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Our thesis

We fund the things that are still working after the money is gone.

Most money arrives, and then it runs out.

Food. Kits. A training course. A stipend that lasts six months. Real help, right when it is needed.

But once it is used, there is nothing left for the community to keep drawing on. It meets this month's need, not next year's.

So we fund the things that keep producing.

A clinic that opens every morning. A borehole a school maintains itself. Sewing machines still running three years on. A cooperative registered in its members' own names.

Bought once. Producing consultations, water, income and training years later. The community holds the capacity, not just the output.

Who owns it is not the test.

Public benefit is.

We fund charities, community organisations, cooperatives and companies on the same terms, as long as a named low-income community is measurably better off, and that benefit is the purpose, not a side effect. We do not fund individuals.

What makes something worth funding for us.

Five tests. A strong project meets all of them.

  • Permanence Still standing in five years.
  • Public benefit A named community, measurably better off.
  • Self-sustaining Keeps going without us.
  • Productive output Makes something, and makes more over time.
  • Stewardship Someone there who can run it.

What we fund within.

Six areas. The thing being bought has to pass the same tests in all of them, so the area matters less than the shape.

  • A nurse attending to a young patient on a hospital ward
    Health Clinics, equipment and the buildings that house them, serving people who cannot pay private rates.
  • A teacher addressing a room of uniformed students
    Education Classrooms, workshops and labs that keep teaching long after the cohort we funded has left.
  • Farmers harvesting cassava in a field
    Agriculture Land, irrigation, processing and storage, so a harvest becomes income rather than a season.
  • Workers on scaffolding on a building in Accra, Ghana
    Infrastructure Water, power and the physical things a community cannot build for itself in one go.
  • A vendor selling shoes at an outdoor market stall
    Enterprise Productive equipment held by a registered organisation, where low-income users are the customers.
  • A smiling woman among a group of women outdoors
    Equity Institutions that give people a formal footing they were previously denied.

What a fundable project looks like.

Three examples of the shape we look for: things bought once, that go on producing long after our funding stops.

  • A woman preparing fresh fish at a market stall

    Agriculture

    A cold store at a fishing landing site

    Catch that used to spoil before market now sells at a fair price, every day, without us.

  • A nurse tending to incubators in a hospital maternity unit

    Health

    A maternity room added to a working clinic

    Women who travelled hours to give birth safely now do it where they live.

  • Hands passing a wooden shuttle across a loom

    Enterprise

    Looms held by a weavers’ cooperative

    Members stop renting time on someone else’s loom, and the cooperative earns from every order.

* Illustrations rather than funded projects, written to show the shape, not to describe work we have paid for. Our real projects are on the projects page.

Where we have come from.

Since 2019, members have funded 68 projects, deploying $301,149. Some of that money bought things that are still running today. Some answered something urgent and then ended, which was the right call at the time.

The thesis is what we have learned to look for. It is where new funding goes, and existing projects are moving toward this shape over time, not all at once.