As part of our Grantmaker Speaker Series, Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation spoke to our staff about his organization’s philanthropic model. Mulago funds organizations “built around a big idea and focused on maximum social impact” in order to help meet the basic needs of very poor people.

Kevin Starr “had a perfectly good career in medicine when he stumbled into philanthropy in 1994.” When his friend and mentor Rainer Arnhold died suddenly, Arnhold’s family asked Starr to support his legacy through the work of the Mulago Foundation. Since 2003, Mulago’s Rainer Arnhold fellowship program has helped social entrepreneurs “turn good ideas into lasting change at scale.”