2025 and beyond
An ambitious future
We deployed more to charity in the first two weeks of 2025 than we did in our first six years.
In January, we published All In: Strategies for Climate Philanthropists in a New Political Landscape. Our latest climate report presents the first systematic mapping of climate philanthropy priorities during the second Trump administration and beyond, and was featured in the Wall Street Journal.
58 people gathered for our sixth annual winter retreat at the end of January. Over five days of sessions and skiing, our community discussed how to navigate global instability and this era of new perils with some exceptional speakers, including Rory Stewart, Annie Jacobsen, and our own Christian Ruhl.
The suspension of US foreign aid left millions of lives hanging in the balance, so we took action and launched the Rapid Response Fund.
We partnered with The Life You Can Save to launch the Rapid Response Fund in mid-February.
Designed to bridge urgent funding gaps and sustain essential programs, the Rapid Response Fund ensures high-impact organizations can continue to deliver lifesaving interventions in global health, extreme poverty, and humanitarian aid. Like our other pooled funds, it's backed by our rigorous research to identify the most cost-effective organizations.
Read more about it in the Associated Press, Vox, and Devex.
In its first 8 weeks, we:
Raised
$3.5M
for the Fund
Received
206
media mentions
Granted
$1.6M
to fill urgent gaps
“With a challenge of this magnitude, doing it alone isn’t optimal. The last thing the ecosystem needs right now is everybody funneling money to the same organization. What we need to be doing is coordinating and ensuring that as many programs and organizations as possible are being sustained. [Launching the fund] in partnership with Founders Pledge made a huge amount of sense, and we’re thankful they’re doing it with us.”
Jessica La Mesa
Co-CEO of The Life You Can Save and Founders Pledge member
“In Malawi, where the [Rapid Response Fund] grant was given, it will take years to recover. The grant that has been given has been very pivotal to us, specifically because we also have to get to the point where we can really show this and survive until we can really bring it forward. We are grateful to Founders Pledge and The Life You Can Save because it allows us to bridge a very important gap.”
Niek Versteegde
Founder & CEO of GOAL 3 - IMPALA, an RRF grantee
“We see an opportunity here to drive real reform in how malnutrition programming is administered in humanitarian settings. We think we can bring together a coalition of implementers of policymakers and donors to not just replace what’s been lost through the U.S. funding cuts, but also to build a much more effective system for responsive malnutrition treatment in emergencies.”
Ciarán Donnelly
SVP of Crisis Response, Recovery, and Development at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an RRF grantee
Looking ahead
We are living in a world in flux, and every action we take can have a ripple effect on the future.
By being strategic and supporting the most effective charities, we can begin to solve complex, urgent, and neglected problems—transforming the world.
The Founders Pledge community can lead the way, and our team will be behind it at every step.
When my husband James & I became members of Founders Pledge in 2018, I knew that we were joining a very special community. As a member, the Founders Pledge team expanded my thinking, guided me through comprehensive research data, and helped me see that this was no ordinary charity.
Joining the team one year later as Chief Operating Officer offered a chance to contribute directly to that mission, and I've been privileged to help scale the impact I first experienced as a member. Back in 2019, Founders Pledge directed roughly the equivalent amount to high-impact opportunities as we spent on our operating costs. I'm thrilled that in 2024, through focused effort on efficiency, strategic growth, and process refinement, we've multiplied that impact many times over. For every dollar spent on our operations in 2024, we helped our community grant $16 towards high-impact projects tackling pressing global problems – sixteen times the impact from just a few years ago.
Beyond a metric, this is powerful proof that our integrated model works. Our commitment to rigorous research, community stewardship, values-based advisory, and efficient operations truly multiplies the good we can collectively achieve in the world.
Looking ahead, it's this proven effectiveness that gives me immense confidence that our model can scale further without losing our agility. As we saw with the launch of the Rapid Response Fund, we can turn a need into an outcome swiftly. We have that entrepreneurial instinct of acting decisively and pivoting when needed while staying true to our purpose.
The past decade was only the start, and the next 10 years hold even greater potential. As both COO and member, I am more excited than ever about the journey ahead and the transformative change we can drive together.
With anticipation for what's next,
Charlotte Monico
COO & Founders Pledge member
