Mulago

Let’s talk about funding that fuels scale. I’m excited to co-host a session with Emma Colenbrander of Spring Impact to dig into what it takes to fund your solution AND your organization as you scale. We’ll discuss insights from Spring Impact’s Securing Nonprofit Funding report and Mulago’s decades of experience backing the worlds most impressive social entrepreneurs—unpacking how to design for the right payers at scale. I’ll be joined by an esteemed panel including leaders from (2025 Skoll Foundation Awardee!) Healthy Learners and VisionSpring as well as the Honorable Twaambo Mutinta from the National Assembly of Zambia ????. Come prepared to participate as we will be handing the ?? over to the room for a fishbowl style discussion with the audience. ?? When: Wednesday, April 2, 1:30 - 3:00 PM ?? Register here: https://bit.ly/43jHc6h Pro tip: all Marmalade sessions are first come, first served—so get there early!

Just in time for the Skoll World Forum—meet our newest Mulago Fellows! These 10 game-changing social entrepreneurs are tackling poverty with bold, scalable solutions. Fun fact: 3 of this year’s 5 Skoll Foundation Awardees got their start as Mulago Fellows, so they’re in great company! #swf #skollworldforum #socialentreprenuers

I just spent a week with one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Kenichi and I just got back from Jordan where we visited Darsel founded by Abdulhamid Haidar (2023 Mulago Rainer Fellow and recent portfolio addition). Darsel is an AI-based math chatbot that helps kids learn math at their own pace at home using their parent’s phone. Math touches everything you do — Darsel makes sure kids get the foundation in math to set them up for life. Darsel’s tech is an elegant application of AI. On the back-end, they’ve built a large math question bank that tests kids’ understanding of concepts. The algorithm provides individualized learning to students by moving them through a sequence of questions based on what concepts they’ve mastered. For kids though, it just feels like they’re playing a game on WhatsApp by texting back and forth with the chatbot. It works because teachers are bought in. Even though kids do Darsel at home, teachers keep engagement high by reminding kids to use it and rewarding kids who use it a lot. We visited school after school where district officials, school principals, and teachers all loved the effect Darsel was having on not just kids’ math scores but also their confidence and curiosity in the classroom. They’ve unlocked this teacher behavior in a clever, cost-effective way. At the end of the year, Darsel hosts a ceremony in partnership with the government for the highest performing students and classrooms. This little boost is a HUGE motivation creating healthy competition across districts and schools. They’ve got some great initial impact results and have a new RCT in the works with JPAL MENA to show just how much Darsel can transform kids’ performance in math and boost confidence when it comes to learning. While they’ve scaled up Darsel grade 7 operations (and soon grade 6) in Jordan, they’re moving lightning fast, expanding to more grade levels and to new countries (including India and Nigeria). For those of you going to Skoll, grab a coffee with Abdulhamid - I guarantee you’ll walk away buzzing and not from the caffeine. Oh—and they’re hiring a Fundraising Director. Big opportunity. Link in the comments. Pass it on.

?? here’s a sneak peek at our 2025 Rainer Arnhold Fellows. The selection process was tough, again. We looked at over 1000 organizations this year to whittle it down to these remarkable people. Now more than ever we need big, scalable ideas to tackle poverty. This may be our most promising cohort of big ideas matched with irrepressible leaders yet. Check them out. Bram Willem van den Bosch at Emata: AI-powered credit to identify the best smallholder farmers and help them grow in Uganda. Grant M. Gordon at Essential: Affordable protein added into everyday foods starting out in Kenya and Ethiopia. Ira Guha at Asan: An affordable, reusable period cup making menstrual health accessible in India. Joao Abreu at ImpulsoGov: A public health platform to improve patient care across Brazil. Muthi Nhlema at BASEflow Limited: Groundwater management to get the right boreholes in the right places in Malawi. Nicolas Laing at OneDay Health: Full-service primary care clinics in Uganda’s healthcare black holes. Opeoluwa Fayomi at Pullus Africa: Bundled resources to strengthen Nigeria’s poultry industry. Pascal Mensah at Economic Policy Network: Builds elite coalitions to drive “pro-growth” strategies. Simon Graffy at Inspiring Teachers: Teacher-centric tools to get kids to grade-level literacy in Ghana and Uganda. Tony Senanayake at Fortify Health: Fortify flour with micronutrients in India. As fellows, they get funding ($100K), lots of support, and attend two of our week-long design and strategy retreats. We’re stoked about this group. They’re pushing smart ideas, and if our track record is any indication, these are the ones to watch: the ones who will win the Skoll Foundation, The Audacious Project, Co-Impact etc awards of the future. A bunch of them will be in Oxford at the #SkollWorldForum next week. If you bump into them, say hi ??

