How Locally-led Foundations Create Systems Change — A 5-Step Playbook From Central Square, DGMT & Lemann
Leaders in India, South Africa & Brazil charted a new path for philanthropy. What did they do right?
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What frustrates me most about education in the Global South is that too often, decisions about who/what gets funded, and by how much, are made by white people sitting in rooms in the US and Europe.
92% of US foundation presidents are white.
As a white American who lived and worked for 7 years in Kenya and South Africa, this is a dynamic I’ve seen firsthand. I’ve both been part of the problem — as a board member of a US-based foundation — and part of the solution, trying to get more leaders funded who reflect the race/ethnicity of the students they serve (as a Co-Founder of Metis). But solving the pipeline problem does not solve the underlying issue: that the people who control the money — who usually have the most POWER — are too often far from the realities of the countries they are trying to serve.
In light of Black Lives Matter, the work of Camelback, and increasing conversations about proximity in the funder community, this is starting to change, slowly. But as philanthropists and investors have this moment of reckoning and search for ways to do better, there are 3 funders who can show us how to do things differently:
- DG Murray Trust (DGMT), founded in 1979 in South Africa.
- Lemann Foundation (LF), founded in 2002 in Brazil.
- Central Square Foundation (CSF) founded in 2012 in India.
Although all 3 evolved separately, they have a lot in common. This playbook shares the 5 guiding values/methods that set them apart. And it shares the action steps that more people can take to support foundations like these to exist in more countries. Non-local funders can co-fund with local philanthropists. And local philanthropists or leaders can start new foundations that operate on these 5 principles:
- Commit deep pockets to move the needle on ONE issue — education — with a long-term view.
- Catalyze innovation across one country’s ENTIRE system — public & private.
- Hire a LOCAL team to understand complex political context & sense emerging leverage points.
- Create incubation networks to test EARLY-stage solutions through a VC mindset.
- Use public goods/events/spaces to INFLUENCE how others move & create a hub effect.
1. Commit deep pockets to move the needle on ONE issue — education — with a long-term view.
All three foundations were started by wealthy men who wanted to change the countries they were born in. Unlike most foundations, which work across multiple sectors (such as health, agriculture, etc), these 3 all decided to focus on one issue: making sure a higher quality education reaches more children and youth in their country. While most funders define success from their investments/grants on a quarterly or yearly cycle, these 3 foundations measure their progress with a longer-term horizon. They are willing to be patient and see results across DECADES, in addition to years.
All 3 founders are committed to the well-being of their home country over the long-term, and they all allocated significant portions of their wealth to this — a model other philanthropists can follow. Ashish Dhawan left a career in private equity to launch CSF, co-found a liberal arts university, and serve as a board member to education nonprofits such as Teach for India. Jorge Paulo Lemann is the 114th richest person in the world (as of August 2021) due to 3G Capital and other investments; he founded LF and started a scholarships organization, Fundação Estudar. Douglas George Murray and his wife Eleanor used their shares from a family-owned construction, engineering, and mining company to endow DGMT (Douglas died in 1964).
(One could critique the sources of these philanthropists’ massive wealth — private equity’s promotion of layoffs, running a white-owned business involved in mining in apartheid South Africa, etc— but that is not the focus of this article.)
2. Catalyze innovation across one country’s ENTIRE system — public & private.
The next method that makes these 3 different is that while most funders work across multiple countries or regions, these 3 focus on one country. They take a hyper-local approach that goes deep into one geography instead of going wide/shallow across huge swaths of the world. Because India, Brazil, and South Africa’s populations are so large (1.4 billion, 214 million, and 60 million), this still allows them to reach high numbers of people.
While most funders tend to support one type of organization (either for- or non-profits) all doing a similar type of work in a silo (say low-fee private schools, edtech, ECD, government reforms, etc), these 3 use an ECOSYSTEM APPROACH. They recognize that to change an education system, you need leaders in every silo across one country: edtech companies and private school chains; ed nonprofits; and government schools, government policymakers, and teacher unions. These 3 work with all types.
