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Application for the 2026 Charity Entrepreneurship Programs is Open
6 min readAug 4, 2025
We’re excited to announce that we’ve reopened applications for the following Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program Cohorts:
This post summarises the six new charity ideas recommended for the February 2026 Cohort (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.
Apply now
If you’re an ambitious, impact-driven individual looking to start a high-impact nonprofit, the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program is your best launchpad.
Since 2018, we have incubated over 50 field-leading, benchmark-setting charities across different cause areas who have raised $68+ million and are supported by actors like GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Mulago, Open Philanthropy, 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 want to 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.
We are excited to recommend five new impactful charities for the February 2026 cohort of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program.
During the first half of 2025, we 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:
Note that there are two additional previously recommended animal welfare ideas available to the 2026 February cohort:
Below, you can find 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.
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.
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 under-supported, 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.
More details and report here.
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.
More details and report here.
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 82 consumption doublings per USD 1,000, or costing USD 12 per consumption doubling.
More details and report here.
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.
More details and report here.
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.
More details and report here.
Please note that in addition to the above ideas, two previous recommended animal welfare ideas will be available to the February 2026 cohort:
We want to see a new organization implement the most successful and well-tested intervention of the animal movement – cage-free corporate campaigns – in a new, neglected region such as the Middle East, which farms over 300 million hens every year. Cage-free campaigns are the backbone of the existing animal advocacy movement, with great progress being made on the global level, as we have seen 2,625 cage-free commitments made so far. 1,157 of these corporate pledges are now fully implemented across Europe, the UK, and the US, impacting 220 million hens. However, despite this global progress, there are still many countries without existing organizations or ongoing campaigns where layer hens are still suffering in the extreme confinement of battery or furnished cages. We can change that. We have already seen progress being made in the region by Kafessiz Türkiye in Türkiye. We think focusing on the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt could be particularly promising for a new organization as there are currently no existing organizations working here.
More details and report available here.
Keel bone fractures (KBF) are the most important welfare concern in cage-free laying hens. They are caused by their unnaturally high egg-laying demand, lack of space to exercise, and freedom from cages, creating more opportunities for collisions and injuries on farms without appropriate stockmanship and management. We want to see a new organization work in countries that have made the most cage-free progress – particularly Germany, the UK, and the US – to help reduce the prevalence of KBF. We are most excited about this being done through work with certifiers to set targets for KBF prevalence on their farms. For example, Global Animal Partnership Steps 5 and 5+ require KBF prevalence to be at or below 25% on these farms. We think this new organization should first work with certifiers but then consider a pivot to focus on corporate campaigns (or policy) in the medium-to-long term, as these campaigns are more scalable and generally have a stronger evidence base than those with certifiers.
More details and report available here.
We encourage you to learn more about these ideas here and sign up for the 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.