Prevail plans and executes programs that generate visible, humanity-level change

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Today, social change falls short of the bounds of human ingenuity.

Prevail is a new organization that helps givers and implementers to realistically pursue more ambitious global goals. For example, we have a goal to ensure more than 25M children get a better foundational education – supporting 10 country governments that hold nearly half of the world’s children living in learning poverty. Also, we have another goal to help standardize the warmest parts of the world on energy-efficient air conditioning technology, before the global number of air conditioners triples in the coming decades.

Big dreams are 95% about field execution. The five co-founding board members of Prevail are all field implementers – our organizations have a collective budget of more than $500m per year, and 10,000+ full-time staff. We have experience executing ambitious field programs. We are part of a like-minded community of givers and implementers who are tired of thinking small – but also appreciate the reality of running ambitious field programs.

Prevail is staffed by experienced implementers who have experience translating bold plans into reality on the ground, and who are capable of providing behind-the-scenes support to implementers as they grow. We manage funds to successfully achieve ambitious end-outcomes.

If you share our interest in accomplishing bolder social change goals, or if you are a skeptic that doubts this is possible, we invite you to read on.

Safeena Husain

Fred Swaniker

Andrew Youn

Andrew Youn

Andrew Youn

We all aspire to contribute to the world in a way that is bigger than ourselves. Life is short – so when we spend our time and resources, we should be part of projects that are truly world-changing. We do not only want to make incremental progress – we want to win against global-level problems.

This requires resources. To use an analogy from the private sector: Uber and Lyft changed the human experience by making ride-sharing globally ubiquitous in just five years. Investors did not expect them to do that with mere millions; they collectively invested more than $10B, in 2017-2019 alone.

As a human race, we are what we spend. We can achieve bold scale in social change – but this requires bold resources. Prevail projects start humbly, often with targeted trials – but if successful, they are designed to deploy $1B+ over ~10 years. Human ingenuity + Resources + Time are an unstoppable force.

Even $1B is not enough to change the world of 8B people. We are only interested in projects that improve how 10x or even 100x in government resources are spent, or shape how markets spend similarly large amounts of funds.

History gives us examples of how philanthropy can generate enormous leverage. For example, Andrew Carnegie gave $1B to start libraries – and since then, the US government alone has spent ~$300B+ building libraries. Whether or not you like libraries, Mr. Carnegie got powerful leverage from his giving. Prevail believes that four powerful forces shape the human experience:

We seek to shape these forces.

To do that in a field of work like education or health, we are not trying to start a general foundation to send resources to many organizations. There are many amazing leaders already doing this important work. For example in global education, we do not seek to start another global education foundation.
Rather, we back a relatively narrow program family, and attempt to harness a big existing force. In global education for example, we seek to leverage $10Bs that Global South governments already spend on education each year. We back organizations that support their host governments to improve daily less on plans and coaching support for teachers. This solution has proven and outstanding cost-effectiveness, and could become a new world norm.

We invest in proven solutions. We look for:

  • Rigorous academic evidence that programs are highly cost-effective; but also
  • Real-world evidence that large market and government forces can be successfully shaped;
  • Practical evidence that implementing organizations are ready to grow; and
  • Client voice that speaks to a truly improved experience. We spend several person-years researching solutions before we fully back them.

Everything is analyzed through the lens of: will this bold program deliver concrete outcomes in real field conditions?

The world has a lot of good ideas, but especially in the social sector, there can often be an insufficient number of field implementers ready to grow. Many big ideas quickly hit the unforgiving brick wall of low implementation capacity. We therefore search for solutions that have many existing capable implementing organizations with outstanding leadership.

We are also prepared to work alongside them to deliver end-outcomes. Because Prevail team members have helped to grow organizations with thousands of full-time staff, we are capable of supporting implementers from behind-the-scenes in field operations, HR, finance and accounting, systems, procurement, and government relations – through staff secondments, general hiring and operating support, and shared services.

We have started Prevail to help enable successful execution of bolder social change. Drawing from our collective experience, we offer services that coordinate givers, implementers, and stakeholders to envision and execute ambitious social change programs.

