What Meta Charity Funders funded in Spring 2025 - Fourth Round Retrospective

By Ambitious Impact, Joey🔸, Martijn Klop 🔸 @ 2025-10-23T11:58 (+18)

About MCF

Meta Charity Funders (MCF) is a funding circle that aims to fund charitable projects working one level removed from direct impact.

We are currently taking applications for our Fall 2025 funding round (deadline on October 31st). Read more here and apply here.

We are also continuously looking for new members to help us close important funding gaps in the early- and midstage metacharity ecosystem. By being part of MCF, you join experienced co-funders, gain access to a coordinated application process and a space where you can share knowledge and insights with other meta charity funders. Express interest here or read about eligibility on our website.

Why we did or did not grant to applicants:

We find that most opportunities that we are excited to fund fall in two categories:

New, promising ideas with a strong founding team and a relatively smaller (<$50k) funding ask, a good strategy and clear outcome metrics. Despite lacking track record, we are excited to fund relatively cheap new experiments in the meta charity space.
Mid-stage organisations with initial strong track record and a good long term strategy which has already partially been validated. These organisations might still have few opportunities for long term funding, but we believe them to be on a path to long term sustainability and are excited to fund them in this critical phase.

In general, our scoring criteria that made us more or less excited to grant to projects were:

A clear theory of change with an apt amount of uncertainties for the current state of the project: we think young organisations should first demonstrate their ability to execute on relatively simple strategies before going wide and complex
A demonstrated gap or need for this project, ideally with concrete examples
Clear, measurable or traceable short- mid- and long term outcomes
Cost-effectiveness, either measured in counterfactual giving multipliers or more qualitatively in terms of the expected outcomes (such as career changes) per dollar

Round Summary

We received ~60 applications and ultimately funded 8 projects. In total, our members granted ~$530,000 in this round. The next grant round applications are open until October 31st, and we welcome similar applications as we did in the last round.

Note that during the last round, we coordinated closely with Open Philanthropy on their Effective Giving RFP. Grants that were cofunded by MCF members and also applied to the MCF RFP are included in the list below

Grants made by MCF members

Total: $530.000

Giv Effektivt - $210.000:

“We seek funding to continue Giv Effektivt’s existence and growth trajectory. We estimate a 9.5x – 21.7x counterfactual giving multiplier in 2022 – 2024 … We’ll continue to execute on our detailed growth strategy, focusing primarily on media outreach, building relations with our HNW-donors and improving our website, SEO and donor experience”

Notes: We’re excited about their track record, growth and strategy and think this is a well performing effective giving initiative which we are excited to support.

Etkili Bağış (Turkish Effective Giving Initiative) - $20.000

“Etkili Bağış is a fundraising organization focused on informing and inspiring individuals in Turkey to donate effectively, directing their contributions towards charities with the greatest impact by engaging affluent and HNWIs. We aim to develop individual giving in Turkey and supporting Turkish-speaking donors to give to the most cost-effective international orgs. Our goal is that, by our fifth year, every $1 invested in our organization will generate $10 for the most effective charities in the world. We aim to make effective, frequent donations the standard in Turkey.”

Notes: We think this is a promising new Effective Giving Initiative with a bright and dedicated founder. This is an inexpensive grant to try and seed a new EGI with the potential of turning a significant multiplier.

Community Coordination for Consultations - $51.600

“The project aims to mobilise the European effective altruism and adjacent communities to influence government consultations. In person and online workshops will be run in specific countries to assist individuals to make evidence-based submissions to ongoing public governmental consultations related to important cause areas. By coordinating large numbers of submissions from the community, the outcomes of the consultation can potentially be influenced. A submission guide would be provided to attendees with arguments sourced from experts. The role would also potentially involve coordinating aligned political and industry groups to ask them to make submissions.”

Notes: We supported Ben before and are excited about where he is taking this project. We think this is an excellent example of a new meta initiative worth pursuing. CCC is well organised and seems capable of executing on this plan and consultations seem like an underexplored avenue to have a positive impact on major pressing issues like AI Safety, Foreign Aid and Animal Welfare.

Mieux Donner - EGI in France and Switzerland - $149.333

“Mieux Donner is an effective giving organisation based in France. We were incubated by AIM in July 2024 with seed funding of $95,000. From July 2024 to March 2025 we have … raised 111,911 euros from 156 donors. Signed up ten 10% pledgers and four trial pledgers. Our giving multiplier is currently 1.2 excluding pledges and 9.4 including pledges using GWWC’s estimate.”

Notes: They’ve seen good early results including recurring donations, are led by a competent team and have strong leads for future growth.

Impact Catalyst - Incubation Program for Social Entrepreneurs - $18.000

“Impact Catalyst is a Spanish-language incubation program for early-stage social entrepreneurs in Latin America, providing training, mentorship, and research support to build cost-effective, EA-aligned organizations. It targets talent—including individuals who did not enter/apply to Charity Entrepreneurship — offering a structured, low-risk pathway to test and scale interventions. The program translates key EA frameworks, expands the regional EA ecosystem, and ensures that promising yet unsupported initiatives maximize their effectiveness. By minimizing opportunity costs and fostering long-term accountability, Impact Catalyst fills a critical gap, enabling high-potential entrepreneurs to create scalable, evidence-based social ventures.”

A driven and smart founder, a bold idea which might not succeed as planned but is worth the (relatively inexpensive) experiment and has clear outcomes that they want to hit in 12 months.

EA community building in South Africa - $35.000

“We do EA community-building in South Africa, primarily aiming to address talent and skill bottlenecks for high-impact work. Driven by voluntary efforts since 2024 by a team of about 7 organisers, our community has grown to several hundred members with ≈180 people in the WhatsApp community, a further ≈150 fellowship participants on Slack and ≈850 email subscribers. Our 2025 Intro EA Program had 50 successful completions. In 2024, we ran the EA SA Summit 2024 with 52 attendees and several actions taken. We connected LEEP and Healthy Futures Global with 5 short-term volunteers. We support community builders in neighbouring countries.”

Notes: Positive takes on the leadership, well structured execution and we’re excited to support their community building work outside of the regional conferences (which is likely separately funded). We also noted tangible benefits for high impact NGOs working in South- and Sub Sahara Africa from the EA SA community, including high value referrals.

Effective Environmentalism - $38.000

“Environmental challenges are seriously threatening global health and development and the safety of future generations. The resources (time and money) available for tackling environmental issues are often spent ineffectively or counterproductively. The environmental movement could become orders of magnitude more effective by embracing the principles of effective altruism (EA): prioritisation, impartiality, truth-seeking, and collaboration. While EA-aligned climate organisations exist, efforts to grow an EA-inspired environmental movement are lacking. The aim of Effective Environmentalism is to grow an environmental movement based on the principles of effective altruism through building a community, offering resources, and guiding talented individuals towards impactful careers.”

Notes: We see the value in a restart of Effective Environmentalism. There’s a large demand for people in and adjacent to the EA community for seeing EA principles applied to environmental cause areas and there is a lot of potential to raise neglected issues (air pollution, farmed animal welfare) on the agenda of environmentalist groups. EE’s current team is capable and are moving fast, and we are excited to see what they will achieve in the coming years.

EA Indonesia - $9.000

This is a renewal from a grant made last year, so we have limited notes. However, we are excited about the proliferation of EA LMIC groups, especially in large countries where high impact NGOs often seek value aligned talent and are excited to support EA Indonesia into its next phase.

Lastly

If you are considering to fund any of the projects that we have funded in the past, we're happy to share more extensive notes. We're also excited to hear feedback on our track record and aproach. You can reach us at metacharityfunders@gmail.com