"The Solutions Are There." Funding Challenge Backs Community-Led Efforts to Save Mothers and Infants
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Photo: Lwala Community Alliance / Lever for Change
Lwala is all about community, as its full name, Lwala Community Alliance, makes clear. The Kenya-based organization, working in partnership with Dandelion Africa, aims to expand its community-led healthcare approach to tackle maternal and infant mortality in Kenya, where 70,000 mothers and children die each year.
Lwala and Dandelion Africa were the top recipients of the $12 million Maternal & Infant Health Award, a global competition launched by The Patchwork Collective, Lever for Change and ICONIQ Impact. The award was created to identify and support innovative, community-led projects working to improve maternal and infant health, as IP reported when five award finalists were announced in May.
The Lwala and Dandelion Africa partnership will receive a $9 million grant. But they weren’t alone: The Patchwork Collective, which made the final selection, found the work of two other finalists so impressive that it awarded $1 million grants to the Babies and Mothers Alive Foundation and to Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu’ Kawoq.
The fact is, unlike many other vexing global issues, infant and maternal mortality is a problem with tangible and achievable solutions. As the award announcement points out, “Over the last 10 years, advanced research and technological breakthroughs have led to a global decline in maternal and infant mortality… It’s estimated that if these innovations were made accessible to those who need them most, nearly 2 million lives could be saved.”
The finalists for the Maternal and Infant Health awards are trying to save some of those lives by working in high-need communities in their respective regions to increase health access, to professionalize community health workers, including doulas and midwives, and to strengthen community health clinics.
Muhsin Hassan, senior awards director at Lever for Change, underscored this point in a recent interview. “The solutions are there — this isn’t trying to find a cure for cancer, where there isn’t a treatment or the treatment is unknown,” Hassan said. “It's a matter of providing adequate resources and support and thought partnership to those on the ground trying to address these challenges. That is our goal: to call attention to organizations that are tackling this issue, and part of that is to empower and uplift these strategies so others can come in and support work that is already being done. ”
Leveraging change
The awards are a project of Lever for Change, a nonprofit created by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2019. The organization, which creates funding challenges and other opportunities in an effort to amplify donor impact, is backed by a variety of big names including MacKenzie Scott, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Reid Hoffman, along with MacArthur. Often, the donors involved will sponsor specific challenges, with Lever for Change facilitating the application and judging process. To date, Lever for Change says it has “influenced over $1.5 billion in grants and provided support to more than 145 organizations,” according to its website.
A common critique of philanthropic competitions is that they put applicants through multiple rounds of proposal development and months of work, which can be a time-consuming and frustrating process for everyone except the final award recipient. Lever for Change attempts to address that by not just funding a single winner, or simply walking away when the final phase of the competition is complete. As my colleague Mike Scutari pointed out in an overview of Lever for Change’s work earlier this year, “Key to [Lever for Change’s] approach is a more collaborative process and the idea that even those that don’t take home a prize can still find funding.”
In the case of the Maternal & Infant Health Award, each of the five finalists received a $200,000 grant for capacity building, and as compensation for the time and resources required to develop their proposals. And finalists and other top-ranking applicants join Lever for Change’s Bold Solutions Network, which helps members access additional funding.
In addition, Hassan and his team reach out to funders they think may be interested in supporting particular programs and share the due diligence and other materials they’ve developed over the course of the selection process.
Hassan said some funders contacted Lever for Change after the five finalists were first announced, and the organization is in conversation with others. Award recipient Maya Health Alliance and finalist Jacaranda Health have both received funding from Google, for example, through its AI for the Global Goals awards.
“They received significant investments from the folks at Google,” Hassan said. “Over the next few months or early next year we hope we can announce additional leveraged funds.”
That’s one of the main goals of Lever for Change, as the name implies. “These five organizations provide examples of solutions that are being implemented, solutions that are working and have been rigorously evaluated,” Hassan said. “We want to reach out to other funders who are interested in this space, especially those who are not necessarily coming from institutional philanthropy and don't have the infrastructure for extensive evaluation. Our point is that these are great organizations that are working in underserved communities where the need is highest. We want to invite others to join us.”
Matti Navellou, who heads ICONIQ Impact, the philanthropic arm of ICONIQ Capital and one of the awards’ backers, sees a parallel between the collaborative approach of the award recipients and the funding partners. “In much the same way, we’re looking to collaborate with additional partners and donors to strengthen this effort and amplify the impact these organizations, and the other finalists, can have.”
When she announced the award recipients, Marie Dageville, cofounder of The Patchwork Collective, underscored the stakes. “No family should suffer the loss of a mother or child, yet tragically, most maternal and infant deaths stem from a detectable and treatable complication,” she said. “If this award helps ensure the survival of even one woman or child, it will be worth it.”
