High-level summary of our strategy:

1. Vision: A world in which one million more people can afford a better life

2. Mission: To improve people’s lifetime earnings through access to opportunities

3. North Star metric: Increase in lifetime earnings per dollar spent

4. North Star investment threshold: $100 in increased lifetime earnings per dollar spent

5. Geographic focus areas: Colombia, Kenya and the United States

   1. We prioritized these countries given their:
      1. Relatively low or uneven economic mobility, providing significant room for results in improving and equalizing access to opportunities
      2. Relatively strong operating environments and data collection infrastructure to support efficiency and transparency in our work
      3. Existing networks of peer funders and partners we can work alongside, increasing opportunities for collaboration and leverage
   2. These regions will be the focus of in-depth research and potential market entry in FY24; however, we will also remain open to opportunities that may present themselves for high impact in other geographies

6. Focus communities: We will focus on individuals or families making below a living wage in their local context, with a potential focus on specific groups that are disadvantaged due to factors such as gender, disability, or social background.

7. Investment focus areas: Our ambition to surpass the 100x North Star threshold, coupled with research and modeling on potential impact, has led us to the following areas of focus:

   1. Creating opportunities for individuals through catalytic investments in job training and job placement organizations that expand institutional reach (e.g., to new populations, new geographies), reduce barriers to accessing services, and improve cost efficiency
   2. Improving labor market efficiencies through systems-level investments that address human capital supply/demand mismatches and create platforms and tools to tackle market failures
   3. Strengthening collective action through field-building activities that lead to greater information-sharing and co-investment among employers, decision-makers, and philanthropists

   Note: These investment types have different expected return on investment ranges, levels of certainty, time horizons, and measurability of impact. We will build a portfolio that optimizes for expected value and supports a learning approach.

Taking a Thesis-Driven Approach

Background: To maximize cycles of learning that improve our strategy and outcomes, we have developed an initial investment “thesis” structure. We believe that by concentrating our grantmaking around certain areas of inquiry, or theses, we will learn more and become more effective over time.

Our initial theses include two geographic focuses (i.e., locations where, due to economic, social, and political factors, we feel we have the potential to deliver outsized North Star outcomes) and two thematic areas of interest. In the future we may also develop population-specific theses.

A brief snapshot of our initial thesis areas are as follows:

1. Geographic Thesis Areas

   1. Latin America, initially focused on Colombia

   2. Sub-Saharan Africa, initially focused on Kenya

      Market Entry Strategy

2. Thematic Thesis Areas

   1. Emerging Talent Demand: We hypothesize that sectors with high labor demand and low current labor supply will provide opportunities for outsized income gains for workers who gain the appropriate skills.
      1. In some areas, a supply/demand mismatch already exists in the U.S. (e.g., trucking, healthcare, construction)
      2. In other areas, we can predict growth in labor demand and shortages in supply due to public funding inflows (e.g., green jobs growth due to the Inflation Reduction Act, growth in semiconductor industry jobs due to the CHIPS Act)
   2. Future of Work: We believe that emerging technologies, evolving ways of working, and increased cross-border connectivity will drive opportunities for outsized efficiencies in education, training, and work, driving costs down to deliver high income gains and economic opportunity. In particular, we are interested in:
      1. The impact of remote work on the global distribution of economic opportunity
      2. The potential impacts of artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive efficiencies and new models for education, training, and employment

We will conduct research and seek out grantees in these thesis areas; in some cases, we may issue requests for proposals (RFPs) in these areas of interest. Read more here.