FY26 Annual Goals

February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026

Approved by Board: December 2024

Overarching goal (North Star): Achieve an impact of >$100 in lifetime earnings increase per dollar spent, or <$1000 to double income for life.

Executive

Reach higher: Extend our impact by finding, seeding, and organizing donors around >100X or <$1000DIL projects to drive >$6B in increased lifetime earnings.

DRI: President & CEO

Key Results

  1. Develop and receive board approval of a three-year organizational strategic plan, including evaluation of organizational structure and capacity needs covering various growth scenarios
  2. Engage with the GitLab board (quarterly touchpoints), GitLab team members (monthly touchpoints), and Sid and Karen Sijbrandij (monthly touchpoints) to drive awareness, pride, and support for the Foundation’s ongoing work
  3. Launch three new >1000X systems change initiatives (one in each of our three markets)
  4. Raise $30M+ in co-funding or direct investment from other funders to extend our impact
  5. Build our longitudinal wage tracking capability in order to measure our ROI and impact over longer terms

Measurement

Improve precision and insight: enhance modeling, learning, and long-term impact measurement to drive more strategic investment decisions

DRI: Director of Impact Measurement and Analytics

Key Results

  1. Launch a longitudinal impact tracking measurement strategy to validate how we impact lifetime earnings by:
    1. Partnering with 2+ research organizations
    2. Increasing reporting periods to three or more years with 5+ grantees
    3. Support 5+ grantees to collect longer-term income data from their participants
  2. Expand ROI models to enable a broader investment strategy and ensure usability and validity, by soliciting feedback from industry peers when updating the model for:
    1. Alternative uses of our capital
    2. Systems change work (including policy change, or narrative change)
    3. Delayed income effects, where income gains occur in the medium- to long-term
    4. Evidence risk and probability using sensitivity analysis
  3. Elevate our learning process with approval of programs and leadership team in order to sharpen our investment strategy through:
    1. Increasing discipline in our learning process and feedback loops across internal teams and grantees by hosting six learning sessions over the year
    2. Conducting results-driven analytics to publish 2+ reports identify the leading indicators that predict success or failure
    3. Identifying qualitative insights across 3 RFP thesis areas (Green Jobs, AI for Economic Opportunity and Learning for Action Fund)
  4. Improve the precision of our counterfactual datasets so that all models use 2+ counterfactual sources by:
    1. Accessing or building higher quality Kenya and Colombia income data
    2. Accessing or building higher quality income data by demographic groups (children, women, refugees, educational level, etc.)
    3. Partnering with external research partners and funders
  5. Expand the foundation’s support for impact measurement capacity building by:
    1. Implementing improvements as recommended from the FY25 L4AF retrospective
    2. Launching Year 2 of the Learning for Action Fund that supports more grantees than Year 1
    3. Building upon the success of Year 1 Learning for Action Fund to launch a multi-funder fund to increase evidence-building across the field

Programs

Optimize our grant portfolio to achieve higher outcomes than FY25 and build a systems change through a more collaborative and market-informed grantmaking approach.

DRI: Sr. Program Director

Key Results:

  1. Launch three new >1000X systems change initiatives (one in each of our three markets) informed by market research and outcomes from portfolio to date.
  2. Consistently implement, as demonstrated by grantmaking activities, a strategy structure across each market that includes target industry sectors, populations, intervention types, structured operating models, and specific systems change targets.
  3. Work with Partnerships team to secure $20M in follow-on and shared funding for our portfolio, including one or more issue-based funder collaborative, and one larger scale, >$1M funder partnership per market.
  4. Insights from first grant cycle reports combined with market research drives grant renewal selection and portfolio structure for FY26, increasing average portfolio outcomes through scaling and systems change grants.
  5. Extend the cycles and impact of our dollars by executing one or more recoverable or non-grant funding mechanisms such as a loan, outcomes based financing investment, guarantee or other mechanism.

Partnerships

Deploy a partnerships-first grantmaking approach, developing organizational infrastructure and relationships with key philanthropic investors to raise $30M+ in leveraged funds.

Chief Programs and Partnerships Officer

Key Results

  1. As part of the 3-year strategic plan, develop and execute an Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) Donor Strategy.
  2. Develop new funder communities to build systems change partnerships with 6+ co-investors for a combined $10M (2:1) in collaborative funding.
  3. Incentivize partnerships to scale successful laboratory projects through a matching contribution requirement to reach at least $15M in matched funds (1:1)
  4. Create partnerships with 3 co-investors in Colombia, Kenya, and around new issue-specific funds.
  5. Raise internal awareness and support of GitLab Foundation with GitLab Inc, as measured by same-level or increased GitLab Inc approved funding for FY27, by collaborating with communications, ESG, and DIB teams to support their goals.