Charity Entrepreneurship Program Applications are Open & New Charity Ideas

We’re excited to announce that we’ve reopened applications for the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program for the following cohorts:

Charity Entrepreneurship

• February 9th - April 5th 2026

• June - July 2026 (special round focused on increasing the impact of philanthropy, learn more here)

• September - October 2026

This post summarises the six new charity ideas recommended by our research team for the February 2026 round.

Apply now (Applications now closed)

Applications close on October 5th, and successful candidates will receive offers by December 8th. For the full application timeline and program details, visit our website.

How to Apply

Why should you apply to the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program?

If you’re an ambitious, impact-driven individual looking to start a high-impact nonprofit, the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program can empower and accelerate your journey.

Since 2018, we have incubated over 50 non-profits, many of which are field-leading and benchmark-setting across different cause areas and are supported by actors like GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Mulago, Open Philanthropy, and Animal Charity Evaluators. We disbursed $3.6M in seed grants, and many of our incubated organizations are estimated to be as much as 20 to 60 times more cost-effective than top GiveWell charities. These charities have reached more than 75 million humans and have the potential to improve the lives of over 1 billion animals.

Our program provides expert mentorship, funding, and a proven process to turn ideas into field-leading organizations. If you’re ready to lead, think evidence-first, and maximize your impact, we invite you to consider this career path for yourself and challenge you to take the first step toward building something extraordinary.

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Introducing our newest recommended ideas

During the first half of 2025, the AIM research team examined (i) climate interventions with co-benefits for human health or animal welfare and (ii) classic global health and development ideas that support humans' living longer and more fulfilling lives.

Our recommendations span different sectors and approaches, including:

• a meta organization supporting local air quality monitoring and advocacy teams;

• an organization training brick kiln owners in practices to reduce CO2 and PM2.5 emissions;

• innovative financing tools to assist smallholder farmers;

• a highly targeted Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) mHealth intervention;

• an organisation advocating for supermarkets to make 60:40 plant:animal protein ratio commitments;

• an organization lobbying to secure scale-up funding for alternative proteins from governments.

Below is a brief summary of each recommendation.

More details and full reports on each idea will be made available here in the coming weeks.

We are deeply appreciative of the people who supported us throughout this round, including dozens of experts who gave us their time and insight, and the group of AIM Research Program fellows who contributed to this research round: Léa Guttman, Margaret Hegwood, Maximilian Weylandt, Stuart Craig, and Unathi Maddie Beku. 

Strengthening Air Quality Monitoring and Advocacy in LMICs

• High-quality and transparent air-quality monitoring is a key enabler of reducing air pollution. 

• While growing interest exists in expanding locally led air-quality monitoring and advocacy efforts, many local teams are undertrained and undersupported, limiting their effectiveness and chance of success.

• This charity will work to strengthen the global infrastructure of air quality monitoring & advocacy by providing services such as technical training, research support, monitoring & evaluation, community building, or facilitation of knowledge exchange.

More details and research report available here.

Reducing Air Pollution by Improving Brick Kiln Energy Efficiency

• Training the owners and operators of brick kilns is a cheap and effective way of reducing air pollution and GHGs, and it is currently highly neglected.

• If successful, this charity will be among the most cost-effective climate-oriented charities, at around USD 2 per ton of CO2-equivalent averted.

More details and research report available here.

Increasing Access to Novel, Low-risk Loans for Smallholder Farmers

• This charity will work with existing financial institutions, such as savings cooperatives, to offer novel types of financial products, with a primary focus on asset-collateralized loans.

• To achieve this, the charity will provide these institutions with technical assistance, offer default insurance (to reduce the lenders’ risk), and help with the marketing of these loans to farmers to increase take-up.

More details and research report available here.

Reducing Diarrhoeal-related Deaths through Targeted Sanitation Interventions

• A new team will target households at high risk of diarrhoeal disease through a simple, cost-effective package of WASH interventions. The process involves identifying hospitalized patients with diarrhoea, delivering a bedside education module, handing over low-cost WASH supplies (e.g., chlorine tablets), and following up via mobile messaging for up to a year after discharge.

• The theory of change (ToC) for this idea is clear and concise, with relatively simple core components and a low cost of necessary health commodities.

• We are encouraged by the significant and sustained effects observed in the RCTs for both WASH behaviour practices and diarrhoeal burden for up to 12 months.

More details and research report availablehere.

Advocating for 60:40 plant:animal protein sales ratios by 2040

• The theory of change for this intervention is clear and concise.

• It relies on (good cop) corporate campaigning which is a well-tested and successful approach within the animal movement.

• The charity will also provide technical assistance to supermarkets to help them meet their commitments.

• This intervention is expected to be extremely cost-effective, averting up to 177 SADs per 2023 USD (modeling a 60:40 by 2040 commitment).

• We are encouraged by progress in the Netherlands where 13 supermarkets with a total market share greater than 90% have committed to 60:40 protein sales ratios by 2030.

  
  

More details and research report available here.

Securing Scale-up Funding for Alternative Proteins

• This is the first alternative protein intervention that AIM has ever recommended, and we are excited to invest in an alternative path to victory for the animal movement.

• Giving Green finds that promoting alternative proteins to reduce demand for conventional meat is one of the most promising climate interventions and recommends the Good Food Institute (GFI) as one of its top non-profits.

• This work is very neglected. Scale-up funding has been historically underinvested relative to R&D funding. Currently, only one person in GFI's 15-person US policy team and one person in their 12-person Europe policy team are focused on securing scale-up funding.

More details and research report available here.

Please note that in addition to the above ideas, two previous recommended animal welfare ideas will be available to the February 2026 cohort:

Cage-free Farming in the Middle East

Collaborative corporate campaigning for cage-free farming in neglected countries in the Middle East (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt). 

More details and research report available here.

Reducing Keel Bone Fractures

Working with farmers to reduce the prevalence of keel bone fractures (KBF) in cage-free layer hens, ideally through outreach to certifiers to update their certification standards to include an outcome-based limit on KBF.

More details and research report available here.

Apply to our program to help launch these organizations

We encourage you to learn more about these ideas here and sign up for the upcoming Q&A webinars, where you will have the opportunity to have your questions answered by our research team. 

Unfamiliar with our program? The Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program is a free 2-month training program that helps you find an evidence-based idea for a new charity, a talented co-founder to build a new organization with, and up to $200,000 in seed funding. We have successfully incubated over 50 charities, reaching 75+ million people and 1+ billion animals. Learn more about our track record and what it’s like to be on the program.