Usually when funders talk about systems change, they mean a specific intervention being adopted at scale; when these three talk about it, they mean an entire system changing through a diverse set of interventions over time.
For example:
- LF shaped their government’s curriculum policy; they support school districts to replicate Sobral city’s transformation from 1,366th to 1st in learning outcomes — and fund over 100 organizations, such as Ensina Brasil (teacher training) and Consed (network for government education officials).
- DGMT funds a laser-focused 5-year strategy/ theory of change for improving child and youth outcomes, including efforts to prevent nutritional stunting in toddlers, ensure children can read, and help youth find work — such as SmartStart (ECD centers) and Nali’bali (reading support).
- CSF supports government, edtech and private schools — such as equipping 4 states to strengthen foundational skills, funding edtech products, and sharing information for parents on low-fee private school options.
3. Hire a LOCAL team to understand complex political context & sense emerging leverage points.
But what is most important to enable all of this, is that all 3 are locally-based and grounded. This means:
- They are run by staff and management teams who are almost all citizens of the country they are trying to change — and overseen by board members who mostly are.
- Their HQ offices are in Delhi, São Paulo and Cape Town.
- Almost all of their staff live in the country.
- They fund mostly organizations led by people who are also from the country.
The majority of education funders are from the US/Europe and live there, with occasional trips to see their grantees. However, in most countries in the Global South, local education leaders face corrupt governments, powerful teachers unions, deep ethnic or religious divides, entrenched inequality, and the legacies of wars or colonialism. This political context matters — and it changes quickly based on the next election, Cabinet reshuffle, or protest. In contrast to outsiders who fly in, insiders can sense this unfolding context and rapidly respond to seize opportunities as they arise.
For example, when the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic caused many schools to halt in-person learning, LF worked with Imaginable Futures and Sincroniza Educação to respond quickly and support districts to pivot to remote learning; this built on their earlier effort to fund Khan Academy to translate content to Portuguese. DGMT also supported health outcomes during Covid-19 by funding daily radio broadcasts to educate the public.
CSF has also taken advantage of windows of opportunity to work with government. In 2019, they supported the central government to create an index that helped states see their strengths and growth areas. In 2021, they launched a program that recruits bright professionals to strengthen state education systems. These kinds of initiatives are only possible when a funder team has strong relationships with government officials and the context to know who to go to, how is the right way, and when is the right moment to make an ask.
(It must be noted that these 3 do still have room to go in ensuring that their staff reflects the race/ethnicity/gender percentages of the population they are serving. For example, in majority-Black South Africa and majority-non-white Brazil, LF’s top 3 leaders are white, and DGMT’s top 3 leaders are also white — both are 2 male and 1 female. CSF’s advisory board is 4 male, 1 female.)
4. Create incubation networks to test EARLY-stage solutions through a VC mindset.
Because their staff knows the local ecosystem deeply, these 3 foundations can take risks to fund unproven models. Unlike most foundations, who tend to support later-stage organizations, these 3 sense and fund white spaces where change needs to happen. They have a VC (venture capital) mindset, which means they are willing to bet on many ideas, knowing that only a few will eventually succeed. Because they have a long-term view, they know that they fund not only individual solutions to problems, but rather create the conditions for an ecosystem of successful solutions to emerge and scale — and know that even ‘failures’ will bring useful learning about what is needed.
For example, all 3 fund networks that actively source new solutions from entrepreneurs and provide them with capital and technical assistance:
- DGMT funded the launch of Innovation Edge, which has invested in over 47 ideas to solve challenges in South Africa’s early childhood sector — and Ilifa Labantwana, which supports the government to strengthen its ECD policies and programs.
- LF funds the Innovation Center for Brazilian Education, which supports edtech solutions to scale-up in government schools. They also actively launch new ventures themselves, such as Instituto Reúna, which tests new services/ tools for teaching and learning, and Movimento pela Base, a movement to support curriculum reforms (for more on how LF builds ventures, read this case study).
