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Report2021 Annual
Looking back on the last year, it’s clear that while we have accomplished much as a two-year old startup, there’s still so much potential ahead. Not just for our systems change goals, but for ourselves: we’re still reflecting and strategizing all the ways we can grow and evolve, intentionally. With your continued partnership and support, we can unleash even more breakthrough impact across new communities and new countries — while challenging the harmful power imbalances in doing philanthropy-as-usual.
With gratitude, Atti Worku C O- C E O Katie Bunten-Wamaru C O- C E O All photographs included in this report come from the African Visionary Fund’s library and were provided by our incredible Visionary Partners.
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We begin this letter with gratitude for you: our funders, partners, allies and supporters. We’re grateful for your generosity, your unwavering support during the toughest moments of the pandemic, and your strong belief in our mission to help more funders see the innovations of African visionaries as the catalysts to real, sustainable change on the continent. Without a supportive community like you, this journey would not be Together,possible.we welcomed 15 incredible Visionary Partners to our portfolio, committed a total of $2.5 million in funding, recruited our amazing co-CEO Atti Worku, were featured in the New York Times, expanded our internal team and board, created a more inclusive grantmaking process, and so much more.
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Although we may be at the beginning of our journey to dismantle inequities in funding flows and fuel African social innovation, together we are powerful. Just powerful enough to co-create better philanthropic systems and break down more barriers in 2022 with African visionaries!
OF THE FUND, Dear Friends
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$2.5 million in multiyear general operating support granted to African visionaries
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2021 by the Numbers 1.2 peoplemillionserved by the work of our first cohort of partners in 2021. 15 African PartnersVisionarytotalacross 9 different countries. 200+ African-led organizations reviewed in our 2021 grant round. 4.1 million committed toward our $10 million 2023 goal. 78% of funding raised is multi-year. Over 100 funders engaged in AVFund’s network via philanthropic advocacy & events. 11articles published by or featuring AVFund. 5events where co-CEOs Atti and Katie were panelists. 2
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OUR PARTNERS Where You Can Find 3
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We believe that proximity ma ers when tackling challenges and improving lives on the continent and beyond. We connect innovative African founders with the resources to positively impact their communities.
We envision a world where African visionaries are recognized by funders for their ability to drive progress and systems change sustainably.
Just 0.4% of all international humanitarian funding went to local and national African NGOs in Africa in 2019. A year later, we launched the African Visionary Fund to challenge this inequity and to dismantle the reasons why it remains stubbornly low. In 2021, our grants totaled $2.5 million USD and impacted over a million people in Africa.
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IMPACT IN ACTION
What sets us apart
But we’re not the ones in the drivers’ seat of this impact — our visionary partners are. We’re just channeling the fuel. Our job is quite simple: To right the power imbalances impacting how philanthropy-as-usual is practiced across sub-Saharan Africa.This means backing the people and communities closest to the problem, so that they can take the lead on innovating for impact.
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people have received BarefootLaw’s legal services and information in 2021.
During 2021, Uganda-based BarefootLaw continued to harness the power of digital technology and artificial intelligence to provide free legal support to Ugandans, particularly those living in rural Althoughareas.the pandemic kept BarefootLaw staff from working in-person together, their resilient team thrived during COVID-19, evolving their technology systems — including the launch of the third version of Winnie, an AI system for legal support, that was officiated by the Secretary of General of the Commonwealth.
Dandelion Africa worked tirelessly in 2021 to lessen the pandemic’s impact on their communities while supporting the health needs of women, adolescents and children across 12 sub-counties in Kenya. From building a youth center to raising awareness of their gender-based violence reporting system, the grassroots innovator is on a mission to improve the health and economic well-being of people living in marginalized and rural communities.
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BarefootLaw is working to expand their grassroots activities to people and communities at the last mile. This includes scaling their Community NODES from the current 12 to 50. i
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Kenyan women, teens and children accessed Dandelion’s services in 2021.
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For her incredible work as Founder and Executive Director of Dandelion Africa, Wendo Aszed was named a Change Champion by Population Matters, alongside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. i
Burundians accessed services through SaCoDé’s work in 2021.
Rays of Hope’s workbooks and handbook were officially approved by Malawi’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, giving RoH the opportunity to reach approximately 3 million students with practical, hands-on learning support. i In 2021, Malawi-based Rays of Hope continued to move the needle on their goal: to improve learning outcomes for disadvantaged children. With hands-on teacher training and robust student support, RoH’s afterschool program celebrated a 98% pass rate and all 10th graders who took the national standardized test passed — and are well on their way to their next big step, 11th grade!
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students impacted through their teacher training program
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SaCoDé celebrated its 10th anniversary! The organization serving thousands of youth, women, and men in six community centers started off in founder Françoise Grâce Nibizi’s garage as a small class of 15 women learning about sexual and reproductive health, and modern cleaning and hygiene techniques. i SaCoDé dedicated their year to building up new SaCoDé centers for health and income generation across communities in Burundi. To combat COVID-19, the organization launched a project that helped thousands of students and their teachers gain access to modern water ramps in schools across 178 rural primary and secondary schools.
