The organisations that Thankyou is funding seemed to be based out of Western Countries. It seems like you are funding ‘white saviours’ rather than local communities?

We understand that Western funders in the past have had a bias towards funding organisations that resemble them, at the expense of incredible, local, and proximate organisations. A recent report showed that only 0.4% of all humanitarian aid went towards local and national African organisations.

At Thankyou, we were one of the pioneering funders of the African Visionary Fund; a partner tackles this problem by finding and vetting high-impact African-led organisations and connecting them to funders like Thankyou. We are proud to have funded them in the first three years of inception.

We have also funded D-prize, which is an organisation that finds and funds pre-seed stage local leaders and their proven poverty interventions, with initial capital and support, with the goal of creating highly impactful, local organisations that scale to reach 100,000 people in 5 years.

Within our grant portfolio, the organisations that we partner with that have HQs in Western Countries (usually smaller teams, for fundraising purposes) all have HQs in-country where the majority of staff reside and live. We carefully look at representation in decision-making power and other power dynamics indicators when we are conducting our due diligence.

As we ensure that organisations are values aligned to Thankyou this means the partners we back ensure that local leadership and voices are participating in the decision-making process across all levels of the organisation.