When delivering truly ambitious end-outcomes, it is all about field implementation. This is why we think there is a need for entities like Prevail, which are laser-focused on successful delivery of programs, and are staffed with experienced implementers.

We must approach bold goals with humility. Our programs have a reasonable risk profile: walking down the side of a cliff often produces a better outcome, compared to leaping blindly off of it.

In fact, we believe that larger projects have unique opportunities to actually reduce risk per dollar deployed. We can do more diligence than normal, and deploy across a diversified portfolio of markets and implementers. We will often have a patient, 10+ year time frame – and so we can gradually ratchet resources up or down with success. We can support promising organizations over time. And we can create shared donation structures that spread risk across a small donor group.

In our first projects, we are carefully studying failures, learning from them, and are clear-eyed about potential downside scenarios. Ultimately, we believe we can steward each dollar of funds in a way that reduces risk per dollar. We want a world where both donors and implementers can pursue very ambitious global goals – while actually reducing individual risk.

It is important to think at the high level, but ultimately proximity is paramount. It is crucial to authentically engage stakeholders in government, civil society, and stakeholder groups to shape stronger programs. We value authentic engagement from the people we serve not only for equity reasons – but because feedback and engagement lead to higher-quality programs and creates an enabling environment for change.

We are having a series of brainstorms with some of the world’s leading philanthropists about
bolder social change. Reach out to:

andrew@prevailfund.org

1) Powerful

How Leadership Resources
Can Harness 10x and 100x Forces

The human race is capable of achieving great things, when ingenuity is matched by resources.

The history of amazing human achievements often follows a predictable pattern: 1) someone comes up with a great idea. 2) They get a little money to try it out. 3) They get a lot of money to grow it. 4) And then a “force” makes it really big and it changes the fabric of human experience.

In 2011, nobody had heard of “ride sharing.” Five years later, you could use your phone to summon a taxi to your door, nearly anywhere in the world. How did this happen? 1) Human ingenuity was certainly involved – but then resources took over. 2) In 2010, Uber raised about $2m in its first funding round to try out its idea. 3) Then from 2011-2013, investors gave Uber $4B to make it really big. 4) Today, the power of consumer spending (currently more than $80B annually on ride sharing) has made this service ubiquitous in nearly every country in the world.

Ride sharing is a fairly amazing human “achievement” if you think about it. What can’t we apply the same pattern of success that regularly leads to “amazing human achievements,” and instead apply it to goals in social equity? We are failing to do this! There are two missing ingredients:

1) There is no lack of human ingenuity in social change. Check.

2) It is also not hard to raise initial innovation funding. Check.

3) What is nearly impossible is “big” funding – specifically $1B+ type funding – to make something big.

4) And even $1B isn’t enough: the world has almost 8 billion people. We must then systematically harness forces like market spending, government spending, human behavioral norms, and science – to make a meaningful change in the whole world.

We looked through human history for examples where large funding ($1B+) was consciously used as a lever to systematically harness a much-larger force. We came up with four interesting prototype examples.

From 1886 to 1920, Andrew Carnegie gave today’s equivalent of $1B to start 2500 libraries. While a large sum of money, this wouldn’t have been a particularly exciting gift if the libraries ran out of funding after ten years. Instead, government saw the value. We estimate that approximately $300B+ in government funds have been spent to operate public libraries over the past 100 years in the US alone.

As this example illustrates: $1B alone is not enough to meaningfully change the human race – but it can harness a much larger force. An initial rivulet of water can cut a channel in the earth. If that channel is large enough, a torrent of water will follow it. Over time, we can create the Grand Canyon. Philanthropy can act as this initial rivulet of water. We believe there are four basic forces that philanthropy can help to direct. Here are four examples.

LEAD A FLOOD OF GOVERNMENT FUNDS

Public libraries

Andrew Carnegie’s $1B+ gift started the public library movement; today, government spends $12B annually on 9,000 public libraries, in the US alone

$1B+ of innovative giving is big enough to lead a flood of Government funds.

HARNESS PRIVATE SECTOR FORCES

CEPI

~$1.7B in CEPI grants and forgivable loans have guided tens of billions in private sector R&D, clinical trial, and manufacturing capacity

$1B+ of innovative giving is big enough to harness private sector forces.