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Wezesha Impact’s executive director, Solomon Kayiwa Mugambe, presented at Skoll World Forum, where he spoke about how virtual due diligence could help funders prioritize proximity and remove barriers to entry for grassroots organizations. i 2021 was a big year for Wezesha Impact, a Ugandan organization on a mission to launch young people into meaningful and productive Despiteemployment.challenges during the pandemic, the organization strengthened, designed and expanded to 75 vocational schools and 30 informal learning centers to deliver experiential business skills development for thousands of youth. 4,725Impact
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Tanzanian students accessed Shule Direct’s interactive learning content.
Shule Direct created the first locally-based e-learning platform in Tanzania based on the national curriculum by the Ministry of Education. In 2021, they followed up this remarkable milestone with another big release — Shule Direct Kids, a primary school app designed to help children in grades one through seven improve their literacy and numeracy skills with fun and engaging games.
Faraja Nyalandu, Shule Direct’s founder, was appointed Ambassador of Education by the Tanzania Education Authority in recognition of her organization’s work in improving access to quality education for children across the country. i
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young people accessed Wezesha’s virtual and in-person programs.
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In December 2021, we welcomed nine new visionary partners to the Fund:
AkiraChix bridges the global gender gap in tech by providing high-potential African women with technology and entrepreneurial skills to compete.
ACADES provides a platform for smallholder farmers to engage in agribusiness in Malawi.
Fundi Bots works with schools and communities in Uganda to provide hands-on and project-based STEM education in classrooms. Friendship Bench Provides sustainable mental healthcare rooted in communities.Zimbabwean Kidame Mart empowers rural female entrepreneurs in Ethiopia to provide last mile distribution for fast-moving consumer goods that enhance people’s standard of living. 9
Kajo Keji Health Institute addresses the severe shortage of medical personnel in South Sudan by educating high potential health care workers.
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Stay tuned throughout the year to see how they grow!
MSICHANA Initiative envisions a Tanzanian society where the rights of girls are safeguarded and advanced through empowerment, advocacy, and policy reform.
This-Ability is a social enterprise focused on advancing Disability Rights and Inclusion in Kenya.
WAVE is tackling youth unemployment by getting young people work-ready through skills development and helping employers find untapped talent for their business.
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As co-CEOs Katie and Atti learned to collaborate across two continents, they discovered another challenge: how to intentionally live out AVF’s values both internally and externally while juggling the demands of a fast-growing startup. What they found is that living out our values with intention — with our partners, funders, team, board, communications and more — takes much more time but results in much more sustainable and equitable impact.
For many African visionaries, securing funding often feels like a winding road riddled with hurdles and bureaucratic hoops, fueled by both conscious and unconscious bias. At the Fund, we decided to break down this barrier for our potential partners, with the intention to share our learnings with other
underwentsemi-finalistsTalentedduediligencecalls 26 virtualshortlistedvisionariesforsitevisits. Finalists are chosen based on sector diversity, geographic diversity, and funding need. 9
Atti’s lived experience as an African founder has given her firsthand experience of the realities and complexities that local innovators face, making her the perfect leader to execute the Fund’s mission to advocate for African visionaries as the experts and critical drivers of change.
Tracking Our Growth in 2021 Welcoming, Atti New Updates on Grantmaking
After we wrapped up the first participatory revision of the Fund’s grantmaking criteria and selection process, we set out to find our next cohort of African visionaries. We learned that there are more potential partners that we’d love to bring into our partner community than With the guidance of the AVFund’s Advisory Board and Grantmaking Committee, we employed our newly re-designed grantmaking criteria and selection process to handpick our second cohort. What this meant: Throughout the process, we met African visionary leaders — each with their own transformative abilities — who are performing brilliant work across the continent. It is clear that there is no pipeline issue when funding African-founded organizations, and we are grateful to all the amazing organizations who worked with us through our grantmaking process. Months total of rigorous interviewing,research,andduediligence. 5
Initial referrals, with 109researchedorganizationsinternally. 200
Atti Worku joined the African Visionary Fund in March as co-CEO, cementing our dedication to proximate leadership — and connecting across two different time zones!
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We kicked off the new year with an article in the Guardian and celebrated its close with an AVFund-hosted event where we announced nine new visionary partners. We kept busy during the middle months, too, with the New York Times article that highlighted our work in decolonizing aid, a piece written by Alliance Magazine covering the Fund’s unconventional approach to funding African social innovators, and an article from Devex featuring our model as a way funders can support African Weentrepreneurs.alsowrote and published a piece featured on the Skoll Foundation’s website about our co-leadership model and were featured in an article by True Africa. In all, we were featured in 11 articles last year. Our co-CEOs were honored to speak at five virtual events last year while hosting another two for our wonderful network of funders, partners and allies. Over the year, over 100 funders engaged in our events. At many of these virtual events, we witnessed firsthand — from funders, especially — the desire for people to learn more about how we can move even more funding to the proximate leaders positively impacting their communities on the ground. The beauty of being featured in well-known publications and events is that our lean and scrappy organization is getting its name out there while helping push conversations forward within philanthropy. Even more, these opportunities showed us just how ready the philanthropic sector was for our new, unconventional model and its mission to shift conversations about prioritizing proximity from theory to action. In the
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Beyond the grant Looking Forward into 2022 2021 was transformational for the African Visionary Fund and our visionary partners. While there’s so much to look forward to in 2022, our hearts are set on a few new ideas that we’d like to share.
