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 to help funders achieve impact in critical social issue areas. Our challenges can be designed for two different models based on funders’ goals. One model awards a minimum of one US $10M grant to scale a project that provides a solution to a critical social issue. The second model awards a minimum of US $20M total in general operating grants of at least $1M each to selected organizations.
• 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 18 projects featured in this collection focused on access to clean water, protecting bodies of water, or increasing water efficiency for agriculture uses, with work locations around the world.

The projects below 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. 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 Karen Minkel, Philanthropy Director at 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 like this.

Please let us know if you supported one of the projects on this curated list.

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