PERMANENTLY ALTER HUMAN BEHAVIORAL NORMS

Smoking Cessation

Bloomberg $1B+ in grants for smoking cessation helped set smoking behavior and laws in 54 countries, with 4B people

$1B+ of innovative giving can permanently alter human behavioral norms.

NUDGE SCIENCE

US Polio elimination

$1B+ grants to discover and scale vaccines eliminated polio as a public health problem in the US in 1979, saving $4B in annual health expenditure, forever

$1B+ of innovative giving can nudge science to achieve bold social change goals.

Public libraries

Andrew Carnegie’s $1B+ gift started the public library movement; today, government spends $12B annually on 9,000 public libraries, in the US alone

$1B+ of innovative giving is big enough to lead a flood of Government funds.

CEPI

~$1.7B in CEPI grants and forgivable loans have guided tens of billions in private sector R&D, clinical trial, and manufacturing capacity

$1B+ of innovative giving is big enough to harness private sector forces.

Smoking Cessation

Bloomberg $1B+ in grants for smoking cessation helped set smoking behavior and laws in 54 countries, with 4B people

$1B+ of innovative giving can permanently alter human behavioral norms.

US Polio elimination

$1B+ grants to discover and scale vaccines eliminated polio as a public health problem in the US in 1979, saving $4B in annual health expenditure, forever

$1B+ of innovative giving can nudge science to achieve bold social change goals.

To influence these forces does require some weight. After studying historical examples like those above, we feel that a billion dollars – and more – is enough to do this. This is a major reason that we are interested in billion-dollar social change initiatives – the weight has to be large enough.

What if we could systematically harness these large forces for social change, in every field of work? What if new, billion-dollar initiative got launched every day? What a world we could achieve! What a people we could become! Do we sound crazy yet? It’s actually entirely possible and eminently reasonable ….

Possible

It is surprisingly possible to mobilize $1B gifts for social change

We think a billion dollars is a minimum mathematical floor to truly “change the world.” If this resource is multiplied 10x or even 100x through a major “force,” then one can plausibly hope to change a world of nearly 8 billion people.

Mobilizing $1B+ gifts is surprisingly Possible – especially when one considers that successfully spending $1B can take 10 or more years.

There are many potential sources for bolder funds. Citizen initiatives like the Rotary Club, the March of Dimes, United Way, and Giving Tuesday regularly mobilize sums of this size – and have achieved bold social aims in the past. You don’t have to be a Captain of Industry to have bold dreams for a more just and equitable world. Dozens of government innovation funds are also getting into the game, and beginning to dream big.

$1B+ gifts are particularly possible for more than 3,000 of the world’s wealthiest individuals and foundations. $1B gifts are surprisingly “affordable.” Imagine an example foundation holding $2 billion dollars: at first, giving $1 billion feels crazy. However, it probably takes at least ten years to give away $1B responsibly, and during that time, capital grows. Assuming only 5% annual growth, a $2B foundation can make a new $1B gift every ten years. This logic is even more compelling in aggregate – the world’s 3,000 wealthiest billionaires and foundations create an average of $900B in new wealth each year, and currently hold $13.1 Trillion (this is 1 billion-dollars 13,100 times over). Lastly, social change initiatives do not always need to rely on grants – and can instead involve socially-minded capital.

Resource: A $1B gift is surprisingly possible to execute

Someone with net worth of $2B can execute a $1B gift and still have roughly the same wealth 10 years later


The top 3,000 wealthiest individuals have average annual wealth creation of $900B per year.


With modern-day wealth accumulation, it is in fact mathematically simple to imagine a world where billion-dollar gifts are announced on a daily basis. Imagine the world we could achieve, if bold initiatives like the March of Dimes polio elimination effort were launched every day!

Of course, giving is not just about size, it’s also about smarts.

There is a fast-growing recognition that field projects must be meaningfully co-designed and co-governed by end clients. The people we purport to serve must craft the ultimate vision for what they want the world to look like themselves – and the role of givers is to co-create programs with them. We are field practitioners, and we are passionate believers that the people we serve must play a dramatically bigger role in giving.

