MasterCard Foundation

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OVERVIEW: The MasterCard Foundation is a major grantmaker that focuses its global development funding on financial inclusion (particularly for women), education, vocational training, youth employment & livelihoods, health infrastructure and vaccines. Grantmaking prioritizes Africa and Indigenous communities in Canada.

IP TAKE: With $30 billion in assets, The MasterCard Foundation is one of the largest philanthropies in the world. Its strategy has shifted in recent years to prioritize a handful of large programs with focused goals, including huge investments in COVID-19 vaccines and youth employment in Africa. While the foundation offers a great deal of information about its goals and priorities, it is somewhat less transparent about its grantmaking and the organizations it supports. MasterCard does not accept proposals for funding but encourages “interested organizations to follow our social media channels and visit our website for future opportunities to collaborate.” Notably, applications to the Scholars Program are accepted, but these are administered by participating schools and universities, not by the foundation.

PROFILE: Gifted with shares from the financial services company MasterCard, the Toronto-based MasterCard Foundation was established in 2006 and functions separately from its corporate sister. The foundation’s mission is to “advance education and financial inclusion to catalyze prosperity in developing countries and to support Indigenous youth in Canada.” This funder names three strategies and five initiatives, although many of these overlap, making it difficult to ascertain which grants stem from which strategies and/or initiatives.

MasterCard’s strategies include Young Africa Works, Youth Employment in Africa, and Impact Strategy, which prioritize career education, vocational training and entrepreneurship in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda.

The foundation separately names five programs and initiatives, four of which support education, development, health and economic development in Africa. The fifth program, EleV, works exclusively in Canada to “to enable 100,000 Indigenous young people to access post-secondary education and transition to meaningful livelihoods by 2030.”

Grants for Global Development, Health, Education, and Economic Development

The MasterCard Foundation’s work is organized into five initiatives:

  • The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program was launched in 2012 with the goal to “create the conditions that will enable young people to attain inclusive and relevant education, transition smoothly into dignified and fulfilling work, and lead transformative lives.” The program does not limit its scholarships to African institutions; several universities in the other parts of the world offer MasterCard scholarships to students from Africa.

  • Established in response to the COVID-19 crisis, the Saving Lives and Livelihoods program represents a $1.5 billion collaboration with the Africa CDC “to save the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in Africa, hastening the continent’s economic recovery.” This program will fund the CDC until 2030, supporting initiatives for vaccination manufacture and administration, training for health care professionals, and health care research and infrastructure for the continent.

  • The Centre for Innovative Teacher and Learning in ICT is a five-year initiative that works to “support entrepreneurs and scale up technology innovations to improve teaching and learning in secondary education.” An early press release related to the program announced the program’s first cohort of edtech companies received grants of $40,000 and “customized mentorship, financial support, the opportunity to test, validate and scale their business.” Grantees include Ghana’s AkooBooks Audio, Kenya’s Eneza Education and Ethiopia’s iCog Labs.

  • The COVID-19 Recover and Resilience Program has operated in target areas in Africa and “within Indigenous communities in Canada” to “respond to the short-term impacts of this pandemic, while strengthening their resilience in the long-run.” Priorities include the needs of health care workers, first responders and students. It is unclear how long the foundation will continue to support its COVID-19 recovery and resilience efforts.

  • The foundation’s EleV initiative works exclusively in Canada “to enable 100,000 Indigenous young people to access post-secondary education and transition to meaningful livelihoods by 2030.” The program targets Indigenous-led initiatives for systems transformation, including programs that “embed Indigenous languages, cultures and worldviews” in their functioning. The program names green energy, sustainable resources, eco-tourism, health, technology and construction as sectors that present “major opportunities for Indigenous youth.”

Important Grant Details:

The MasterCard Foundation's grants range from about $15,000 to tens of millions.

  • Grantmaking mainly goes to development initiatives in Africa and Indigenous communities in Canada, but many grantees are NGOs and/or regranters based in Canada or the U.S.

  • Most programs do not accept unsolicited funding proposals, but scholarship seekers may use the list of participating institutions to find MasterCard-funded grants through the Scholars Program.

  • For additional information on past grantmaking, see the foundation’s News Releases or its past tax filings.

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