Applications to the Charity Entrepreneurship Program are open
- Crystal Lam
- Aug 4
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 10
We’re excited to announce that we’ve reopened applications for the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program and our Research Fellowship program for the following cohorts:
Charity Entrepreneurship
February 9th - April 5th 2026
June - July 2026 (this round will focus on increasing the impact of philanthropy, learn more here)
September - October 2026
This post summarises the six new charity ideas recommended by our research team for the February 2026 round (which can also be read and shared as a standalone post here).
Applications close on October 5th. For the full application timeline and program details, visit our website.
Why should you apply to the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program?
If you’re an ambitious, impact-driven individual looking to start a high-impact nonprofit, the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program can empower and accelerate your journey.
Since 2018, we have incubated over 50 non-profits, many of which are field-leading and benchmark-setting across different cause areas and are supported by actors like GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Mulago, Open Philanthropy, and Animal Charity Evaluators. We disbursed $3.6M in seed grants, and many of our incubated organizations are estimated to be as much as 20 to 60 times more cost-effective than top GiveWell charities. These charities have reached more than 75 million humans and have the potential to improve the lives of over 1 billion animals.
Our program provides expert mentorship, funding, and a proven process to turn ideas into field-leading organizations. If you’re ready to lead, think evidence-first, and maximize your impact, we invite you to consider this career path for yourself and challenge you to take the first step toward building something extraordinary.
Introducing our newest charity recommendations—From training brick kiln owners to advocacy to securing scale-up funding for alternative proteins
Introducing our newest recommended ideas
We are excited to recommend six new impactful charities for the February 2026 Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program cohort.
During the first half of 2025, the AIM research team examined (i) climate interventions with co-benefits for human health or animal welfare and (ii) classic global health and development ideas that support humans' living longer and more fulfilling lives.
Our recommendations span different sectors and approaches, including a meta organization supporting local air quality monitoring and advocacy teams; training brick kiln owners in practices to reduce CO2 and PM2.5 emissions; innovative financing tools to assist smallholder farmers; a highly targeted Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) mHealth intervention; advocating for supermarkets to make 60:40 plant:animal protein ratio commitments; and lobbying to secure scale-up funding for alternative proteins from governments. Below is a brief summary of each recommendation and links to further details on our website.
Full reports on each idea will be made available in the coming weeks here.
We are deeply appreciative of the people who supported us throughout this round, including dozens of experts who gave us their time and insight, and the group of AIM Research Program fellows who contributed to this research round: Léa Guttman, Margaret Hegwood, Maximilian Weylandt, Stuart Craig, and Unathi Maddie Beku.
Air quality monitoring & transparency meta-charity
Ambient air pollution is a leading risk factor for poor health and mortality, responsible for nearly five million premature deaths each year. Compared to its severity, air pollution remains a neglected topic in many places, especially low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This neglect is partly due to a lack of high-quality, transparent, local data on the severity and sources of air pollution. While a growing number of local actors have been setting up air quality monitoring functionality and advocating for stronger regulations, many of these local actors are undertrained and undersupported, limiting their effectiveness and chance of success. This non-profit will work to strengthen the global infrastructure of air quality monitoring & advocacy by providing services such as technical training, research support, monitoring & evaluation, community building, and facilitation of knowledge exchange.
Training to improve the energy efficiency of brick kilns
Artisanal brick kilns are a significant source of air pollution across South Asia, causing an estimated 60,000 premature deaths yearly. In addition, they are significant emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs). While many kilns across the region have now been converted to cleaner “zigzag” designs, workers operating the kilns don’t follow the best operational practice, limiting the effectiveness of zigzag conversions. Recent research shows that targeted training for the workers and owners of these kilns can reduce emissions by around 20%. We estimate that this charity can avert a disability-adjusted life year (DALY) for between USD 150 and 320 and one ton of CO2-equivalent GHGs for 1.60–4.7 USD.
Boosting access to asset-collateralized loans for small-scale farms
Smallholder farmers are often caught up in low-productivity cycles because of their inability to access credit. This new organization will work to convince and coach cooperative-like institutions to provide novel loans to smallholder farmers, where the asset they buy (such as water tanks) itself acts as collateral. We make this recommendation based on existing research, which shows that these types of loans are rare in LMICs, despite having the potential to significantly increase farmers’ incomes while being very low-risk for the financial institutions. This intervention is expected to be cost-effective, creating 57 consumption doublings per USD 1,000, or costing USD 17 per consumption doubling.
Targeted Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Mobile Health Interventions
A new organization will deliver a novel and highly targeted intervention to reduce the prevalence of diarrhoeal disease and associated mortality in underserved regions where the burden remains high. This program will identify hospitalized patients with diarrhoeal illness and provide their households with a package of WASH interventions and post-discharge follow-up support. We believe this targeted approach will be particularly effective because household contacts of an index case are at significantly higher risk of contracting diarrhoeal illness than the general population, and secondly, because the experience of a recent, serious case requiring hospitalization is likely to increase the salience of adopting WASH practices within the household.
Working with large food retailers to achieve plant-based-protein sale commitments
A new team will reduce the welfare and climate footprint of our food system by encouraging supermarkets to increase the percentage of protein sales coming from plant-based sources. The non-profit will advocate for protein sales ratio commitments by a target year (e.g., 60:40 plant:animal protein sales by 2040) by conducting corporate campaigns and providing technical assistance to supermarkets to encourage consumer purchasing of plant-based protein.
Securing scale-up funding for the alternative protein industry
A policy non-profit will work hand-in-hand with governments to introduce finance tools to help alternative protein producers scale production (e.g., loan guarantees). We think scale-up financing is a barrier to plant-based protein scale and price competition, but remains neglected in the advocacy ecosystem. Drawing lessons from industries like clean energy, the non-profit will push for policies that give alternative protein companies access to scale-up funding from governments, which could also reduce investment risk and unlock private capital.
Please note that in addition to the above ideas, two previous recommended animal welfare ideas will be available to the February 2026 cohort:
Cage-free Farming in the Middle East
collaborative corporate campaigning for cage-free farming in neglected countries in the Middle East (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt).
Reducing Keel Bone Fractures
Working with farmers to reduce the prevalence of keel bone fractures (KBF) in cage-free layer hens, ideally through outreach to certifiers to update their certification standards to include an outcome-based limit on KBF.
Apply to our program to help launch these organizations
We encourage you to learn more about these ideas here and register for upcoming Q&A webinars, where you will have the opportunity to have your questions answered by our research team.
Unfamiliar with our program? The Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program is a free 2-month training program that helps you find an evidence-based idea for a new charity, a talented co-founder to build a new organization with, and up to $200,000 in seed funding. We have successfully incubated over 50 charities, reaching 35+ million people and 1+ billion animals. Learn more about our track record and what it’s like to be on the program.
