Unlock Aid

Unlock Aid: Why This Moment Matters

Global development is undergoing a once-in-a-generation restructuring. Decisions made in the next few months will shape who receives future funding, how those dollars flow, and what problems they’re designed to solve. With your funding we will:

Reshape the Public Narrative
We are reframing the debate from “What comes after aid?” to “Who is already building the future?” Through media and research, we’re spotlighting innovators delivering last-mile health, food security, education, and other solutions to the biggest challenges facing the planet.

Creating the Solutions Index
We’re building a Solutions Index to showcase a curated list of scale-ready, high-impact organizations capable of absorbing $10M+ in growth funding. It will serve as a trusted resource for funders, institutions, and media — proving the future is here and ready for investment.

Driving Reform
We’re designing new channels of funding for proven social innovators by championing funding for more innovation labs, pay-for-results models, and co-investment structures with the private sector. Our goal: ensure innovators finally have a fair shot at resources they need.

Background and problem statement

For decades, the U.S. and other wealthy nations have poured billions of dollars into foreign aid. These funds have saved lives, built infrastructure, and supported global stability. Yet despite the good that aid has achieved, the model is deeply outdated. It was designed for a different era, one that too often perpetuated aid dependency and relied on a large and lumbering aid industry as the conduits for international cooperation rather than frontline actors closest to the challenges.

Meanwhile, over the past two decades, impact investors and venture philanthropists have seeded a new generation of highly effective organizations tackling the world’s toughest challenges. They’re rooted in their communities and have built sustainable business models beyond aid. Hundreds of them are part of the Unlock Aid coalition.

These are organizations that:

• Have paying customers or diversified revenue outside of traditional aid.
• Operate sustainable business models tested in real markets.
• Show evidence of impact, whether through markedly improved health outcomes, increased agricultural productivity and food security, and economic growth.
• Are ready to absorb $10 million or more in growth capital to expand their proven models.

Yet while these innovators are capable of transforming health, food security, education, and other global challenges, they remain stuck in the “missing middle.” They are too big for philanthropy and too impact-focused to attract significant commercial capital, too established to be treated as “startups,” yet too unconventional to be trusted by aid donors with large-scale aid contracts. 

As a result, the very organizations that can deliver the best return on investment for taxpayers and deliver the greatest outcomes for the communities they serve never get the chance.

This is our moment to change the game

Unlock Aid is a coalition of builders, entrepreneurs, and reformers who came together in 2021 with one simple but ambitious mission: to ensure the next generation of global development innovators receive the funding, policy support, and visibility they need to scale their impact. We’ve got a solid track record of impact, too, unlocking hundreds of millions of dollars for social entrepreneurs. 

But today our mission is more relevant than ever because, right now, decisionmakers in the United States and around the world are shaping the next decade of global development, impacting how hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent, to whom, and to deliver what results.

Amid the freeze on U.S. foreign aid during the first half of 2025, while many traditional aid contractors and organizations dependent on U.S. government funding simply shut down or scaled back operations, social innovators already operating on leaner models and with diversified revenue streams continued to serve. They pivoted, adapted, and survived, not because aid was flowing, but because they were built for resilience.

This divergence underscored a truth Unlock Aid has been saying all along: the future of development is already here. It is being built by innovators who deliver cost-effective, sustainable solutions in the toughest environments. 

The question is whether we will invest in this next generation of social innovators at scale before it is too late. Because if we fail to act now, we risk:

• Losing a generation of proven solutions across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• Ceding leadership to other countries already funding innovation.
• Rebuilding broken systems and alienating communities who want true partnership.
• Wasting taxpayer dollars on outdated models instead of scalable, cost-effective solutions.

This is a rare political, philanthropic, and media moment for the future of global development. Institutions are searching for alternatives. Donors are looking for a new narrative. Communities want to be partners, not recipients. If we don’t seize this moment, we risk reverting to old models.

Now is the moment to act.

That’s why we need your help. 

With your support we can:

• Amplify proven solutions so they gain visibility with funders who can scale them.
• Shift billions to proven innovators.
• Multiply impact because every dollar you give helps unlock far greater public and private funding.
• Protect progress because investing in resilience and sustainability is strategy, not charity.

This moment is not business as usual. It is an investment in the next generation of solutions, in stronger global partnerships, and in a world where communities have the tools they need to thrive.

The time is now. The opportunity is here. And the builders are ready.

Funds collected are processed by Panorama Global, a 501c3, and support charitable activities like research, narrative shift work, and to support our engagement with think tanks, multilateral development banks, global funds, philanthropy, and other funders.