How to Fund Proximate Leaders and Their World Changing Ideas?
Proximate leaders is a term that has been made famous over the past years, especially with the discourse around race, and equity in fundraising has deepened at various levels. As an organization that has directly funded 40 proximate leaders from 26 countries with $58000+ in microfunds, we have learned a great deal about the process of finding and supporting proximate leaders at a global scale. This piece will dive into that process with the goal of supporting other institutions looking to grow their strategy of supporting proximate leaders.
Who are proximate leaders?
As Angela Jackson, Tulaine Montgomery & John Kania define in this SSIR piece, proximate leaders are “Someone who has a meaningful relationship with groups whose identity, experience, or community are systemically stereotyped, feared, dismissed, or marginalized.” In our processes, we look at proximate leaders as the people who are closest to the issues that they are vying to solve with community-led solutions. As Jackson, Montgomery and Kania further write, “Being a proximate leader is about much more than being exposed to or studying a group of people and its struggles to overcome adversity. It’s about actually being a part of that group or being meaningfully guided by that group’s input, ideas, agendas, and assets.”
Why focus on proximate leadership?
With the outbreak of COVID-19, many organizations have realized that the dated process of saviorism -- where non-local leaders hold the ideology and experience that their funding, guidance and solutions are at the center of development strategies -- is flawed, not only because COVID made it hard for these leaders to work in their communities, but it also exposed the lack of awareness that many such leaders have when it comes to developing contextualized programming in their communities. As Jackson, Montgomery and Kania write, “The proximate leaders that we have studied and worked with have two additional qualities that stand out. The first of these is that they are unabashedly asset-based in their view of those they wish to help. The second is that when working with people in the community they focus on several dimensions of human potential which, when taken together, can form the foundation for achieving transformational results.”
While many funders were looking at Zoom as the glue to re-shaping their relationships with non-profits, proximate leaders that we have met are focused on what was most important to their communities -- and many times, that did not mean forcing people to join a Zoom meeting while they are facing severe food insecurity, or while their access to internet did not improve as a result of COVID-19.
How does LBF support proximate leaders?
Little Big Fund started in 2015, with a goal to provide tools, networks and microfunds to early stage social changemakers around the world. From the very beginning, the core of Little Big Fund’s approach can be divided into three elements -- community partnerships, rigorous curriculum, and microfunding.
On partnerships - we know that as an organization based in the U.S, our networks are primarily biased, and consist of people that might not necessarily reflect proximate leaders. Rather than conducting open call programs -- which we think create an unnecessary barrier to access given that open calls mean reliable access to the internet, and social media -- we build partnerships with community based organizations -- from universities, educational programs to incubator programs already connected to local communities around the world. We find the partners that do an excellent job of supporting proximate leaders and offer our courses to the members of these organizations. This allows us to work with leaders who are based in remote parts of the world by extending the learning and experience that the members have gotten, amplifying and building a bridge of sorts.
On curriculum - our curriculum is not a one-size-fits all course that we can deliver similarly in Nepal as we can in Uganda. Each country, community, and entrepreneur is different -- which is why we have developed a workshop style curriculum that allows us to facilitate a learning process where participants are peer-learners and peer-teachers. Through a series of peer-review processes, we allow them to provide feedback to one another -- recognizing elements in each other’s funding proposals that due to our lack of context, would have been simply missed. Similarly, we invite mentors -- social changemakers from both for profit and nonprofit space -- from their own communities who are able to share insights on their own fundraising experience. Last month, we conducted a course in collaboration with Kapadia Education Foundation, which primarily provides scholarships and leadership development programs for young leaders in East Africa. As part of our course, we were excited to welcome Sonia Kabra from BuuPass and Ian Otula from Vuma Biofuels -- both East Africa based seasoned entrepreneurs that were able to share insights that were relevant to our participants.
On micro-funds - this has been the most crucial element of our model that helps us actually finance projects. Most of our participants aren’t your typically seasoned entrepreneurs with years of fundraising or project management experience. They attended school to become a medical assistant, or a lawyer, and clearly do not have the traction that is usually expected of social changemakers in a typical funding process. They may have been chosen to be a part of a pitch session that awarded thousands of dollars, but had a small budgeted pilot program they wanted to implement while also working a job, and realized the pitch session was not the right fit. We take the leap of faith and invest microfunds in their ideas in the early (very early) stages without a focus on the outcome. There is too much conversation around outcome in the philanthropy space without recognizing that sometimes the effect of a $540 grant on a social changemaker is not the concrete deliverable or large percentage impact measurement of their project but instead their deepened understanding of the issue. If, at the end of the process, these changemakers decide to not continue their project, that is as successful for Little Big Fund as if they ended up continuing their ventures. Sometimes, a small amount of funding uplifts a leader's sense of resilience, trustworthiness, and the desire to try again. Over the past few years, we have funded projects that have been ambitious -- from cleaning Lake Victoria, building Solar Powered Backpacks, providing point of water filters, and running the first health clinic in their communities. Some of these ventures have not continued till date, and that is something that we celebrate at Little Big Fund - doing more social change does not always require building a new venture.
As we look forward, we are excited to continue expanding our programs by building greater partnerships with value-aligned organizations around the world, making our curriculum more accessible (Spanish language courses are in the plans!), and providing $100k in microfunds to 100 social changemakers over the next three years.
In all of this, we would like to thank our partners such as The Resolution Project, Athari Group, WeMakeChange, and Kapadia Education Foundation for their trust in our efforts to radically move the needle forward in funding proximate leaders.
If you would like to connect with us and exchange ideas, please feel free to reach out to us at founders@littlebig.fund.
