A Global Philanthropic Competition to Save the Lives of Mothers and Babies

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Thinking globally and acting locally may be the best way to save the lives of mothers and babies around the world. That is the goal of the Maternal & Infant Health Award, a grant competition to identify and support path-breaking, community-led projects working to improve maternal and infant health. The competition is an initiative of The Patchwork Collective, ICONIQ Impact and Lever for Change, and recently announced its first five award finalists. 

The need for such funding is clear: As many as 4.5 million pregnant women and newborn babies die worldwide every year. The World Health Organization reported that in 2020, a maternal death occurred almost every two minutes. The tragedy is that most of these lives could have been saved, as the announcement points out: “​​The majority of these deaths stem from complications that are not only detectable but also preventable with proper attention and medical care.” The goal of the Maternal & Infant Health Award is to expand and enhance that attention and medical care by strengthening programs that are already providing it in local communities around the world. 

The maternal health crisis has received some attention from philanthropy in recent years. Model and entrepreneur Christy Turlington Burns created Every Mother Counts, for example, to support efforts to improve birth outcomes in the U.S. and abroad, as IP’s Liz Longley reported recently. And the Elevance Health Foundation has committed $30 million to promote equity in maternal care in the U.S. But given the devastating numbers — and the fact that they’re heading in the wrong direction — far more needs to be done.

Marie Dageville, cofounder of The Patchwork Collective, which provided funding for the Maternal & Infant Health Award, drew a contrast between the reverence with which society claims to view mothers and the treatment they receive. “Though we regard [mothers] with admiration and importance, we don’t treat their health with the same respect,” she said when the finalists were announced. “We’re allowing mothers, and their newborn children, to die at alarming rates, making a time that should be filled with joy and promise one that’s met with anxiety and fear.” 

The award, she said, will “help fund programs and projects that are treating this issue with the attention and urgency it demands and saving the lives of the world’s most at-risk mothers and children.”

Thinking big, increasing impact

The Maternal & Infant Health Award is spearheaded by Lever for Change, a nonprofit created by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2019. Lever for Change, which receives support from MacKenzie Scott, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Reid Hoffman, along with MacArthur, designs challenges that encourage donors to “think big and increase their philanthropic impact,” according to the website. (Inside Philanthropy recently wrote about MacKenzie Scott’s partnership with Lever for Change here). 

Lever for Change’s award selection process is methodical and provides guidance for participants all along the way. In the initial phase, participating teams evaluate each others’ applications, so they all receive feedback from their peers. The cohort of applicants is narrowed down and proposals are evaluated again, this time by an expert panel. All feedback from panel members is released to the applicant teams, Muhsin Hassan, Lever for Change’s awards director, points out. “In traditional philanthropy it’s kind of like a job application: You apply and if you don't advance, you get a very generic email saying, ‘Thank you, it was a competitive pool.’ But here you get an in-depth evaluation from an expert,” he said.

There were 220 applications from 49 countries for the Maternal & Infant Health Award. The five award finalist organizations are located in Colombia, Guatemala, Uganda and two from Kenya (see the list of finalists here). Each will receive a $200,000 planning grant to strengthen and refine their proposals over the course of nine months. That process is also rigorous — Hassan calls it “an even more robust set of due diligence initiatives.” Finalists will receive capacity-building support and participate in Q&A sessions with donors, reference calls and technical review. The finalist selected at the end of 2023 will be awarded the remaining $9 million. 

Lever for Change doesn’t consider its job over when the final phase of the competition is complete. One of the frequent criticisms of philanthropic competitions is that they demand large amounts of labor from applicants, while sending all but the winner home empty-handed. Lever for Change seeks to increase funding opportunities for all participants, and has had success, as my colleague Mike Scutari reported earlier this year. Finalists and other top-ranking applicants join Lever for Change’s Bold Solutions Network, which helps members access additional funding. Hassan and his team also proactively approach funders they think may be interested in particular programs. 

