Giving Compass' Take:

• Innovative philanthropists can fund social change through big bets in philanthropy. The authors use the example of One Acre Fund, a nonprofit that was able to expand its services thanks to resources and grant funding through a network of "big bet" philanthropists. 

• What are the challenges for donors to adopt the big bet approach?

• Read about how big bets in philanthropy can advance social mobility. 

We run One Acre Fund, a nonprofit that provides professional services to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Our aim is to help them grow their way out of hunger and build lasting pathways to prosperity.

Every year, we work diligently to meet our budget and hopefully eke out a little bit of growth for the next year. But as we have grown, we have found it increasingly difficult to enlarge our grant base. Even though we are a leading organization in smallholder agriculture, with an effective and proven program model, we are serving less than 2 percent of the total need for our services.

In the nonprofit sector, there simply is no equivalent of venture capital, private equity, and public markets—in other words, the kinds of backers who can help us to truly grow.

An increasing number of philanthropists are beginning to change this story. These philanthropists are not merely interested in supporting a range of nonprofits. They wish to produce visible transformation in a few, targeted fields. They realize that accomplishing big things in society requires allocating commensurate resources. 

As we can attest, the effects are meaningful. One Acre Fund is proud to be one of seven nonprofits supported by the Audacious Project, which has organized a group of philanthropists to make big bets. Audacious donors agreed to give us $1 for every $2 in grants we raise from other sources, thereby contributing fully one-third of our grant funding over a five-year period. Immediately after the Audacious commitment, One Acre Fund grew from four countries to six. The resources enabled us to meaningfully test and expand the pilots we were running in new countries.

We believe social change organizations that can demonstrate successful programs models and the capacity for effective expansion can and should take intentional steps to become more “big bettable.” Here is our advice to fellow social change leaders:

  • Dream. Be ambitious. We found it helpful to take a step back from our immediate organizational needs to consider the entire field we were trying to shift.
  • Be careful in timing and make realistic plans. There have been many moments where our organization did not feel able to absorb transformative amounts of funding. In those instances, we invested to ready our programs for expansion.
  • Authentically reflect both heart and head. Seek ways to communicate the dignity of and inspiration we feel from the people we serve, such as the hardworking mother or the child striving to reach his full potential.

Big bets work. When philanthropists and social change leaders team up to think bigger, they create the potential for transformative change. Well-run organizations that stay grounded in the important day-to-day work while fostering a bigger vision for what they can achieve in their field may be able to find bold, innovative philanthropists who want to invest in their accomplishments.

Read the full article about big bets in philanthropy by Andrew Youn & Matthew Forti at Stanford Social Innovation Review.