It is also shockingly easy to waste a billion dollars. When betting big, we should expect to leverage much-larger forces like government and private sector, with 10x or even 100x results. We need to intentionally harness those forces. It can also be challenging to execute large gifts because many social sector organizations have less operating capacity. We must do heavy field work to ensure good execution, and stage-gate projects in a way that minimizes risk.

Practical

Easier said than done: how to actually execute $1B+ initiatives to change humanity

Successfully executing a billion+ dollar gift in social change is a lot harder than it looks. As three co-founders of this initiative, we collectively employ 10,000+ full-time staff across a dozen countries and we spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year with high effectiveness. Along the way, we have encountered challenges with refining new program models to combat some of the world’s most entrenched social problems, rigorous measurement of social outcomes, staying aligned and hearing host governments, and keeping HR/ finance/ tech/ logistics growing smoothly.

That is why we are starting Prevail, which seeks to help givers to quietly explore the possibility of world-changing gifts – and then eventually to help them execute in the field. Drawing from our collective experience, we offer five services to help deal with five major barriers to successful gift execution.

Amplify client voice

It is a moral imperative that today’s solutions be co-designed together with end “beneficiaries,” and not solely envisioned by a few individuals. We have the field capacity to engage end-clients and the organizations that represent them in authentic conversation, to survey thousands of end-clients in several countries, and to set up meaningful client governance structures.

Identify practical solutions

We can help givers and giving organizations to quietly and logically learn about a field – for example by interviewing dozens of the top practitioners and academics in that field, without setting undue expectations.

Identify and prep field organizations

As a concept begins moving towards possible execution, Prevail can help select implementing organizations who can execute the concept – for example we can deploy a full-time staff person into the field together with each implementing organization. We can customize support for each organization to get them ready to metabolize big funding.

Political economy and risk

It is important to approach social problems with appropriate humility, and learn from existing practice. We can mobilize the field staff to engage hundreds of government and other private stakeholders – and meet them quarterly. This is important for creating an enabling environment for scale. We can also minimize accounting, compliance, and other risks – and stage-gate programs so that funding is released gradually, with demonstrated success.

Support and monitor execution

As field practitioners, we know how to assist implementing organizations with execution without getting in their way. If implementing organizations need more accounting and budget support, more government relations support, more logistics support, more HR support, etc – we can assist them with seconded and shared staff resources to make this possible.

It is a moral imperative that today’s solutions be co-designed together with end “beneficiaries,” and not solely envisioned by a few individuals. We have the field capacity to engage end-clients and the organizations that represent them in authentic conversation, to survey thousands of end-clients in several countries, and to set up meaningful client governance structures.

We can help givers and giving organizations to quietly and logically learn about a field – for example by interviewing dozens of the top practitioners and academics in that field, without setting undue expectations.

As a concept begins moving towards possible execution, Prevail can help select implementing organizations who can execute the concept – for example we can deploy a full-time staff person into the field together with each implementing organization. We can customize support for each organization to get them ready to metabolize big funding.

It is important to approach social problems with appropriate humility, and learn from existing practice. We can mobilize the field staff to engage hundreds of government and other private stakeholders – and meet them quarterly. This is important for creating an enabling environment for scale. We can also minimize accounting, compliance, and other risks – and stage-gate programs so that funding is released gradually, with demonstrated success.

As field practitioners, we know how to assist implementing organizations with execution without getting in their way. If implementing organizations need more accounting and budget support, more government relations support, more logistics support, more HR support, etc – we can assist them with seconded and shared staff resources to make this possible.

We do not take the execution of large social change initiatives lightly. However, collectively we have seen a reasonably complete playbook of every problem an organization might encounter while scaling up. We are keen to use that experience to support the execution of visionary philanthropic initiatives that seek to achieve global change.

If you are a serious giver or giving organization interested in changing the world: reach out! You can remain confidential if you wish, and we take that very seriously. We’d love a chance to have a zero-expectations introductory conversation, and hope at a minimum it would prove thought-provoking and fun. hello@one-5.hipdev.pro