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Introducing the Specialist Founder Track of Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program
6 min readApr 13
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Apply to build one specific, research-backed charity.
Looking for mid-career professionals in public health policy and foreign aid spending.
You've accumulated expertise that most people in the world simply don't have. Real relationships. Valuable networks. Professional credibility. An understanding of how decisions are actually made. That career capital is extraordinarily valuable, and there's a specific way to deploy it that could affect millions of lives.
We've identified two extraordinarily cost-effective charity ideas that need founders with specific backgrounds to succeed.
If you've built a career in policy or advocacy — think government aid agencies, health ministries, food regulatory bodies, or the organizations that work closely alongside them — this is for you.
Submit an Expression of Interest form before April 29th.
Program starts in September 2026.
Our incubation program typically recruits talented generalists and matches them with ideas during the program. But a small number of our ideas don't work that way. They need founders who already have the relationships, the institutional knowledge, and the credibility to open doors from day one.
The Specialist Founder Track is straightforward: you apply to build one specific charity. If accepted, you know from day one what you are signing up to build.
We're recruiting specialist founders for two ideas:
Learn more
Global aid budgets are being cut. That trend probably isn't reversing soon. Which makes it all the more urgent that the aid which remains goes to what actually works.
This charity would work upstream: engaging the policymakers and budget holders who decide where aid is allocated, and making the case for funding evidence-backed, cost-effective interventions over less effective ones.
We've identified at least 10 promising countries, including Japan, Spain, Italy, South Korea, and New Zealand. Our modeling suggests that even a single early policy win could avert a DALY for $60 to $314. For a well-connected founder working in a context they know well, that bar is achievable.
We first recommended this idea in 2022. It led to the founding of the Center for Effective Aid Policy (CEAP), which shut down in 2024. The post-mortem was clear: working as outsiders, without pre-existing relationships inside the agencies they were trying to influence, made persuasion extremely difficult.
That's exactly why we're recruiting differently this time. Other organizations in this space, such as Pour Demain, Langsikt, and Results Canada, have shown that progress is possible with the right people and approach.
You've spent years inside a bilateral aid agency or a closely related organization. You understand how funding decisions are actually made, because you've watched them happen, or shaped them yourself. You have real relationships with people in international development, not loose connections. You likely already have a foothold in national aid agencies and are specifically passionate about improving the effectiveness of foreign aid allocation. You're comfortable with the reality of policy work: long feedback loops, relationship-driven progress, and genuine uncertainty about outcomes.
If you meet all or most of these, we’d love to hear from you through the expression of interest form!
Express your Interest
$1 per DALY averted. That's our cost-effectiveness estimate for this intervention in Indonesia alone. To put that in context: it's among the most impactful numbers we've ever modeled.
Diets high in sodium contribute to millions of cardiovascular deaths each year, a burden that will grow as populations age and dietary habits shift. Despite the scale, the policy response in most countries remains wholly inadequate. Many of the hardest-hit countries have no active advocacy presence at all.
This charity would engage governments and food industry actors to reduce sodium levels in widely consumed processed foods. The core approach is reformulation: persuading or pressuring food producers to change how their products are made. Complementary levers, such as front-of-pack labeling and fiscal policy, may support the strategy depending on context.
We've identified many promising countries, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Mauritius, and several in the Western Balkans, such as Montenegro, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Bosnia, Albania, and Serbia, among others.
We've put this idea forward through our standard incubation program five consecutive times without finding the right founders. That's not a reflection of the idea's potential. The numbers speak for themselves. It's a profile problem. This charity is unlikely to be built by someone who discovers salt policy during the program. It needs someone who already knows this problem matters, already understands the landscape, and is ready to do the unglamorous, high-leverage work of shifting it.
You have a background in public health policy-making or advocacy. You've worked inside or alongside a health ministry, food regulatory body, or public health authority, and you have a clear understanding of the norms and practices of that world: how decisions get made, who the real decision-makers are, and what it takes to move them. You have existing relationships with officials, industry players, or international public health institutions. You have a foothold in one of the priority countries or sectors, and you may already have experience working on diet-related diseases. And you're realistic about what policy advocacy involves: long timelines, uncertain individual wins, and progress measured in years — alongside the knowledge that the wins, if achieved, are enormous in scale.
If you meet all or most of these, we’d love to hear from you through the expression of interest form!
Express your InterestWe're not expecting hundreds of applications. We're expecting a small number of people for whom one of these ideas is a near-perfect fit — someone who reads this and thinks: that's the problem I've been positioned to work on for years.
If you tick only some of the criteria but believe you could be a good fit for these ideas, we still want to hear from you. We'll review every submission and reach out if we think there's a strong fit.
These ideas will only be launched if the right people come forward. The counterfactual impact at stake is enormous.
Program starts in September 2026.
Submit an Expression of Interest form before April 29th.
Express your InterestThe right founders for these ideas may not be in our immediate network, but they might be in yours.
If this post made you think of a specific person, please forward it to them directly, or submit a referral using the link below.
I might know someone!You'll receive the same support as every founder in our incubation program, including:
The one thing that's different from the standard program: you arrive knowing what you're building. The program will focus on helping you refine your strategy for a specific country context, not on figuring out what to build or where to begin.
I want to learn more!
I think this is an excellent idea!
Out of curiosity, is CE’s ideal outcome to have two specialist founders in each idea, or to pair one specialist with one non-specialist for a kind of balance?
Our current hypothesis is that we’d most likely match this person with a generalist during the program (just like the other non-specialist founders). However, since this is something new that we're testing out, we are also open to exploring different scenarios, including solo founding or potentially hiring two specialist founders for the same ideas if they have exceptional skill fit with each other. It will largely depend on the talent pool.