Humanity faces no shortage of challenges.
Some have been with us for generations, such as childhood hunger and disease in low- and middle-income countries.
Others, like the climate impacts of the global food system and the potentially imminent threat of unmitigated artificial intelligence, are just beginning to enter the public consciousness.
These challenges can feel overwhelming to casual observers, the apparent lack of progress on them disheartening. But the gloom belies growing collaboration between the philanthropic community and some of the brightest minds in tech and life sciences. This collaboration could help solve some of the planet’s most pressing problems.
Let’s take a look at four domains where nonprofit foundations or NGOs are partnering with tech leaders right now to drive change.
1. Fighting ‘Legacy’ Diseases in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Vaccine-preventable childhood diseases like measles and poverty-correlated communicable diseases like tuberculosis are rare in higher-income countries like the United States and Canada. But they continue to cause untold misery and death in much of the world.
Straightforward (if resource-intensive) public health measures can significantly reduce the toll of preventable diseases like measles and polio. UNICEF’s long history of public education and vaccine access campaigns across the Global South have saved countless lives, even as climate change and the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic threaten some of that progress.
Vaccine drives and awareness campaigns only go so far, unfortunately. Where they falter, groundbreaking partnerships between tech innovators and purpose-built philanthropies can pick up the ball.
For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (Gates MRI) recently partnered with Calibr, a division of Scripps Research, to study and potentially commercialize a compound that may improve upon current TB treatments. This would be a game-changer for vulnerable populations in Africa and parts of Asia, where tuberculosis is common and treatment is inconsistently available.
2. Recruiting Gamers to Advance Medicine
Within days of isolating it, scientists had sequenced the full genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. Yet this impressive feat did little at first to advance the medical community’s understanding of COVID-19 disease progression or improve treatment protocols. (The latter came only after months of tragic trial-and-error in overcrowded emergency departments.)
But an unusual arrangement emerged during the pandemic’s early days that likely did save some lives. And it could have significant implications for future studies of viral diseases and immune system disorders, including some cancers.
At its core was Dotmatics, an R&D software development firm that partners with research universities like MIT and the University of Oxford. Branching out from its usual lab-focused fare, Dotmatics developed two online games that recruited thousands of willing ‘citizen scientists’ to analyze cellular-level changes in patients with COVID-19 and other diseases of the immune system. These citizen scientists took just days to perform analyses that would normally take weeks. More importantly, they provided reams of data that will be used to train the next generation of software — which will work even faster.
3. Growing Sustainable Food Solutions
Agriculture and related activities account for nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. Meat production is responsible for the majority of agriculture-related emissions, and red meat production (principally beef) is to blame for the majority of meat-related emissions.
Animal protein — whether beef or pork or chicken or fish — is both tasty and culturally significant. Without alternatives that are not only palatable but essentially indistinguishable from the real thing, humanity will be conventionally carnivorous for the foreseeable future.
In partnership with alternative protein developers like Fishtown Seafood and UPSIDE Foods — whose lab-grown chicken is the first FDA-approved cultivated meat product — the Good Food Institute (GFI) is working to change that. GFI supports dozens of companies working to commercialize and scale cultivated or plant-based meat products within the next decade. Not all of these ‘earthshots’ will succeed, but perhaps enough will to meaningfully reduce agricultural emissions without undue disruption at the dinner table.
4. Electrifying Transportation in Latin America
Despite halting progress toward fleet electrification, the transportation sector remains the largest single emitter of carbon pollution in much of the world.
Changing this will not be easy on a global scale. Incentivizing EV adoption through tax credits for industry and consumers may work in rich countries and regions like the United States and Europe, but it’s a heavier lift in low- and middle-income countries with volatile currencies and meager national reserves.
The Green Climate Fund, a major funder of low-carbon solutions, recognizes this better than most. So it’s partnering with local governments and other stakeholders across Latin America in a large-scale effort to speed the region’s transition to EVs.
For now, the focus is on financial and technical assistance for the development of electric bus fleets, expanded access to light electric commercial vehicles (such as delivery vans), and procurement of distributed Level 2 charging infrastructure. But these partnerships could well lead to more fundamental shifts in electric mobility — shifts that may hold lessons for other countries.
These deep, productive partnerships between philanthropy and tech offer real hope amid what can feel like a relentless barrage of bad news. While the world does face a host of serious challenges that won’t be solved overnight, it’s encouraging to see what’s possible when stakeholders put aside their differences and work toward lasting solutions.
What’s even more encouraging is that these four examples represent a tiny sampling of such work. Pick any field and you’re sure to find funders and tech innovators working hand-in-hand to make the world just a little bit better.
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