Top New Philanthropic Funds
Executive Summary
Ten funds emerged as the strongest candidates from a rigorous multi-round review of 95 funds. Though they differ considerably across key dimensions, each holds significant impact potential and represents a compelling philanthropic opportunity
If you are a possible funder or founder of these funds (or funds in general) I would love to hear which funds you think would be promising.
What The Full Report Contains
Executive Summary A one-page table of the top ten possible funds, showing net score, likely effective size ($Ms), and brief descriptions.
Summaries of the Top 10 Funds
Summaries of each of the top 10 funds, including their theory of change, strengths and limitations, estimated cost-effectiveness, potential size, and overall promisingness.
The Case for Funds
An explanation of why funds are a promising philanthropic vehicle capable of delivering disproportionate impact, including the trade-offs between broad and narrow fund mandates and the rationale for prioritizing broader funds in this guide.
Methods
An explanation of the research methodology showing how funds were narrowed from 95 ideas to the ten most promising through iterative depth research.
Shallow Reports of Top 10 Funds
Shallow reports (3-pagers) for each of the top 10 funds, examining strengths, weaknesses, recommended size, cost-effectiveness, evidence base, limiting factors, value-add, potential size, potential breakdown of funding, alternative framings and ways to test. This is the deepest description of each fund within this report.
List and brief explanations of the bulk of ideas considered before narrowing, including how far each progressed in the evaluation process.
The most valuable next steps to advance the founding of top funds by capable actors.
Appendix (Scope of Project)
I agree with Nick here. I can see that these funds would be attractive to donors and probably get attention over a 1-5 year timespan, but I feel like philanthropy is very trend-driven and some of these would struggle to sustain momentum. Obviously some are inherently more durable than others (e.g. Global South Animal Fund). And you can get around this if an established org launches it as a sub fund (see e.g. the Beginnings Fund from Gates).
There are also actors in some of these spaces already with fund-like models, but I will read the full report before commenting on neglectedness.
Thanks Joey - I love the idea of new funds, but I have a few concerns about large, long term specific funds like these.
After being in the non-profit world for about 10 years, I see funding landscapes ever changing and sometimes rather quickly. From focuses on HIV, to malaria, to climate change, to Gender based violence-prevention. Foundational education was having a big surge, but that might be starting to wane a little (based on vibes only not a nice spreadsheet analysis!).
Family planning and poverty graduation have momentum and a rising tide of interest at the moment, but is the answer to supporting that setting up large long-term funds? Family planning is an interesting case. There's a combination of new-ish cost-effectiveness analysis that makes family planning look more cost-effective than ever, combined with a large pool of family planning funding disappearing from big AID. I agree then it makes sense to put more money towards family planning right now. Will this need be the same in 3 years? Or in 5 years? Setting up specific funds seems like a heavy lift to deal with a gap which could be not long-standing, and there are risks of getting soldier mindset and losing flexibility in the long term
There are pretty big potential lock-in downsides (which you've discussed). What if a billionaire decides to set up their own Billion dollar fund for the same cause? What if the evidence shifts and all of a sudden the fund area looks less attractive? What if AI drastically changes the world in a way that makes a fund makes less sense? There has then been a huge amount of heavy lifting that might need to be painfully unwound.
Once you set up a large specific fund dedicated to a specific cause, I think there can also be some soldier mindset/turf-protection kick in which can happen even unintentionally. In the rural health world, the community health worker movement continues to do amazing work, and has set up Africa Frontline First and the Financing Alliance for Health to ensure continuing funding for the movement. Skoll foundation recently stated they are focusing only on community health workers within healthcare. Although all this focus amplifies the good community health workers will do, it can squeeze out opportunity for other innovations and interventions in the rural healthcare. I fear it might be stifling innovation a little. If you have a solution focus more than a problem focus, with your hammer everything can look like a nail.
I prefer slightly broader funds. The food systems fund feels better to me, because there's enough flexibility within it to adjust if the world changes
I also like the idea of sub-funds. You said about family planning "This fund is uniquely well-suited to being a sub-area within an entity that runs multiple funds". This gives more flexibility to set up shorter term funds to meet current needs and gaps, without the above risk of big longer-term funds.
These are off-the-cuff-ish thoughts though and I appreciate the work to increase the number of funds overall, I think its super important!