How Three Foundations Want to Rethink Philanthropy – and Save Millions of Lives

When three foundations meet at Restaurant Skovshoved on a chilly Tuesday in November, it is to present an agreement that will be felt by people thousands of kilometres away from the Danish coastline.

The three philanthropic institutions – Philips Foundation, We Share Forward Foundation and the World Diabetes Foundation – share two things: the analysis that our current financial system has flaws, and the ambition to save millions of lives.

In an ambitious partnership, the three foundations are bringing new financial instruments into play to address both challenges.

“We are not here to make money. We are here to maximise our social impact and improve health outcomes. And to do that, we cannot rely only on traditional grants,” says Kirza Buch Kristensen from the World Diabetes Foundation.

“We need new financial tools to drive innovation where healthcare systems are too overstretched to do it themselves.”

Diseases on the rise

The three partners have joined forces because there is not nearly enough money to tackle the major chronic diseases affecting the Global South – illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

Diabetes alone is expected to rise from 589 million people in 2024 to 853 million by 2050. Eighty per cent of them live in low- and middle-income countries.

At the same time, development assistance is declining, and local governments have neither the budgets nor the capacity to reverse the trend.

We are facing a widening gap between needs and available financing.

In 2022, two trillion dollars were missing to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Two years later, in 2024, the gap had doubled to four trillion.

It is against this bleak backdrop that the three foundations have committed themselves to rethinking the financial architecture of philanthropy through the ImpactBridge partnership.

“We are willing to forego any financial return as long as we achieve sustainable impact. The most important thing is to reach people who currently have no equitable access to healthcare, and ensure that access endures” says Bahaa Eddine Sarroukh, Director of the Philips Foundation.

Social entrepreneurs are the agents of change

But how do you reach the people who need the intervention the most?

By working with impact enterprises operating on the frontlines of healthcare, the three partners argue.

“The real changemakers are the social entrepreneurs,” says Bahaa Eddine Sarroukh.
 “It is the social entrepreneurs who are actually developing the innovative models for delivering healthcare,” adds Kirza Buch Kristensen.

Last Mile Care brings healthcare to the workplace

The first investment under ImpactBridge goes to Last Mile Care, an Indian enterprise that brings healthcare directly to the country’s millions of factory, warehouse and construction workers by establishing small clinics at the workplace.

Last Mile Care screens for diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic diseases that are often detected far too late, and provides follow-up through both permanent teams and mobile units capable of taking tests and carrying out examinations on site.

Employers pay a fixed amount per employee. This creates a stable and scalable business model and ensures that workers gain access to basic health services that would otherwise be out of reach.

This is exactly the kind of local, early-stage, practical health intervention the three foundations want to scale through ImpactBridge.

The bumpy road through the Valley of Death

But there is another problem: it is not only governments in the Global South that lack funding. The same is true for the impact entrepreneurs who are meant to drive the change.

It is extremely difficult to move from being a promising startup to becoming an established enterprise that delivers impact at scale.

First, they must survive the Valley of Death, where up to 90 percent of all startups fail within the first five years.

Second, the pathways to scale are notoriously broken for startups – and for social enterprises, they are often even weaker or simply non-existent.

“Many social entrepreneurs may receive a grant or a bit of seed capital from business angels, which allows them to test ideas. But at a certain point, a gap emerges,” says Bahaa Eddine Sarroukh.

“Once they start becoming a type of social business, they no longer qualify for traditional donors like foundations, but neither do they fit what conventional investors are looking for, since those expect a substantial financial return.”

This is why ImpactBridge aims not only to address concrete health challenges but also to create financial innovation that strengthens the ecosystem around social changemakers and enables them to grow and reach more people.

“We don’t just need to support early-stage entrepreneurs – we specifically need to support early-stage social entrepreneurs, so that they can survive the Valley of Death and grow to a level where other investors can join,” says Eleni Theodorou, Director of the We Share Forward Foundation.

Keeping the money in circulation

To make this possible, the three partners have created a circular philanthropic model in which investments are deployed by the We Share Forward Foundation.

“We work with circular grants in the form of loans, equity, convertible instruments and other financial mechanisms – depending on what each social entrepreneur needs,” says Eleni Theodorou.

We Share Forward is a philanthropic foundation, it does not operate like a venture or investment fund, she explains:

“We don’t take carry or annual fees the way conventional funds do. Our goal is to create impact and generate returns that can be reinvested as mission based investments. It’s really as simple as that.”

In ImpactBridge, the philanthropic capital in circulation, is donated  by the World Diabetes Foundation.

Instead of returns flowing back to the foundations, the money remains in the cycle, where it can finance reinvestments in existing social enterprises or new impact startups.

“We are not interested in an exit that leaves the enterprise struggling afterwards,” says Kirza Buch Kristensen.

“For us, an investment is a success if the enterprise thrives, continues to exist and keeps delivering its services. That is far more sustainable – and far more important for genuine impact – than five exits with some financial return that ultimately doesn’t matter.”

Letting the snowball roll

What does matter to the three partners is impact – both at the individual and the systemic level.

“We have a very clear mission: we want to make a difference for 100 million people a year. Right now  we are at 46 million, so we need to reach 54 million more,” says Bahaa Eddine Sarroukh matter-of-factly.

Unlike her colleague at the Philips Foundation, Kirza Buch Kristensen does not operate with a fixed target.

“For us, it’s about building a portfolio – not alone, but within the partnership, because we truly believe in the synergy. We wouldn’t just make our own isolated investments; we want to do it collaboratively. And then it is, of course, about assessing whether we’re actually contributing to the impact we aim for,” she says.

This is not only about concrete health outcomes but also about changing financial flows that can drive long-term transformation.

“We actually want copycats – other actors who replicate what we’re doing. That’s why we need to document our best practices and learnings, so the model can be repeated,” says Eleni Theodorou.

The model and portfolio must also be adjusted continuously to maximise impact, she adds:

“Ideally, we will have revolved part of the capital so that we’re not limited to supporting 10, 15 or 17 enterprises – but many more, because we reinvest returns and attract new impact investments . That way, we can create a snowball effect.”