” The foundation seeks to fight poverty by finding and funding the “organizations best able to create change.” Its Portfolio is categorized into Livelihoods, Health, Water and Sanitation, Conservation, Energy, and Education. The foundation also has an Amplifier program that helps organizations determine solutions to make them more effective in their work.
The San Francisco-based foundation was created to fulfill the legacy of the late Rainer Arnhold, a physician, philanthropist, and world traveler. Post-World War II, Arnhold established a practice in the Bay Area, and also engaged in hands-on pediatric and clinical teaching in the developing world. Rainer was abroad when he passed in 1993, hiking to a village in the Bolivian Andes with a collective of medical students and local health workers.
Grants for Global Development
The foundation addresses the basic needs of the very poor, most of whom live in rural settings. The Livelihoods portfolio supports mostly smallholder agriculture. Grantees through Livelihoods have included One Acre Fund since 2007. One Acre Fund gets “smallholder farmers, most of the world’s poorest people, what they need—training, seeds, fertilizer, credit and access to markets—to make a better living from a small farm.” Mulago has invested $2 million in One Acre Fund thus far. Mulago has given a total of $600,000 to Working Villages International, located in “the 73-mile-long Ruzizi Valley in Africa since 2006, investing in agricultural interventions that improve farmers’ incomes.” The foundation has also supported the BOMA Project, which works in Kenya to “help the poorest women in those communities establish small businesses that sell local staples.”
Through its Energy portfolio, Mulago has supported Inyenyeri, which tackles indoor air pollution by “leasing smokeless stoves to families for a nominal fee and sells biomass pellets to them at a cost that is lower than the charcoal they are already buying.” It has also supported Off.Grid Electric, which sells solar electricity to households in Africa.
Mulago Foundation’s education funding largely involves primary education. It has invested in Educate Girls, which “mobilizes communities – parents, village leaders, schools, community volunteers – to enroll girls, improve school infrastructure (toilets, clean water, fencing) and boost learning outcomes.”
The Rainer Arnhold Fellows program supports “leaders with scalable solutions to poverty - and the chops to deliver them.” Fellowships are for one-year and include $100,000 in unrestricted funding. Fellowships also include the Annual Design Retreat, “an intensive week to work on design for impact and strategy for scale.” Grantseekers can look over past Rainer Arnhold Fellows to get a better idea of what the foundation looks to fund with this program.
Grants for Global Health
Taking a broad strategy towards grantmaking, Mulago’s health program supports organizations working in access to quality primary health care and behavioral change. One past grantee in this space is D-Rev, which provides affordable health products to the poor including their “flagship” products of prosthetic knees and a suite of jaundice treatment devices. Another past grantee is Amani Global Works, which received funding for its primary health system in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Other former grantees include Jacaranda Health, which “combines the right technologies, efficient systems, and a patient-centered customer service model to make quality care affordable and desirable for poor women,” has received a total of $550,000, and began working with Mulago in 2010. It has given $550,000 to DMI, which “uses intensive media campaigns to turn life-saving behaviors into cultural norms.”
Grants for Environment
Mulago’s conservation program focuses on supporting organizations whose conservation efforts benefit poor people. For example, in the past Mulago has awarded a number of unrestricted grants to Blue Ventures to fund its work using small and short-term fishery closures to help communities learn how to manage their local fisheries and increase income. Funds through Conservation include $635,000 to OneReef, which “helps motivated Western Pacific communities save their reefs through conservation agreements that provide them with the financial and technical resources they need to do it.” The foundation supports COMACO, which “trains farmers in high-productivity ‘conservation farming,’”
The Henry Arnhold Fellows program “supports leaders with scalable conservation solutions — and the chops to deliver them.” Fellowships are for one-year and include $100,000 in unrestricted funding. Fellowships also include the Annual Design Retreat, “an intensive week to work on design for impact and strategy for scale.” Grantseekers can look over past Henry Arnhold Fellows to get a better idea of what the foundation looks to fund with this program.
Important Grant Details:
Grant amounts typically range from $50,000 to $300,000.
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