- CSF runs an Edtech Lab that designs edtech products.
They also have helped test new results-based instruments to fund and scale up innovations:
- The CEO of DGMT was an advisor to the design of a social impact bond for ECD in South Africa.
- In 2019, CF helped to underwrite the risk for a development impact bond to improve foundational learning outcomes in Haryana state.
5. Use public goods/events/spaces to INFLUENCE how others move & create a hub effect.
Unlike most foundations, which keep most of their research internal-only, these 3 intentionally publish materials for public use, or they fund other entities to do so. They recognize that alongside funding grantees, they have greater power when they influence other funders to shift their work. They:
- Publish research & media: CSF publishes a newsletter with updates from across India’s ed system and research such as a report on trends in the sector of private schools that serve half of India’s children. DGMT publishes a magazine and a podcast.
- Publish honest annual reports: DGMT’s annual report tracks their progress on their theory of change, what they have learned, and what they think other funders should focus on.
- Participate in donor networks: They share knowledge and influence other donors; CSF/DGMT are members of International Education Funders Group.
- Fund journalism about their ed sector: LF funded Jeduca, an association for education journalists in Brazil.
- Fund education researchers: LF sponsors Brazilian researchers to attend Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and Columbia Teachers College, and a Professorship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
- Create physical hubs: DGMT is located in the same building as Innovation Edge and Ilifa Labantwana; this shared office space creates a hub for education and ECD in South Africa.
- Host events: CSF hosts EduSquare, a bi-annual event for their nonprofit partners.
All these activities create spaces that bring together actors in their ecosystems to build relationships and share knowledge. This leads to a stronger ecosystem with more partnerships and rigorous research about what is working and what is not.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. If you are a non-local funder — strengthen your impact by CO-FUNDING with local philanthropists.
If you are a foundation trying to support education innovation and reforms in the Global South, but you do not live there, consider channelling some of your funds through foundations based in the countries you seek to impact — who are trying to operate on these 5 principles. You can either fund the foundations directly, or fund alongside them to give grants to the same organizations. This can be more efficient and effective than hiring your own in-country staff, as you won’t need to duplicate the work they already do to source and conduct due diligence on new organizations.
If you want to influence education in Brazil, India, or South Africa, you can fund or co-fund with LF, CSF, or DGMT. If you seek to impact other countries, you will need to do your own research or hire a consultant to help you find out which funders exist locally. For example, the US-based investor Imaginable Futures has co-funded projects with LF since 2017 and co-funded Innovation Edge with DGMT since 2014. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (with a global education team in London) funds CSF and their former Director of Global Education sits on its advisory board.
2. If you are a local philanthropist or leader trying to transform your ed system — start a NEW foundation or nonprofit that operates on these 5 principles.
LF, CSF and DGMT all changed the landscapes of Brazil, India, and South Africa. But we need organizations like these to exist in many more countries. Play a role in making this a reality:
- If you are a wealthy citizen in a Global South country, start your own foundation that operates on these 5 principles.
- If you don’t have enough resources on your own, team up with others to co-found a foundation together. For reference, DGMT distributes roughly $10.5 million per year — but you can start smaller.
- If you are a leader and not a philanthropist, start your own nonprofit that operates on these 5 principles and fundraise to staff it.
If more of us follow in the footsteps of Ashish Dhawan, Jorge Paulo Lemann, and Douglas and Eleanor Murray, the Global South will have more locally-based foundations creating systems change in education — and we will ensure that more children have the skills they need to thrive.
Kat Pattillo writes about education reform and innovation across the Global South. She is currently researching how hubs accelerate systems change in education (comparing Delhi, São Paulo, and 7 other cities), through an MPhil in Politics at Oxford. As a consultant, she also supports clients to design ecosystem-building initiatives. Kat previously taught at African Leadership Academy in South Africa and co-founded Metis in Kenya. For more of her writing, follow her on LinkedIn or sign up for the EdWell newsletter