“We tell funders, ‘Look, here are five teams who have undergone this very rigorous process. We can vouch for them.’” Hassan said. After the organization’s earlier Larson Lam ICONIQ Impact Award competition, for example, the Conrad Hilton Foundation provided support for two finalist teams, and MacKenzie Scott funded others. 

For award finalists, the $200,000 itself is a welcome boon — as is the recognition that comes with it. “When we make the call, people are so excited, some of them break out in tears,” said Hassan, who considers these conversations one of the best parts of his job. “They appreciate the recognition. And the press release — as you can imagine, a small organization working in Colombia doesn't have the resources to do that on their own. So getting that word out is a real win for them. Already, we're hearing from teams that donors are reaching out to them directly. That's part of the strategy; it's a very intentional approach.”

ICONIQ Impact and Patchwork Collective

This is the third competition Lever for Change has worked on with ICONIQ Impact, the philanthropy arm of ICONIQ Capital, an investment management firm. ICONIQ Impact, which was founded by ICONIQ Capital partner Michael Anders in 2019, advises a pool of about 200 high-net-worth individuals and families looking to engage in philanthropy. The organization supports funding areas including climate equity, education and economic mobility, strengthening democracy, support for refugees, and ocean protection. Since 2019, ICONIQ Impact has advised on almost a half-billion dollars in philanthropic funds. 

Matti Navellou, who heads ICONIQ Impact, says that Lever for Change was one of ICONIQ’s first collaborative partnerships, and the success of that collaboration has influenced her organization’s direction. 

“We really try hard to not reinvent the wheel,” she said. “You know, where someone else is doing something, and they've been doing it for 20 years, let's partner with them. Let's find people doing it really well and crowd around them. That is not only going to lead to larger amounts of funding, but what else can we learn from bringing in funders from different regions and different geographies?”

Navellou says that many of the wealthy families ICONIQ Impact works with aren’t sure where or how to donate their wealth. “A lot of our families are visionary entrepreneurs, they've spent a lot of their time building incredible businesses,” she says. “But many of them are really quite young, and they're in the early stages of figuring out how to do their philanthropy. What does it mean to be an effective philanthropist? They're open to innovation and doing things differently, but they're really looking for guidance.” 

One of those families is Benoit and Marie Dageville, who created The Patchwork Collective, the main donor organization backing the Maternal & Infant Health Awards. Clients in the ICONIQ Impact network are confidential by default, Navellou pointed out, but the Dagevilles have been public about their participation. The Dagevilles made their fortune when Snowflake, the data cloud company Benoit Dageville cofounded, went public in 2020. 

The Patchwork Collective supports “locally led solutions to global problems” in the areas of social equity, global health and climate justice, according to its website. In their Giving Pledge letter, Marie and Benoit Dageville credit ICONIQ Impact with helping them “build Patchwork and live out our values through our giving.” 

When Lever for Change was considering a competition focused on maternal health, Navellou reached out to the Dagevilles and The Patchwork Collective. “We brought this opportunity to the family as a way of exploring having an impact in an area that is most important to them,” she said. “That area is overlooked and underfunded groups that are community led and supporting the most marginalized communities, and are focusing on the gaps in the global health landscape. Of course, maternal and infant health is one of those gaps.”

That priority guided the process from the beginning, Hassan said. “We know this is a huge space, there are all sorts of stakeholders, including big, international NGOs,” he said. “The Patchwork Collective is focused on the small folks on the ground who are doing the needed work, but are often neglected — not really seen as serious players, or they just don't come across the table of philanthropists and program offices and foundations.”

The five Maternal & Infant Health Award finalists are those small organizations on the ground: Maya Health Alliance in rural Guatemala, Jacaranda Health in Kenya, SinerglasONG in rural Columbia, Lwala Community Alliance in Kenya, and Babies and Mothers Alive in Uganda. These organizations don’t have familiar names, hefty budgets or large staffs; they’re embedded in remote regions and under-resourced communities, doing what they can to create healthier futures for mothers and their babies.