The prolonged global COVID-19 crisis has been exhausting for health systems. It has magnified existing inequities and disproportionately affected communities with fragile health and economic systems. The Skoll Foundation supports social innovations that strengthen health systems, center equity, and build global systems for pandemic prevention and response.

In 2021, we invested in networks and advocates working to coordinate a faster end to COVID-19 and make progress on preventing future pandemics. We also sought to fill gaps in critical areas to save lives today, such as medical oxygen and COVID-19 response systems strengthening. And we made long-term investments in proximate innovators primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia who are leading the charge in building strong health systems.

The world needs a more coordinated response to ending COVID-19 and building systems to prevent the next pandemic, ending the boom-and-bust cycle of support for public health preparedness. The Skoll Foundation made a cluster of investments around global coordination and advocacy, supporting the work of Pandemic Action Network, The Elders, ONE, and the UN Engagement Hub. We have also seen past investments in cooperative efforts like the COVID Collaborative and Africa CDC become models for the coordination needed to drive lasting systemic change.

We supported innovators like Oxygen Hub, Build Health International, and LifeBank who work to build a sustainable supply of medical oxygen across sub-Saharan Africa. Oxygen is a critical lifesaving treatment not just for COVID-19 but for a variety of other health conditions, and the pandemic has only underscored the need to increase access to this medical necessity.

With large amounts of COVID-19 response funding committed to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a coalition of local civil society organizations created the COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project to track commitments, hold governments accountable, and drive citizen advocacy for equitable use of funds. Meanwhile, Health Finance Coalition and the Financing Alliance for Health focused on capitalizing on this crucial moment to mobilize innovative and sustainable financing at the scale needed to support strong, comprehensive, and durable health systems.

Proximate innovators drive health systems transformation. We added to existing investments in primary health care through support of organizations like Muso, Amref Africa, and Amani Global Works. We invested in health workforces through our support of Kajo Keji Health Training Institute in South Sudan, and disease surveillance with Swasti Precision Health Wastewater surveillance.

In the U.S., we invested in health equity efforts with the support of organizations like Health Leads, the Community-Based Workforce Alliance, and others working to build equity-centered, community-owned public health infrastructure for the future.

Climate change is a global existential threat that requires urgent, collective, and coordinated action. The Skoll Foundation supports social innovations that mitigate climate change, influence private sector action, advance climate justice in partnership with the hardest-hit communities, and build strong support for climate action globally.

Limiting the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and preventing the worst impacts of climate change requires supporting social innovations. In 2021, we invested in and cultivated partnerships with organizations that develop innovative solutions to stop tropical deforestation globally and build lasting public support for constructive, equitable climate action.

In a year marked by the COP26 gathering in Glasgow and the push for global leaders to make concrete commitments toward climate action, the Skoll Foundation joined a first-of-its-kind alliance of more than 20 leading philanthropic organizations that announced a collective intention to fund more than $300 million to drastically reduce global methane emissions. The commitment builds on the diplomatic effort spearheaded by the United States and European Union’s Global Methane Pledge.

Long-term partners, like Skoll Awardee Ceres, work to engage the business and investment community to promote climate-friendly practices and advocate for constructive climate policy. Climate Reality Project works to build a permanent majority in favor of climate action. It trains leaders from faith-based, BIPOC, and low-income communities across the U.S. and the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum to bring global climate action tools and pathways to communities around the world.

The work and research of Rights and Resources Initiative strengthens the growing body of evidence that recognizing and protecting Indigenous and community land rights leads to lower deforestation rates, higher carbon storage and biodiversity, and self-determined development. The Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN) amplifies the power of Indigenous communities, including through the encouragement of the participation of Indigenous women and youth in efforts to slow deforestation and mitigate climate change in Indonesia.

Partnership for Southern Equity helps build coordinated movements for climate action by convening diverse coalitions of leaders from frontline, historically marginalized communities of color, grassroots and civil rights organizations, subject-matter experts, houses of worship, youth leaders, and academia to advocate for the equitable sourcing and commodification of power generation in the U.S. South.

Skoll has leveraged the power of storytelling by investing in organizations like Earth HQ, which works to address climate change at the community level and is the media arm of the Global Commons Alliance. The Alliance leverages mass media to grow public demand for climate action.

Our current economic systems are extractive and unsustainable. These systems maximize the wealth of a few over the well-being of all and prioritize short-term gains over long-term sustainability. Billions of people pay for the costs of this inequitable system while relatively few reap the rewards.

The Skoll Foundation aims to support a global transition to a new economic paradigm that centers the needs of all stakeholders—people and planet—and takes a long-term view to focus on economic well-being for all. We support social innovators who bridge the actions of established power with the interests of emergent power through policy and narrative shift efforts that build a larger share of wealth for communities and workers.

Common Future works to shift capital, lift up local leaders, and provide advice on the development of equitable economies to transform power and resources for those who have been intentionally and systemically excluded. Its Character-Based Lending Program serves business borrowers—many of whom have been excluded from the traditional lending system—with low-interest loans that do not require credit checks or collateral.

Imperative21 represents a coalition of actors working to shift the narrative and cultural expectations about the role of business and finance in society. They launched their RESET initiative—a long-term campaign to raise awareness about the necessity and opportunity for changing economic systems and leading a movement to build a truly inclusive economy.

