Grants/Problem Statement

How This Works
Thumbnail Description Vision, Mission, Values Statements Leader Overview Board of Directors Management Team Awards and Recognition Financial Statements Problem Statement Programs Description Compare to Other NGOs Theory of Change Outputs Description Outcomes Description Impact Description Results to Date Organizational Model Scaling Strategy Long Term Strategy Grant Budget
List of Submitted Grants
Annual Fundraising Plan 2013

Common Question Phrasings

1. Describe the current state of the pressing problem or issue(s) that your organization addresses. - Skoll Foundation
2. Overview of Need: what is the problem? Why is it important? - Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation

Answers

Our work is designed to address the following problems:

1. The way society innovates - the copyright system limits people’s ability to improve upon or even use vital human innovation to solve very serious problems such as hunger and disease.
2. Planned obsolescence - products are designed to have limited lifespans in order to improve profit margins for companies by creating conditions where people have to continue to spend money. Entire product service industries develop around this issue to profit off of people’s dependency.
3. Chronic unemployment and poverty - the United States has lost over 29% of its manufacturing sector jobs since its peak in 1978 due to the globalization of the labor market. Some developing nations have seen an increased ability to attract investments that lead to job creation, but we need to ask ourselves if these are the kinds of jobs we want for ourselves. Aside from a life of poverty or working for unaccountable institutions, the third option, the route of the entrepreneur, has been prohibitively expensive, and the risks are very high.
4. Enterprise development barriers are unnecessarily high - the cost of acquisition for industrial capital is prohibitively expensive. When businesses depend on industrial capital for survival, and it breaks down, service costs can drive companies out of business.
5. Climate change and the destruction of natural ecosystems - the global system has taken risks to improve profitability and to concentrate power, and now the infrastructure that supports billions of lives is unacceptably instable due to a lack of political will in the face of climate change and the accelerated destruction of natural ecosystems. We need to rapidly deploy decentralized systems of agriculture, manufacturing, and clean energy production in order to reduce carbon emissions and develop social infrastructure that is resilient in the face of change and uncertainty.

comments powered by Disqus