Our Fellowships

We find leaders with real solutions to climate or poverty—and help them design for impact at scale. All our portfolio organizations start as Mulago Fellows.

We find founders who have a scalable solution to poverty or climate—and the chops to deliver it.

Healthcare, education, livelihoods, water and sanitation, a healthy environment— whatever leads to a better life and a route out of poverty. Each year, we select the best 20 to become Mulago Fellows through our Rainer and Henry Arnhold Fellowship programs.

1000

+

Organizations we looked at last year

200 +

Organizations we spoke with in depth

~20

New Fellows selected annually

Our Fellows Design for Impact at Scale

The one-year fellowship is a mix of money, design thinking, coaching, and connections. The main event is a week-long retreat that's the highlight of the whole thing.

Here are the components of the fellowship in more detail:

Design & Strategy

Week-long workshops bookend the fellowship, where we deep on design for impact and strategy for scale. Throughout the year, we coach fellows using our frameworks—it's a rare chance to focus completely on big ideas and how to make them work.

Community & Connections

Fellows are connected to expert advisors, experienced doers from our portfolio, and get a lot of face time with one another during monthly facilitated peer coaching. They join a community of 250+ Mulago fellows.

Resources

The fellowship comes with $100k and is the on-ramp to our portfolio—all fellows are considered for longer-term Mulago funding following the completion of their fellowship.

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Go Big or Go... Oh, Just Go Big

All our fellows have big ideas. And want to create exponential change. Our design tools help take them all the way from an idea to impact at scale. Scale for us doesn’t simply mean growth, nor is it just a big number. And it isn’t about an organization “scaling;” it’s about scaling the impact you want to see in the world.

What We Look For

We search for scalable solutions that improve life for the poor, open a route out of poverty, and protect the environment.

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Most of our work focuses on basic needs:

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Health

Perhaps the most basic need of the very poor is primary health care, which includes things like prenatal care, births in an equipped facility, vaccinations, malaria treatment, family planning, and last mile health access. To us, health rises or sinks with everything from road safety to mental wellbeing, from vaccine safety to sexual violence prevention.

Environment

Human well-being and the health of the environment are inextricably linked. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, air pollution, a shrinking water supply—all of these disproportionately affect the world’s poor.

Education

Literacy and numeracy help kids make sense of the world. Whether through early childhood education, primary school, secondary school, or your parent’s phone: the more you learn, the more you earn later in life—and the greater chance you’ll break out of poverty.

Livelihoods

Lots of people rely on agriculture as a source of income. We know what makes farms more productive and gets farmers more money: the right inputs, information, training, credit, and access to markets. Increasingly boosting income outside of agriculture is critical to make a dent in poverty levels.

Water & Sanitation

Clean water and sanitation are fundamental to health and education—kids with reliable water stay healthier and spend more time in school instead of fetching it. We back solutions that keep clean water running for the poorest people

Poverty

Rainer Arnhold
Fellows

Leaders with promising, scalable solutions to poverty — and the chops to deliver.

Conservation & Climate

Henry Arnhold Fellows

Leaders with promising conservation or climate solutions and an ambition to go big.

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Fellowship Timeline

Sourcing | August - October

We do an extensive hunt for fellows at the start of the year. We depend heavily on our trusted network of doers and funders for referrals on who’s doing excellent work.
We look at thousands of organizations per year for ~20 spots. It’s competitive, but we keep it low-hassle.

Screening | October - January

We start with one short form - we hope you don’t spend more than 30 minutes completing it
Two members of our team independently review every application to evaluate potential fit with the fellowship.
From there, we do a series of up to three learning conversations with members of our team. And, we do the rest!

Selection | Early 2026

We select a class of ~20 irrepressible and complementary fellows. We get back to every organization that generously took the time to fill out our application

The First Retreat | May 2026

The first week-long in-person retreat focuses on design for impact and strategy for scale, along with critical things like effective communication of your idea.

Design & Strategy and Coaching | Throughout the year

There's a lot of coaching in between, on design, strategy, and communications. And lots of connections with other leaders in our network.
Monthly facilitated peer coaching sessions deepen connections between fellows.

The Second Retreat | May 2027

Another week-long in-person retreat gives fellows a chance to convene with their fellows, iterate on their design work, and then really nail how to communicate what they do in a way that makes an audience both understand and care about it.