Prevail Fund makes billion - dollar giving powerful, possible and practical

LEARN MORE
scroll arrow SCROLL
hero image
scroll arrow SCROLL

Today, social change falls short of the bounds of human ingenuity and boldness. It is possible to dream far bigger for social equity – and these dreams can be realistic and practical.

We believe it is possible to dream far bigger for social equity. We believe this is our most important shared mission as humans. And we believe that big dreams can be realistic and practical: Prevail is a new initiative led by three of the most successful social change leaders in the Global South. Collectively, our organizations spend hundreds of millions each year, employ 10,000+ people, and serve millions of people annually.

We believe it is surprisingly practical to envision, fund, and execute ambitious billion-dollar field programs. Each of these field programs should have the goal of leaving a visible, enduring mark on humanity. This can be accomplished in the social sector by doing two things:

1) Leadership resources: a truly bold program will deploy at least $1B in resources over time.

2) Leverage: Each program should harness 10x – 100x in resources from “equilibrium forces” like the private or public sectors, science, and humanm behavior.

GOVERNMENT

Andrew Carnegie's $1B gift started the public library movement; today we estimate $300B has been spent by the US government alone on public libraries.

MARKETS

$1.7B in CEPI grants and forgivable loans have guided tens of billions in private R&D, clinical trial, and manufacturing capacity to create and scale the COVID vaccine.

BEHAVIOUR

Bloomberg Philanthropies spent $1B to set laws and norms around smoking in 100 countries with 4 billion people - creating a post-smoking world before it even began.

SCIENCE

The March of Dimes raised $1B in grants to find and scale the polio vaccine in the 1970s, saving the US alone ~$100B in healthcare expenditure since then.

We can repeat historical lessons, and systematically apply them to future opportunities in social change. By thinking big, we can achieve 10x or even 100x cost-effectiveness and think far more ambitiously.

Three example programs we are developing

Make foundational literacy and numeracy education a basic human right for tens of millions of children and beyond. We will help at least 25,000,000 children in 10 countries significantly improve grade 1-3 foundational learning using evidence-backed, scalable pedagogy. Working through existing NGOs, companies and school systems, we will enhance coaching and professional development to 1m teachers, equip them with better materials, and ensure each student has access to high-quality print and digital material. $1B will leverage $20B+ in existing public school funding. We believe an initiative like this could address a meaningful portion of the global education poverty gap, and be an important contribution to the broader movement to ensure every child has a good foundational education, no matter how poor.

Make one billion air conditioning units 80% more energy efficient. In the next 30 years, India alone will install more than 1 billion air conditioning units – a significant portion of the global growth in air conditioning. Before this happens, we hope to help standardize the uniquely humid Indian market on AC units that use up to 80% less electricity. We plan to deploy $1B in targeted incentives, advance market commitments, and debt finance to AC manufacturers and electric utilities that will leverage more than $100B in Indian consumer spending, to attempt to avert ~10GT of CO2e by 2050. This could add momentum to improving the energy efficiency of all air conditioning and cooling technology globally.

Equip 20% of the world’s $1-a-day poor with tree seedlings worth $8B in asset value. Most of the world’s poor live in rural areas. We have a realistic $1B plan to give tree seedlings to 20% of the $1-a-day poor (~20m families). In less than ten years, those seedlings will grow to create ~$8B in timber asset value for the poorest – while also sequestering some CO2. Trees are the world’s most powerful investment asset class for the world’s poor. Tree-planting could perhaps be the world’s most cost-effective and scalable way of eliminating poverty, with a plausible path to one day reaching most of the world’s extreme poor.

Working together, we can achieve bigger goals in social change. Reach out for a no-expectations informational brainstorm: hello@prevailfund.org

Safeena Husain

Safeena Husain

Fred Swaniker

Fred Swaniker

Andrew Youn

Andrew Youn

Andrew Youn

Andrew Youn

Andrew Youn

Andrew Youn

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