Our Mission
The Steele Foundation for Hope portfolio is working in 103 countries, providing access to essential products and services across 53% of world’s countries. We provide sustainable access to healthcare, water, food, and education for people in need worldwide through advances in technology and engineering.
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Our Leaders
Founder
Stuart Steele
CEO
Joe Exner
We choose individual leaders over institutions, creators over consultants, and entrepreneurs over executives.
Our foundation provides patient, philanthropic investment capital to for-profit companies that discover and develop products and services to address some of humanity’s most pressing issues.
We look for leaders who can do anything but are driven to build a company that will ultimately help people by creating products and services that are so good that they become essential.
If we help bring the company to the next stage with capital, can it sustain itself and continue to innovate with profit?
To provide funding, we must believe in the character and competence of the leader(s), the ingenuity of their solution, and the viability of their business model.
Then, when sizing an investment, we work to understand how much capital the business needs to become self-sustaining through profitable growth.
We allocate all financial gains from our foundation investments to fund new companies, allowing us to leverage the same financial resources multiple times to help more people in future decades.
Since our inception in January 2022, we have committed over $121,000,000 to 22 social enterprises.
We are self-funded and do not accept contributions.
Our Portfolio
MDandMe uses advanced AI technology to help people navigate the uncertainty and complexity of health care. Our investment of $2,500,000 will enable the development of the MDandMe platform, including careful consideration and design for future applications in low-resource settings.
Flare coordinates emergency services by adding intelligent platform technology to existing emergency infrastructure like ambulances, aircraft, clinics, and hospitals. Our investment enables Flare to expand access to emergency services and critical care coordination to additional countries.
Water Access Rwanda offers safe, durable, and affordable water solutions to people in Rwanda and the East Africa region. Our $500,000 grant and investment of $7,518,331 enables Water Access Rwanda to provide safe and affordable drinking water to more than 500 additional communities in the years to come.
OpenFn is a technology company that helps governments and social-sector organizations automate business processes that run across multiple systems. Our investment of $2,000,000 enables OpenFn to make enhancements to its technology to reach a broader community of social sector organizations in low and middle-income countries.
Rhaeos is helping hydrocephalus patients by developing a wireless, non-invasive shunt monitoring device. Our investment of $10,000,000 allows for the continued development of its sensors and, ultimately, to enable Rhaeos to expand access across the globe.
Sibel Health’s mission is to deliver better health data for all through their clinical grade, flexible, bio-integrated sensors. Our investment of $25,000,000 enables Sibel to make their sensors affordable to lower-resourced countries.
Zenysis created an interoperability software platform to collect all the data a country receives and organize it in a useful way. Our investment of $13,000,000 enables Zenysis to continue to enhance its platform and deliver it in lower-income countries.
Through breakthrough biotechnology and proprietary process innovations, CassVita promotes cassava, a climate-resilient crop, as a flour alternative to wheat and corn. Our investment of $2,000,000 enables CassVita to develop and expand its cassava production process.
Dimagi helps organizations build mobile applications to maximize the impact of their Community Health Workers. Our investment of $25,000,000 supports Dimagi’s development of CommCare Connect - a new product offering designed to help Community Health Workers learn, deliver, verify, and be paid for high-impact services at scale.
Project Life provides specialized head and neck surgery in low-resourced countries. While performing surgery, they train additional surgeons and equip them with the necessary instruments to perform the procedures in their home hospitals and clinics. We committed $3,000,000 of funding for Dr. Shaye’s work with Project Life and expect to provide additional funding in the coming years.
EarthEnable Inc.’s mission is to deliver affordable, healthy, and sustainable flooring and housing solutions for low-income families in rural Africa. Our $1,500,000 grant allowed EarthEnable to expand its efforts for low-income families in rural Africa.
Gardens for Health International provides nutrition education while guiding and equipping families to use their land to grow nutritious food. Our $1,584,000 grant enabled Gardens for Health to scale their programs into additional districts in Rwanda.
Village HopeCore promotes sustainable livelihoods and family health in Africa. Our $260,000 grant enabled Village HopeCore to expand its community healthcare workforce and reach.
AkiraChix is a Kenyan-based organization working to grow the largest talent pool of women in tech in Africa. Our $1,000,000 grant enabled AkiraChix to expand its technical training program to more students from across East Africa.
Building Tomorrow’s mission is to provide literacy and numeracy for all children while equipping underserved communities in rural Uganda to support access to quality education. Our $700,000 grant enabled Building Tomorrow to expand the reach of its literacy and numeracy programs to more than 50,000 additional children.
KickStart designs, distributes, and promotes affordable manual irrigation water pumps in sub-Saharan Africa. Our $1,000,000 grant enabled KickStart to expand its work, equipping thousands more entrepreneurs with irrigation pumps and tools to build productive, profitable, and climate-resilient businesses.
The Community Hospice House provides quality, compassionate end-of-life care in a home-like environment for patients who cannot be cared for at home. Our funding of over $3,600,000 to expand and improve its facilities is a continuation of Steele Family funding.
Simprints builds biometric digital identification effective with children as young as nine months of age. Our $7,000,000 grant supports Simprints in expanding their biometric digital identification technology and will be used as part of the national rollout in Ghana of the first-ever Malaria vaccine.
Alight seeks to build a meaningful life for people who are displaced. Our $1,000,000 grant enabled Alight to distribute food and essential supplies inside of Ukraine and to secure temporary housing and resources for those displaced across Europe.
Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) is a crisis response organization that brings aid and recovery services to underserved communities across the globe. Our $500,000 grant enabled CORE to provide immediate relief to people fleeing Ukraine.
World Central Kitchen provides meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises. Our $500,000 grant enabled World Central Kitchen to provide meals to those in and around Ukraine immediately following the Russian invasion.
Families in Transition (FIT) provides comprehensive services to empower individuals and families experiencing homelessness. Our $100,000 grant helped FIT to address an emergency repair need.
“There comes a time where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river.
We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in.” — Desmond Tutu