Agency Fund’s Reflection on 2024
By Sasha Tanghe
Three years ago, we set out to test a thesis: that vast reserves of human potential can be tapped to improve economic development – simply by investing in approaches that help people exercise agency over their own lives. We have been testing this thesis by channeling support to exceptional nonprofits that support their clients with counsel, emotional support, advice, and other agency-promoting approaches.
To date we’ve worked with 150 grantees and 17 funders on a diverse range of ideas and projects. Since 2021, we moved $38 million in philanthropic funding to agency-driven initiatives, primarily in South Asia and Africa. Over this time, we have built a vibrant network of partners – and in February 2024, we reached the milestone of registering as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Looking forward, we aim to grow our grant-making by $50 million over the next 3 years, enabling us to support more organizations at the frontier of impact and cost-effectiveness.
Our strategy focuses in three areas: Discover, Accelerate, and Mobilize. To illuminate our approach, here are a few examples of our work from the last 12 months:
Discover: We identify promising innovators with the potential to demonstrate the impact of “agency” at a massive scale.
In 2024, we ran 3 calls for innovative ideas: two calls with no thematic focus, and one targeting AI. Our calls are open, competitive grant opportunities, with awardees selected in collaboration with our funding partners. In 2024, we awarded $14 million to 29 organizations, with an average grant size of $490,000.
Beyond our direct grant-making, we share our discoveries with other funders. For example, we helped direct $3.5 million to Propel and $3 million to The Nudge Institute by sharing outstanding proposals with other donors.
In the coming years, as grant projects mature, we will measure the social return on investment (SROI) of our initial portfolio. This analysis will help us estimate the impact of our investments – and hopefully guide resource allocation in the future.
We run grant competitions because they expose us to a universe of creative ideas – to the thousands of different ways that “agency” might improve people’s lives. Not every idea will work, and not every working prototype will achieve impact or scale. But by trying things, and learning from others, we are building a body of evidence and experience.
Accelerate: We help scale the impact of promising innovations through “Lighthouse” Organizations.
A second component of our strategy is to invest deeply in a small number of implementers that elegantly demonstrate agency in action. These organizations, which we call “Lighthouses”, are aligned with us in their ambitions to demonstrate their impact through RCTs; to scale to millions of people; and to iterate continuously toward greater cost-effectiveness. They have the potential to illuminate a path toward human development for governments, multi-laterals, and other large-scale actors.
We provide Lighthouse Organizations with funding, and we also embed fractional software engineers, social scientists, and seasoned operators. Acting like a venture fund, we help improve our partners’ data systems, product management, and software automation. Our thesis is that by boosting the abilities of these organizations, we can accelerate their progress – and help them become powerful demonstrations of agency that inspire the social sector as a whole.
In 2024, we advanced our Lighthouse strategy by:
Building Our Portfolio: This year we worked closely with Rocket Learning, Noora Health, and Shamiri Institute on metrics design, data warehousing, A/B test automation, user research, and product management. We built an integrated data flow platform with Shamiri Institute; and with Rocket Learning we designed an experimentation platform for automated A/B testing as well as a phone-based measure of early childhood development outcomes. We also welcomed IMPA, which hosts the Math Olympiad in Brazil, into our Lighthouse portfolio. In collaboration with USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures, we will be testing a film-based behavioral intervention to inspire interest in STEM among 18 million Brazilian public school students.
Creating Public Goods: Part of our Lighthouse strategy is to work with grantees to develop products and public goods that generate sector-wide improvement. In addition to building software, we are co-designing RCTs and A/B tests with partners like Noora Health, Shamiri, and Rocket Learning to test agency-focused, psychologically informed enhancements to their programs.
Partnering with the Private Sector: This month we are launching a new accelerator program in partnership with OpenAI to explore how AI can contribute to frontline social service delivery. Our cohort of partners includes Rocket Learning, Noora Health, Jacaranda Health, Digital Green, Reach Digital Health, Precision Development, and Youth Impact. Each is receiving $500K in funding, expert support from engineers and data scientists, and access to up to $1M in OpenAI credits to amplify their work.
Supporting Ecosystems: In 2024 we hosted two technical workshops for 30+ nonprofits, in partnership with Project Tech4Dev, to improve user engagement with digital social services. We also organized webinars on leveraging LLMs in the social sector.
Mobilize: We are shaping conversations about the role of agency in human development.
While we are still testing the “agency” thesis, we are always looking for ways to share what we’re learning with the global development community. In 2024, our key mobilization efforts included:
Momentum building: We began sharing our thoughts on agency more actively on our blog [1,2,3], and published articles and external blogs on this too. We interviewed Dean Karlan and Kaushik Basu, Chief Economist at the World Bank and grew our social media presence, driving 0.5M views to our content. Our team members presented at UNGA, and we sponsored events on mental health and early child development.
Academic Mobilization: We partnered with SEE Change Initiative at Johns Hopkins University for a conference on agency for international development. We created a $10k research grant competition for social psychologists, as part of the SPSP Intervention Science Preconference, and we built new partnerships with NYU, Stanford, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and Harvard.
Institutional Mobilization: We conducted two evidence syntheses for USAID’s Office of the Chief Economist on the evidence for agency in educational outcomes and agricultural productivity. We are also developing partnerships with colleagues at the World Bank to advance the application of behavioral science in development.
Looking Ahead
As we reflect on 2024, we are grateful to learn from the many applicants who submit ideas to our competitions. We are inspired by the thoughtful, visionary work of our grantee partners. And we look forward to continuing our exploration of agency in action. Our efforts to harness the science of agency are just beginning.
By 2028, we aim to solidify our place as a leading impact accelerator, with bold plans to scale our grant-making, deepen our technical collaborations, and widen the global conversation around agency.
We’re always looking for partners to join us on this journey. So If any of this resonates with you, we’d love to hear and learn from you.
Promising progress. Well done.