AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather 

How does the availability of malaria vaccines change AMF's strategy going forward?

What, if anything, would you do differently if you were starting AMF today?

I have organized two small fundraisers with AMF, and in both cases, Rob was incredibly proactive and helpful, taking time to immediately respond to emails and hop onto calls. Many thanks, but a question remains: where does he find the time, and which time-management strategies does he use?

I understand that (unlike most EA or EA-adjacent organizations) AMF is almost entirely run by volunteer labor. Could you talk about your decision to operate this way, and what challenges or benefits you’ve gotten from this approach?

Are AMF looking into being involved with malaria vaccine distribution?

How does AMF collect feedback from the end-recipients of bednets? How does feedback from them inform AMF's programming?

Top advice to new charity entrepreneurs?

In what situations does it seem like a good idea to start a new (initially small) charity rather than supporting existing efforts?

(E.g. looking at the outside at Malaria work in 2005 one might have felt like this was a huge area with a lot of attention from big global health organisations and it would be surprising if a new small organisation could be able to bring something different / useful that existing organisations couldn't)

Bit of context - I've just started a TB charity and am curious about this for TB too!

Now you have a bigger team have you found that comes with much more overhead in people management, internal communications etc?

The global health community seems to view verticalisation / silo'd provision of health services as non-ideal. (E.g. one ecosystem set up for HIV work another separate ecosystem for Malaria, another one for maternal health etc. But if you're ill you want to go to a primary care facility and get whatever it is you need.) Do you have any concerns about AMF's work being silo'd from other health work in this way?

Can you talk us through, as transparently as you can, the costs and benefits of being so transparent?

On what frequency do you think about organisational goals and strategy internally? (If you're happy to share) E.g. do you set quarterly goals, think about big picture strategy annually etc

I notice that on your Distributions page, you have distributions pencilled in for the Democratic Republic of the Congo up to 2025. Are these distributions contingent on additional funding? If not, which countries would you be most likely to expand your distributions to in 2024 and 2025 if your funding gap is closed? Thanks!

AMF has leveraged corporate support and partnerships perhaps more than other charities do. Does that seem true to you? If so, is it something you think lean nonprofits should be doing more?

Did you get pushback from people in the early days who questioned the usefulness of the role AMF you could play or your model of delivery? How did you handle such pushback?

What's your opinion of the other kinds of work that the Global Fund funds for malaria prevention?

(E.g. At one extreme: GF funds a sensible portfolio of activities and if you were going to spend multiple billions you couldn't do that much better. At the other extreme: The majority of malaria work could stand to be a lot more effective than it currently is - maybe even nets would be a much bigger part of the portfolio)

I've published the podcast version of this AMA, with a transcript, here. Thanks for all the great questions!

Thanks for all the great questions! We will host the meeting, at 6pm UTC, here. Feel free to join us live (where there may be time for more audience questions), or wait for the recording to be released afterwards.