In the inaugural round of 100&Change, Sesame Workshop and International Rescue Committee were awarded $100 million to educate young children displaced by conflict and persecution in the Syrian response region and to challenge the global system of humanitarian aid to focus more on building a foundation for future success for millions of young children. To date, other funders and philanthropists have committed an additional $319 million to support bold solutions by 100&Change applicants, including a $100 million LEGO Foundation grant to Sesame Workshop and $15 million in funding from USAID and GHR Foundation to Catholic Relief Services.
From this experience, we learned that showcasing strong, vetted proposals for social change can lead to significant additional funding for the applicants. Lever for Change continues to share the high-quality proposals of the semi-finalists from the inaugural 100&Change, and others.
Starting in early 2020, the Bold Solutions Network will showcase the strongest proposals surfaced through the second round of MacArthur’s 100&Change and other Lever for Change competitions.
For applicants, the Bold Solutions Network will provide additional exposure to interested donors.
For donors, the Bold Solutions Network offers an efficient approach to identifying powerful, high impact solutions aligned with their philanthropic goals. As part of its services, Lever for Change uses the Bold Solutions Network to help donors refine their interests and provides support on brokering connections to organizations and structuring grants.
The Bold Solutions Network also provides a public good for the social sector: sharing data from multiple award processes generates innovations and insights (e.g. scalable approaches to capacity building), while sharing intellectual property (e.g., the results of due diligence) reduces costs for others and increases the impact of applicants’ work. Bold Solutions Network data also supports research projects conducted by other organizations, and forms the basis for work with Candid (formerly the Foundation Center) to make proposal data broadly available.
