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.

Navigating this Collection

There are 32 early childhood projects featured in this collection that have current work locations in India and lead organizations headquartered in India. These projects were sourced from the full pool of 627 applicants for our global early childhood challenge with LEGO, Build a World of Play. LEGO finalists were announced in October 2022, and awardees will be announced in December 2022.

Please note that the 32 projects included in this list represent a wide range of evaluation ratings across the applicant pool. Please also note that projects were rigorously evaluated and rated by a panel of peers and multi-disciplined experts relative to four specific criteria: whether they were impactful, feasible, community-centered, and sustainable. At the top of each project tile, there is indication of percentile rating relative to the overall applicant pool: finalist, top 5%, top 10%, top 15%, top 20%, and those below the top 20%. Given your interest in providing seed funding to early-stage organizations, those projects that have lead organizations with operating budgets under $1M are denoted with a green check mark at the top of their respective tiles.

The project tiles are organized alphabetically by lead organization name within each rating band, ordered from the most highly rated. 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. 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 Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change, if you are interested in any of the following:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. Requesting another curated list: If you have other philanthropic interest areas, we’d be happy to share additional curated lists.