Founders Pledge: GHD Catalytic Impact Fund

There are many charities that address global poverty and suffering.

With our Global Health & Development (GHD) Catalytic Impact Fund, we try to find the strategic pressure points where modest funding unlocks transformational change.

By prioritizing these leverage points, we help donors maximize their impact in building sustainable, long-term solutions to global poverty and suffering — saving and improving as many lives as possible with each dollar.

What does catalytic impact look like?

• We trigger systemic improvements: We support investments that create new long-term infrastructure or increase the cost-effectiveness of existing systems.
• We remove key bottlenecks: We identify and remove barriers that stand in the way of accelerated impact.
• We crowd in capital: We provide early-stage funding that attracts substantial follow-on investment for cost-effective opportunities.

Our Approach to Grantmaking

When evaluating potential grants, we consider several key points:

• Counterfactual impact. Our grants are designed to create meaningful outcomes that would not otherwise have happened. This means that you can rely on the Funds to create meaningful, real change, rather than just maintaining the status quo.
• Impact-driven philanthropy. This fund prioritizes the highest-impact solutions to challenges. We assess where the gaps are, which opportunities may be neglected by other funders, and where the biggest wins are in terms of making the biggest difference.
• The organization’s funding gap. Not all organizations are set up to scale programs and some may not be able to productively absorb large amounts of unsolicited funding at any given point. We evaluate all potential grantees’ capacity for growth and consider how much money they could put to good use.
• Organizational strength. Particularly with unrestricted funding, it’s important to have trust in the leadership and capacity of the organizations we support. We look at their track record of success and their transparency about failures as well as successes, and we only support those organizations which are exceptionally well run.
• Time-critical opportunities and funding certainty. Sometimes there are time-critical opportunities which require fast decisions. We will use the Fund to make grants that enable such short-term opportunities and stability for high-impact funding opportunities thereby increasing the impact compared to individual giving to specific organizations.

Frequently-Asked Questions

Can charities apply for money from the Fund?

Founders Pledge reviews requests for funding from organizations, but does not guarantee we can fill funding requests.

How frequently will you make grants from the Fund?

In general, Fund Managers will review grantmaking decisions on a quarterly basis, based on the value of Funds and the available options for high-impact grantmaking. We may disburse funds outside of quarterly review dates if we become aware of a particularly promising and time-sensitive funding.

How will my contribution be used?

All funds are granted out — every dollar contributed to the Fund will be used to make grants directly to end-user organizations creating a real difference.

More Questions?

To learn more about the Founders Pledge GHD Catalytic Impact Fund, please visit founderspledge.com or email the team at funds@founderspledge.com.