100&Change Applicants Ready to Solve Challenges

Staff working on 100&Change provide an early look at the 2024 applicants in our global competition for a single $100 million grant.

We are in the midst of the third round of 100&Change, which launched in May. MacArthur is partnering with its nonprofit affiliate, Lever for Change, to manage the 100&Change competition. So far, we have invited ideas, received applications, and conducted Administrative Review. As part of our commitment to transparency, we are sharing some observations on the applications at this point in the process.

Increase in Eligible, “Ready” Applicants

Before submitting an application with a proposal, organizations must first complete a registration form. We often receive a large of volume of registrants compared to applicants, as many organizations decide their readiness (through resources such as our organizational readiness tool) and ultimately chose to advance or not advance with an application. This year, we welcomed 2,296 registrants and 869 total applicants.

The big headline so far is the marked increase in applicants that met eligibility requirements and demonstrated their fit for the competition. This tells us that our readiness guidance is effective, and prospective applicants have the tools to understand how to approach this opportunity.

Thirty nine-percent of the lead organizations that applied as part of collaborations were based outside the United States, representing 61 countries.

Thirty nine-percent of the lead organizations that applied as part of collaborations were based outside the United States, representing 61 countries. Of the 869 applicants, 88 percent of lead organizations are nonprofits. Compared to the last round, we had fewer organizations register (2,296 vs. 3,690) but ended up with more applications (869 vs. 755). Again, we think this could be an indicator that our outreach is improving and organizations are finding it easier to gauge their fit for the competition.

More Global Outreach, Yet Most Lead Organizations Remain in North America

Despite the higher number of applications in this round, there was no significant change in the geographic spread between the last two rounds. A particularly salient data point for us is that in this round and in the last, about 60 percent of applications came from lead organizations based in North America.

In line with 100&Change’s practice of listening to and incorporating feedback, this year, we allowed organizations to submit supplementary materials (e.g. audited financials and memorandums of understanding) in a language other than English. However, we still required that the application be submitted in English. Additionally, to strengthen our outreach efforts and ensure we were reaching organizations outside North America, we provided interpretation in French, Spanish, and Portuguese as well as International Sign Language during our live webinars.

Despite these accommodations and access to vastly improved translation tools, the data suggests we might have hit a plateau for an English-based application from organizations that are not based in North America. We will continue to investigate this and explore how to make our process even more accessible to global audiences.

The geographic spread of valid applications from lead organizations mirrors the geographic spread of total submissions. However, we see greater geographic diversity when we examine where valid applicants are working and proposing to work with the support of 100&Change. The vast majority of communities being served by applicants are in North America and Africa.

Financials a Determining Factor for Eligibility

After the application deadline in September, Lever for Change staff worked to review each of the 869 submissions to ensure compliance with the application requirements and eligibility rules as part of our Administrative Review process. The review team was strict in the application of the eligibility rules but remained fair and consistent. Each application was reviewed multiple times, and flagged applications were reviewed three or four times to ensure no one was disqualified unfairly.

Once the final determination was made and applicants were informed of their status, there was a week-long appeals process for applicants to notify us in case they felt incorrectly ruled out. After the conclusion of the month-long Administrative Review, the review team determined that 666 applications were valid and would move to the Participatory Review stage. The table below provides an overview of the reasons why applications were disqualified across all three rounds of 100&Change.

Overall, we disqualified only 23 percent of the applicant pool and a marked improvement from 37 percent disqualified in the second round and 58 percent disqualified in the inaugural round of 100&Change.

Similar to the last round of 100&Change, the primary reason for disqualification was failure to provide the required audited financials. Unlike the last round, which required three most recent consecutive audited financials, we accepted audited financials from 2019 onwards. We chose to be lenient in this round, recognizing the disruption that the pandemic caused, as well as the high costs of conducting audits for nonprofits. Most who failed to meet this requirement provided unaudited financials, or fewer than three years of financials. We understood that this requirement would exclude new organizations as the lead applicant and that it would impose a burden on small organizations that might have no other mandate for audited financials. But we decided to send a clear signal that organizations without this documentation would have a low probability of advancement in a competition for a $100 million grant, while encouraging such organizations to partner with more established organizations who could meet this criterion.

Solutions Address Reducing Inequalities and Good Health and Well-Being

One of the added benefits of our administrative review process is the opportunity to read the many compelling and inspiring ideas about how to solve the world’s most critical problems. We categorized proposals based on which United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) they will advance. In this round, the most frequent SDGs represented among the 100&Change submissions is SDG 3, “Good Health and Well-Being,” with 390 submissions, and SDG 10, “Reduced Inequalities,” with 348 submissions—these were also the top two SDGs in the second round of 100&Change. However, some proposals appear in multiple categories because they address multiple issues that organizations are aiming to address.

One of the added benefits of our administrative review process is the opportunity to read the many compelling and inspiring ideas about how to solve the world’s most critical problems. 

A closer look at just the valid applicants for this round reveals that most applicants selected four primary subject areas: health, education, community & economic development, and the environment. Along the same lines, out of 97 different priority populations, the categories in the chart below are the top 10 most served populations.

What’s Next

During the upcoming Participatory Review process, applicants will score and provide feedback on each other’s proposals using the criteria outlined in our scoring rubric. Our Wise Head Panel will then review and score submissions using the same criteria and trait scoring rubric. In 2025, we will select Finalists and ultimately the final award recipient. Behind the scenes, we are hard at work on the next stages of 100&Change and we look forward to sharing future learnings with you.

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