Mulago Foundation

Mulago is a private foundation designed and built to carry on the life work of Rainer Arnhold. Rainer's passion was the prospect of a better life for children in poverty, and so the Foundation's work is focused on solutions that meet the basic needs of the poorest families. After Rainer's untimely death in 1993, his brother Henry Arnhold established the Foundation in its current form. Their obsession is impact; they provide unrestricted money to organizations that have a scalable solution and a demonstrable ability to deliver. The Fellows program is built to support social entrepreneurs, and while they do support scaling organizations, their portfolio is largely focused on start-ups. They are agnostic as to whether those organizations are for-or-non-profit – what they care about is which structure offers the best route to impact at scale. They continue to fund organizations as long as they show real progress toward lasting change at scale. The Foundation has a big mandate and a small staff, so they do not accept proposals. The Mulago Foundation taps a deep network to find the organizations that are a good fit. Given the very specific funding criteria, that has proven the most efficient process for all concerned.