IDinsight announces $12 million grant from MacKenzie Scott

Tuesday, June 15, 2021 – Today MacKenzie Scott announced she will be granting $2,739,000,000 in gifts to 286 organizations committed to addressing the most challenging problems facing the world today, including IDinsight.

IDinsight, is a mission-driven global advisory, data analytics, and research organization that helps global development leaders maximize their social impact. 

In the ten years since its founding, IDinsight has grown to more than 180 people working closely with leaders in government, civil society, and funding agencies in Africa and Asia. Driven by a passion for social progress, IDinsight project teams collaborate with decision-makers to enable powerful data and evidence to make a difference in millions of lives.  

The common thread in its work is bringing the best data to the biggest challenges in global development. In some cases, IDinsight teams focus on evaluating whether large government and NGO programs work; in other cases, teams help organizational leaders combine and interpret multiple data sources to reach the most people in need. In all projects, IDinsight applies state-of-the-art quantitative and qualitative methods, ranging from rigorous impact evaluations to machine learning to in-depth assessments that identify bottlenecks in implementation. In addition, IDinsight has developed methods for rapid and cost-effective survey data collection and processing. 

“The IDinsight team is honored to have received this generous grant and we are humbled to be among a community of people working on urgent problems facing this generation and the next,” said Ruth Levine, IDinsight CEO. “This extraordinary gift of unrestricted funding builds on the foundation laid with support of others who also have confidence in our work, and who share our belief in the power of evidence for social good.”  

“While political pendulums swing back and forth, redistributing and re-concentrating wealth, we can choose to fund organizations with the potential to increase the impact of every dollar and hour donated by others,” wrote MacKenzie Scott in her Medium post. “Social sector infrastructure organizations empower community leaders, support grassroots organizing and innovation, measure and evaluate what works, and disseminate information so that community leaders, elected officials, volunteers, employees, and donors at every level of income can make informed decisions about how to partner and invest. These organizations, which are themselves historically underfunded, also promote and facilitate service, which in turn inspires more people to serve.”

Media contact:
Emily Coppel, Director of Strategic Communications; emily.coppel@idinsight.org