FAQs
About the Foundation
We have a rich past that informs our present and our future. You can learn more about our origins on the Our History page.
We are a fairly small team with few openings throughout the year. We suggest that you subscribe to our newsletter (at the bottom of this site) to keep abreast of the latest postings.
Long story short, we do whatever we can to drive more resources to deserving, high-performing African visionaries including taking other donors’ funding.
Please use the Contact Us form in the footer. We check these responses regularly.
About Our Grantmaking
We call our grantees our partners. It implies we are together on a quest to change the world. To be fair, it’s just one small way to chip away at the power imbalance in development, but how do you eat an elephant?
We do not have an open application and we do not accept unsolicited proposals because we have a trusted network of referrals across Africa. Also, we don’t want to waste anyone’s time. See our Grantmaking page to learn more about how we choose who to fund.
African Visionary Fellows are chosen from our existing portfolio of grantee partners.
We fund organizations, not individuals. In addition, we do not provide funding to create new organizations.
View our Grantmaking page to learn more about who we fund. Our Program Officers in each hub are responsible for creating and executing our grantmaking strategies. To be clear, we are not limited by the number of exemplary visionaries across Africa but by our own time and resource limitations!
We offer our partners comprehensive support called Active Partnership. We know the value of an unrestricted grant so we try to be really judicious in deciding to spend money elsewhere.
We have partners all across Sub-Saharan Africa, concentrated in our hubs: Great Lakes (Burundi, DRC, Rwanda), Kenya, Southern Africa (Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe), Tanzania, and Uganda. We also have a few partners in West Africa. Check out our interactive map to see.
About Our Partners
In our book, local = by Africans, for Africans, in Africa. Power matters. For us to consider an organization to be locally-led, the folks who make important decisions should hail from the country in which they operate at the very least. There is more to it, but that’s where we start.
Visit Our Partners page to see the complete list of grantee partners. You can also see where they are located on our interactive map.
Our funding is flexible and unrestricted, meaning our grantee partners are free to utilize it as they see best for their organizational needs.
AVF stands for African Visionary Fellowship. The two-year fellowship offers community, connections, and capacity to stellar proximate leaders of African organizations.
SII stands for Social Impact Incubator. It was a program we ran from 2013 until 2022 that helped early-stage innovators grow their impact by providing tools, building networks, and connecting them to investment. We may revive the SII concept as need dictates in the future. Stay tuned!
For Funder Friends
Visit the Our Partners page and click on a partner name for more details. If you need more information beyond that, please contact our Equitable Giving Team.
Equitable giving is our philosophy for how we show up in the African development world and how we hope other funders will as well. Please check out our Equitable Giving Toolkit.
For Our Partners
The answer is almost always to get in touch with your designated Program Officer. If they don’t have the answer, they know who does and can direct you.
Log in to the Partner Portal. It’s not as daunting as it looks and there’s a FAQ there to help you!
Take a look at our Fundraising Toolkit.
AVF is open to Segal partners who are currently receiving funding and have completed at least one full grant cycle. The application is shared annually to eligible partners.
Yes, send us information about the organization. We are always eager to engage with new ideas and visionaries and our community is built on the referrals of our trusted partners. However, please do not connect us directly to them. We are a small team with a lot on our plates. We will do our best to follow up on your recommendation but we cannot commit to a timeline and such recommendations do not not guarantee funding.
Feel free! We are eager to learn from our peers and sing the praises of our partners.
Please contact us to alert our Equitable Giving team of your upcoming travels. The more notice you can give us, the better we can help you. As soon as you register for the conference, set up the meeting, or apply for your visa, let us know.
For Media, Other
Terrific! Please contact our Communications Team.
We’d be happy to connect you—please get in touch with our Communications Team about our Visionary Voices.