Mulago Foundation

Mulago Foundation
Founded1993[1]
Founder
[1]
TypePrivate foundation
Location
Key people
  • Kevin Starr (CEO)
  • Kristin Gilliss Moyer (COO)
[1]
Websitemulagofoundation.org

The Mulago Foundation is an American private foundation based in San Francisco that supports organizations with scalable solutions to poverty and environmental challenges. It provides unrestricted grants and, in some cases, debt or equity to nonprofits and for-profit organizations. Its focus is on creating a better life for the world’s poorest people, by investing in agriculture, climate change, education, health & medicine, and water & sanitation.[2][3][4]

The foundation was originally envisioned by Rainer Arnhold, a San Francisco paediatrician and philanthropist, whose career combined clinical practice with public health work in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He taught at Mulago Hospital, Uganda. Following his death in 1993 while leading a medical training expedition in Bolivia, the foundation was officially created by his brother Henry Arnhold.[1][5]

Operations

Criteria for funding organizations

The Foundation's stated goal is to identify and invest in the highest impact giving opportunities. They look for three things in potential investment projects: a priority problem, a scalable solution, and an organization that can deliver. Once they identify an organization they wish to fund through their fellowships, they provide unrestricted and continued funding. The Mulago Foundation does not currently accept or solicit proposals. The foundation itself tries to locate organizations to give to through their own network and referrals.[6] The main way they start funding organizations is through their two Fellowship programs - the Rainer Arnhold Fellowship[7] focused on poverty solutions and the Henry Arnhold Fellowship focused on climate solutions.[8][9] Currently the only route into the portfolio is through their fellowships. [10]

Portfolio management and accountability

Mulago assesses organizations in its portfolio using internal frameworks described in Making Ourselves Accountable. Their frameworks assess an organization's progress towards taking their idea to scale. Organizations are managed through annual milestones, that look at the "enoughs": is the idea good enough to be worth scaling? This is about impact: they look for consequential effect sizes, high-quality evidence, and a strong case for lasting change. Is it big enough to make a meaningful dent in a big problem? This is about scope—the overlap of where it’s needed and where it would work, and what factors inherent to the model might constrain scale. Is it simple enough that it can be done by others? Specifically the doer at scale (mostly governments, sometimes other NGOs or businesses). The evidence for this starts with a replicable model and is confirmed by observable progress at replication by others. And is it cheap enough that the payer at scale—government, philanthropy, customers, or Big Aid would pay?[11][12]

Organizations funded by Mulago

As of Aug 2026, the Mulago Foundation website listed about 80 organizations include Babban Gona, Blue Ventures, Bridges to Prosperity, Dost, Development Media International, Digital Green, Educate Girls, Food for Education, Foundation for Ecological Security, Friendship Bench, Global Forest Watch, Kheyti, Medha, Noora Health, One Acre Fund, Planet Indonesia, SaveLIFE Foundation, Ubongo Learning, Urgewald and Youth Impact.[13]

Leadership

The Mulago Foundation is led by Chief Executive Officer Kevin Starr, who joined in 1994 and developed the organization's core investment framework.[14] In 2003, Starr established the foundation's Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program.[15] Chief Operating Officer Kristin Gilliss Moyer joined in 2013 and co-created the Henry Arnhold Fellows Program.[16] Partner Avery Bang joined in 2022 to direct portfolio strategy, sourcing, and fellow programs.[17] Avery Bang was previously a Rainer Arnhold Fellow and CEO of Bridges to Prosperity (a Mulago portfolio organization). [18]

Reception

Mulago's CEO Kevin Starr is a regular contributor to the Stanford Social Innovation Review and has regularly been in their top ten most read articles of the year.[19][20][21] The concept of the "doer and payer at scale" was first introduced by Kevin Starr and Laura Hattendorf in an article in 2015[22]. The term is now used by many in the social impact sector[23][24].