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At the African Visionary Fund, we’re going beyond the grant — but not with traditional capacity building.The reality is that African-founded and led organizations have the skills, knowledge and ability to deliver on their mission and vision. Yet there is a biased perception in philanthropy of African-led organizations as in need of ‘capacity building.’ Instead of focusing on a biased assumption that there is a lack of capacity, we’re redefining our role: we are just here to facilitate access to resources that help our partners unlock greater organizational resilience and support their continued organizational development. While these portfolio services are being developed, our beyond grant services are grounded in our partners’ needs. That includes every interaction, email correspondence, site visit, and grantmaking and reporting mechanisms. These small changes can add up, snowballing into broader systems change for the better.
It’s a question as old as the idea of decolonizing philanthropy: is it possible to make the grant making process more inclusive and, if so, how? In 2021, this thought was top-of-mind for us, especially as we began our first and second round of grants in February and December. To find our new Visionary Partners, we relied on our broad network to send us referrals of organizations doing great things across Sub-Saharan Africa. Although this process put the 15 incredible local, African-led organizations we now have in our 2021 portfolio on our radar, we wondered: what about the organizations who are making big changes on the continent, but lack the connections? That’s a barrier we’re keen to break down — starting with an online application system that gives funders access to a broader pool of potential partners and makes our grantmaking process more open and inclusive. snowballing into broader systems change for the better.
Our online application process
Unraveling the often tricky coils of philanthropy-as-usual is tough. The AVFund is a living, breathing example of how everyday is a new opportunity to further center equity, truly and with greater impact. And going forward, we’d like to help other funders do the same.
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One of our big goals of 2022 is to connect every speaking and writing opportunity this year and beyond to one of our main systems change pillars. Why? We want to uncover spots in funding processes and operations that are primed for internal equity-centered transformation, sharing our learnings along the way. We will be collaborating with a systems change consultant and our partners to build our advocacy agenda, evolve our internal ruminations about systems change and proximate leadership, and to design actionable guideposts that we can live by as a team, as an organization, and as a global philanthropic community.
Building up our systems change ideology
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Here’s
Although the African Visionary Fund has grown our team, board, partner ecosystem and more, we’re still the small, scrappy startup that launched just two years ago. This means we’re still building a foundation for growth and uncovering new paths toward intentionally building out our team and systems. As the African Visionary Fund grows, we — together with our portfolio of remarkable partners — have the potential to reimagine philanthropy, pu ing resources in the hands of African visionaries who understand their communities best. We’re excited to have you along with us as we take this journey every day, every year. to 2022
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16 WorkuAttiCo-CEO Ethiopia Co-CEOBunten-WamaruKatie United States OnsandoAishaPortfolioManager Kenya GundermanStaceyAdministrativeCoordinator United States Amy BrakemanM.PresidentoftheUmsizi Fund Board Member, United States MugyenyiMelizsaCEOoftheGraçaMachelTrust Board Member, Kenya OmalaEvelynAfricaPortfolio Manager at Partners for Equity Board Chair, Australia RewaneMisanExecutiveDirector at Stanford Impact Labs Board Member, Nigeria Dr. PuplampuSuzyCEO&WealthManageratOctaneDC,Ltd Board Apprentice, Ghana SpeidMiltonCommunityManageratTheImPact Board Member, United States AND BOARD MEMBERS Our Team
17 InstituteHealthKejiKajoPhoto: UPDATE Financial Thanks to our partners, we are well on our way to raise $10 million dollars by the end of 2023! And as an early-stage fund, we’re continuing to balance effectiveness and efficiency to make sure we shift as many resources to African changemakers as possible, while building a foundation for growth. Currently, 81% of our expenses drive direct value to our African Visionary Partners through our grants and portfolio services. $1,494,591Revenue Foundations $19,692 Individuals $1,514,283 Total Revenue Expenses$1,104,687 Programs $144,797 &FundraisingDevelopment $127,198 Administration $1,376,682 Total Expenses Statement of Activities 2021 Distribution of Expenses Funding2020-2023Target 81% Programs 10% &FundraisingDevelopment 9% Administration $4.1M raised out of $10M by the end of 2023 goal
18 To all our supporters: thank you for your continued support of our mission and the missions of African Visionary Partners! TO OUR SUPPORTERS A Sincere Thank You F U N D
Do something that counts with your dollars. Many donors like you have already helped us stand up for a better way to put the right resources behind local African changemakers. We rely on donations to carry out our mission to place African visionaries at the forefront of the challenges facing their communities with flexible, multi-year funding. Let’s stop imagining a better world — let’s start living it. Get in touch with us DONATE TO AVFUND TODAY.
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Take the journey with us on social media! @AfricanVisionaryFund africanvisionaryfund @TheAVFund African Visionary Fund