Health Care Without Harm takes an intersectional approach and leverages the health sector to help drive environmental and climate justice in addition to health equity and economic resilience.

PolicyLink, a national research and action institute that advances racial and economic equity, launched several initiatives in 2021. Its CEO Blueprint for Racial Equity—the first comprehensive racial equity blueprint for U.S. federal agencies—developed rigorous corporate performance standards for racial equity with tools to measure, report, and incentivize progress. It also launched the Racial Equity Data Lab, a space to help grassroots leaders create data visuals and dashboards to support campaigns for racial equity and inclusive recovery.

Families and Workers Fund relaunched as a five-year collaborative to invest in U.S. organizations centering the needs and priorities of workers, families, and communities left behind by an exclusionary economic system. This year, the Fund invested more than $10 million in organizations working to address the shortage of quality jobs. For example, the Worker Financial Wellness Initiative aims to make workers’ financial security and health a C-suite and investor priority by raising pay, improving benefits, or granting stock ownership.

Weak institutions and unaccountable governments disrupt people’s lives, sow mistrust, and lead to inequality, poverty, civil unrest, and global instability.

The Skoll Foundation supports social innovations that promote effective governance, strengthen democratic institutions, and advance global security. The governance they seek puts people first, pursues accountability, and protects human rights for all.

In 2021, we continued our focus on social innovators in the U.S. working to tackle threats to election infrastructure and voting access as well as steadily declining trust in democratic institutions. As across all our work, we sought to balance investments between urgent priorities and longer-term civic infrastructure strengthening. We also aimed to support proximate, community-based efforts and national civic engagement and activation.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life launched the Election Infrastructure Initiative (EII) in partnership with the Center for Secure and Modern Elections. EII is a nonpartisan, collaborative effort bringing together election officials, nonprofits, counties, cities, and states calling on the U.S. Congress to urgently invest $20 billion in federal funding to secure and modernize America’s aging election infrastructure.

Protect Democracy’s voter registration monitoring software, VoteShield, has grown to monitor 130 million voter records in 24 states in 2021. Election officials use VoteShield to supplement their efforts to monitor registration databases for foreign interference or domestic error.

The Office of American Possibilities, an emergent systems orchestrator, embraced a multi-stakeholder, multi-issue, nonpartisan approach to bridge big ideas and at-scale implementation. New Profit doubled the size of its Civic Lab portfolio from seven to 14 democracy entrepreneurs, most of whom are people of color. The Alliance for Youth Organizing mobilized an affiliate network of 20 independent youth-led organizations advancing multiracial, pro-democracy reforms and power-building efforts in 20 states across the U.S.

The Coalition Hub for Advancing Redistricting through Grassroots Engagement (CHARGE), a collaborative effort of nine national organizations led by Common Cause, provided training, support, and resources to state partners advancing fair redistricting. Fair Count’s Vote365 campaign, which launched a year in advance of the 2022 elections, builds on the soaring participation from new voters, young voters, and especially rural voters of color to preserve and expand the engaged electorate participating in the midterm elections and to eliminate vote share gaps. Vote Run Lead launched its Run/51 strategy to achieve women majorities in legislatures across all 50 states.

Targeted disenfranchisement, economic inequity, health disparities, violence, and genocide are rooted in centuries of systemic racism, sexism, colonialism, and slavery.

In 2021, the Skoll Foundation supported social innovations that aim to increase capacity, agency, and infrastructure-building for BIPOC organizations so that they can address intergenerational and systemic barriers to advance racial justice. By shifting mindsets and behaviors, these social innovations influence funding, build community power, and drive momentum for lasting change.

IllumiNative’s Indigenous Futures Project, featured at the 2021 Skoll World Forum, is the largest research project ever conducted in Indian Country and a great example of using data to change mindsets and behaviors. The survey’s data on Native communities dispelled inaccurate narratives about the Indigenous electorate being disengaged or a voting monolith.

The USC Shoah Foundation captures missing historical narratives—including the Last Chance Testimony Collection of the last remaining Holocaust survivors—and shares them with more than 2 million students and teachers to build knowledge, empathy, and resilience.

The Black Frontline, a project of The Armah Institute of Emotional Justice and COVID Black is the largest oral history project capturing the narratives of Black doctors and nurses in the U.S., U.K., and Ghana during the pandemic. The result will capture a sonic experience of global Blackness and communicate geography, identity, and individuality within a connected community.

In its first year, Grantmakers for Girls of Color exemplified the power of proximate funders. The organization deployed $4 million to organizations focused on girls of color through three funds: Love is Healing COVID-19 Response Fund, Black Girl Freedom Fund, and the New Songs Rising Initiative focused on Indigenous communities.

AAPI Civic Engagement Fund is exemplary of our commitment to multiracial and intersectional solidarity. The organization launched a $1.6 million Anti-Racism and Intersectional Justice Fund to address the spike in anti-Asian violence and hate crimes alongside the deep, historical roots of race-based targeting of African Americans.

As a proximate funder, Pillars Fund works at two levels of change: changing mindsets and behaviors and changing resource flows. In 2021, the organization deployed $1 million to 30 organizations supporting the Muslim community and issued its Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion, a set of recommendations for film industry leaders to support Muslim stories and storytellers.