Not Your Grandfather's Philanthropy

Sixty percent of the population of Africa is employed in agriculture, and more than 80% of the sector’s output is produced by smallholder farmers. It was with these statistics in mind that the Milken-Motsepe AgriTech prize was born, with the goal of finding innovative ideas to revolutionize the food system.?

Entrepreneurs in the space turned out, and by the time the winners were announced last Monday, 3,500 contestants from 105 countries had entered. Among the finalists were Cool Lion, a C?te d'Ivoire-based startup that provides sustainably-powered cooling solutions, and Kuronga, a South African tech company that uses AI and machine learning to help small-scale farmers assess crop quality. The grand prize of a million dollars went to Tanzania’s NovFeed, which found a way to upcycle organic waste into feed ingredients for fish and livestock.?

The competition underscored two important truths: the first is that there’s no shortage of creative solutions to tackling the SDGs, and out-of-the-box thinking will get us there. The second is that prize philanthropy is quickly gaining traction as a way of elevating that creativity. From the conversations I heard at Milken, philanthropy—both private and corporate—is undergoing a transformation, and the people behind the wheel are putting genuine effort into making these new, more agile models viable.?

Prize philanthropy is just one of the sector’s emerging trends. My colleague Stephanie Beasley reported earlier this week on a novel idea proposed during a session on strategic philanthropy, which is to combine two buzzy trends—moonshot philanthropy and collaborative philanthropy—into one. Moonshot philanthropy is the idea that high net worth individuals make big bets on risky, early-stage innovations that tackle knotty challenges like climate change. Collaborative philanthropy refers to donors pooling funds to meet shared goals. Uniting these two philosophies has the potential to fill some major investment gaps.?

Then, of course, there’s corporate philanthropy, which as I noted is generating more and more discussion. This model is naturally enduring some growing pains as organizations figure out their objectives and how best to execute them.?

All of these topics were on the table at Milken, and it’s clear that philanthropy is due to evolve in a big way. As always, we’re going to continue to cover this evolution in detail at Devex, so be sure to stay tuned.?