Charity evaluator GiveWell described the Mulago Foundation as an "impact-focused" grantmaker (alongside the Gates Foundation, Skoll Foundation, Children's Investment Fund Foundation, Jasmine Social Investments, and Peery Foundation). GiveWell stated in 2011 that it would consider the list of Mulago Foundation grantees (along with those of the other impact-focused grantmakers listed above, as well as the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation) as part of its list of charities to review to see if they qualified for GiveWell's highest ratings.[25][26]

The Mulago Foundation was also mentioned on the Tactical Philanthropy blog, and Kevin Starr of Mulago wrote a guest post for the blog.[27][28]

Kevin Starr of Mulago wrote an article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review describing Mulago's definition of impact and some of the subtleties associated with the concept.[29] His piece was referenced on the Acumen Fund blog.[30]

On March 11, 2014, Kevin Starr and Laura Hattendorf of the Mulago Foundation wrote a lengthy article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review skeptical of cash transfer charity GiveDirectly's accomplishment so far, saying that the evidence so far was underwhelming, though there might still be bigger gains a few years down the line. They contrasted GiveDirectly with other charities that they felt delivered more bang for the buck: One Acre Fund, VisionSpring, KickStart International, and Proximity Designs.[31] Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell wrote a lengthy response countering that GiveDirectly's impact had been more rigorously established, and that Starr and Hattendorf were using flawed metrics to judge impact.[32] The GiveDirectly board independently published a response on the GiveDirectly blog.[33]

Similar resources

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "About Mulago". Mulago Foundation. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  2. ↑ "Mulago Foundation I: Rigorous but Realistic Measurement". Stanford Graduate School of Business. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  3. ↑ "Mulago Foundation". www.idealist.org. Archived from the original on 2021-01-18. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  4. ↑ "Mulago Foundation". Blue Ventures. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  5. ↑ "Mulago Foundation | Devex". www.devex.com. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  6. ↑ "How we fund". Mulago Foundation. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  7. ↑ "Rainer Arnhold Fellowships | Mulago Foundation". TheShareWay. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  8. ↑ "Mulago Foundation | Rainer Fellows Program". www.mulagofoundation.org. Retrieved 2024-05-24.
  9. ↑ Grants, AndPurpose (2025-07-25). "Henry Arnhold Fellowship 2026". AndPurpose. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  10. ↑ "FAQs". www.mulagofoundation.org. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  11. ↑ "How We Fund". www.mulagofoundation.org. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  12. ↑ Frederick, Denver (2021-07-28). "Mulago Foundation CEO on Mission, Impact, Scaling and More". Denver Frederick. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  13. ↑ "Our Portfolio". Mulago Foundation. Archived from the original on 2022-08-12. Retrieved 2022-12-18.
  14. ↑ Starr, Kevin. "Stumbling into Philanthropy (SSIR)". ssir.org. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  15. ↑ "Ep 76: Funders: The Power to Change the System". Dimagi. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  16. ↑ Forward, Fast (2026-02-23). "Fast Forward's 2026 Alumni Retreat Recap". Fast Forward. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  17. ↑ "Mulago - Leadership Team". THE ORG. Retrieved 2026-07-29.
  18. ↑ "Avery Bang - Mulago Foundation". www.mulagofoundation.org. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  19. ↑ "Kevin Starr | Bio". ssir.org. Retrieved 2024-05-24.
  20. ↑ Editors, SSIR. "The 10 Most Popular SSIR Articles of 2024 (SSIR)". ssir.org. Retrieved 2026-08-19. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  21. ↑ SSIR. "The 10 Most Popular SSIR Articles of 2025 (SSIR)". ssir.org. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  22. ↑ Hattendorf, Kevin Starr & Laura. "The Doer and the Payer: A Simple Approach to Scale (SSIR)". ssir.org. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  23. ↑ Impact, Spring (2025-05-08). "The Doer & Payer framework: Make scaling work in the real world • Spring Impact". Spring Impact. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  24. ↑ "Scaling". Innovation for Impact Network. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
  25. ↑ "2011 international aid process review". GiveWell. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  26. ↑ Karnofsky, Holden (February 21, 2011). "GiveWell's plan for 2011: specifics of research". GiveWell. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
  27. ↑ "What is Impact All About?". Tactical Philanthropy. 2010-11-12.
  28. ↑ Starr, Kevin (2010-07-27). "A Different Kind of Philanthropy". Tactical Philanthropy.
  29. ↑ Starr, Kevin (2012-01-24). "The Trouble with Impact Investing". Stanford Social Innovation Review.
  30. ↑ Dichter, Sasha (2012-01-25). "Your chance to shape a sector". Acumen Fund blog. Archived from the original on 2012-07-31. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
  31. ↑ Starr, Kevin; Hattendorf, Laura (March 11, 2014). "GiveDirectly? Not So Fast. We are mistaking an important experiment for a proven solution". Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  32. ↑ Karnofsky, Holden (March 20, 2014). "Big Impact vs. Big Promises". Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved March 21, 2014.
  33. ↑ "What's the hype evidence?". GiveDirectly (blog). March 17, 2014. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
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