About Lever for Change
Lever for Change is a nonprofit affiliate of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. We help donors find and fund solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. We do this in two primary ways:
- We develop and manage customized philanthropic grant challenges that award a minimum of $10 million in funding (payable over five years) to rigorously evaluated proposals and provide other tailored opportunities to help donors find and fund bold solutions capable of accelerating social change.
- We invite all Lever for Change challenge finalists to become members of our Bold Solutions Network, a growing global network that helps members connect with donors, secure additional funding and amplify their impact.
Lever for Change is Launching a New Challenge Service
Since our launch in 2019, we have learned a lot about bold prize philanthropy and scaling bold solutions to critical challenges. Over the years, we have received feedback from donors about their desire to elevate a field by providing general operating support to a cohort of catalytic organizations. In response to this feedback, Lever for Change is launching a new customizable challenge tool that is meant to complement our classic challenges.
The main distinction is that instead of providing funding to scale a particular project, this new challenge model would be designed to provide at least $20 million in awards with a minimum of $1 million general operating support grants each to organizations within a particular field. This new challenge service will hold true to our guiding principles including our commitment to openness & transparency, rigorous evaluation, and bold-large scale philanthropy that helps funders support solutions developed and led by organizations in the field.
Navigating this Collection
There are 8 projects featured in this curated collection that align with Houston Endowment's funding areas in (1) Civic Engagement; (2) Arts and Parks; and (3) Public Education. All of the projects are focused on Houston or Texas more broadly.
The project tiles are organized alphabetically by lead organization name. You will find a brief snapshot for each proposal where you can gather key organizational details and project information that was captured during the challenge process. Please view the "LFC Notes" field on the below project tiles for additional details about the projects that we think may be relevant to the Houston Endowment. For ease of viewing, you may click on each tile to expand the snapshot.
Next Steps
These organizations are ready to solve critical problems and are seeking resources to implement their solutions. Please contact Dana Rice, VP of Philanthropy at Lever for Change, if you are interested in any of the following:
- Requesting additional information about a proposal: We are happy to provide you with an organization’s full proposal and a summary of evaluations and due diligence, if available.
- Connecting with the organizations: We can also facilitate introductions to the organizations featured on this list so you can learn more about their work and ask specific funding questions.
- Supporting organizations: Ready to support one of these compelling solutions? We can answer questions you may have about how to best support the selected proposal(s) and/or organization(s).
- Requesting another curated list: If you have other philanthropic interest areas, we’d be happy to share additional curated lists like this.
Please let us know if you supported one of the projects on this curated list
Lever for Change has an ambitious goal to unlock $1.5 billion in funding for bold solutions by 2025. Support provided by donors to Bold Solutions Network projects is a vital component of our efforts to meet this goal. We are thankful for the important role donors play in helping Lever for Change accelerate social change.
Please click the below link to let us know if you’ve supported one of the projects featured on this curated list.
Report Your Funding