These roles at Mulago don't come up often. Do you know a pro at spotting, funding, and supporting game-changing social investments? Send them our way. Bonus points for deep Africa experience. ?? SF based (3+ days/week) | ?? starting at $156K?| Apply soon - deadline is March 31!

Bravo!!! Congratulations to this years winners of the Skoll Award for Social Innovation! EarthEnable Community Health Impact Coalition Apis & Heritage Capital Partners Healthy Learners Pacto pela Democracia Gayatri Datar! Way to go! It’s been so exciting to watch your journey since we first met in Bolinas at the Mulago retreat. Can’t wait for this rocket ship of a next chapter for EarthEnable! Dr. Madeleine Ballard! Yeeeees! If I’m not mistaken doesn’t this make CHIC, along with PPD, the first coalition and systems change organizations to win the award?! Setting new precedents! And creating the momentum and vehicle for so many organizations to effect huge change together. We’ll be cheering you all on loudly in Oxford! #socialentrepreneurship #SWF2025 Skoll Foundation

Big congrats to our friends Dr. Madeleine Ballard at Community Health Impact Coalition, Gayatri Datar at EarthEnable, and Lonnie Hackett and Ignicious Bulongo at Healthy Learners on winning the 2025 Skoll Award! ?? We’ve had the privilege of working with these remarkable leaders since the early days—and watching them grow bold ideas into scaled solutions that actually stick. This recognition is a testament to their relentless focus, smart design, and deep impact. Skoll couldn’t have picked a more deserving crew. Go go go!

?? If you work in rural global development and rely on public data for population counts, pay attention. A just-published Nature Magazine article by Josias Láng-Ritter reveals a massive problem: the best global population datasets systematically underestimate rural populations—by 53%, even in the best case (WorldPop). This isn’t just a data issue—if further validated, it’s a development crisis. Policies, funding, and progress tracking all depend on these flawed numbers. If we don’t scrutinize the datasets behind studies and decisions, we risk reinforcing inequities instead of fixing them. ?? The graph below says it all: tiny communities (under 10 people) may be overestimated, but the much bigger issue is the consistent undercounting of rural populations. The authors propose smart ways to fix this, like leveraging detailed local enumerations and satellite imagery. But while we wait for better and improved datasets, be a student of the data. When reviewing studies, always ask: What population dataset did they use? If it’s the usual suspects, rural numbers are likely way off. ?? Read the paper: https://lnkd.in/dgfTFMi3 ??? Listen to the AI-generated podcast: https://tinyurl.com/pop-pc #GlobalDevelopment #BetterDataBetterDecisions #PopulationData

?? Deadline approaching for our Investment Principal job opening at Mulago ?? Please help us find right person to join our team of thirteen. It's a core role to lead relationships and funding decisions alongside Portfolio Team colleagues (mostly grants but some debt & equity too; we invest in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations). For this hire we are particularly interested in substantive time/experience working in Africa.??? ?? San Francisco-based (3+ days/week in the office) ?? $156K minimum salary ??? Apply by March 31 https://lnkd.in/ghZtM24y

Will you be at the Skoll World Forum world in a few weeks? Let me know, I'd love to connect! Come and check out the Marmalade event we are co-hosting with Mulago, "Payers at scale: Sources and strategies for impact that goes big" https://lu.ma/a3y6d9lr A couple of other events I'm particularly looking forward to: ?? Restructuring the Impact Sector for a Changing World, hosted by Seth Cochran and The Sidebar: https://lu.ma/wlkpk5e6 ?? Sell Well, Do Good – If You Can’t Sell, You Can’t Save the World: https://lu.ma/z8psq06p with Scott Roy from Whitten & Roy Partnership ?? Impact Investing Needs Less Cake: https://lu.ma/gv4entag?tk hosted by Jeff Pilisuk and Brigit Helms from Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship #SkollWF #ScalingImpact #SocialEntrepreneurship