Mission We envision a world where every community has access to the knowledge, capital, and partners needed to achieve digital equity.
Our mission is to accelerate digital equity by supporting, catalyzing, scaling holistic solutions providing people with the internet access and means needed to participate fully in a digital society.
Description We work with communities to build the internet infrastructure and skills they need to participate fully in a digital society.
To do this, we provide a spectrum of philanthropic support and impact investing capital to advance digital equity. Our approach centers on community connectivity providers and civil society organizations that demonstrate progress in connecting historically underserved communities, pioneering efforts to make the internet more affordable, providing digital literacy training, and more.
What we hear time and again is that communities lack access to the capacity and capital to meet their needs. That’s why our model focuses on meeting community connectivity providers where they are, assessing the needs of the communities they serve, and providing a range of financial tools to help them holistically and sustainably achieve digital equity.
Visit www.connecthumanity.fund for more information.
Our Values:
1. We build with and not for the communities we seek to serve, humble and mindful of great work already being done by our partner organizations around the world, empowering communities as stakeholders in their own digital futures.
2. Expanding the financial toolbox and funding available, we deploy grants and impact investments depending on what our partners need to achieve digital equity holistically. We strive to provide support where, when, and how it is needed, not how it is most convenient for us.
3. Committed to continuous learning, we consult early and often on our programs and investments, while fostering a sense of safety and constructive candor where our partners can share honest feedback so we can learn and iterate as a community.
4. Working in the open, we are invested in cultivating a body of shared knowledge for all actors working to advance digital equity — not only with civil society organizations and community connectivity providers doing the hard work of meeting the digital needs of their communities, but with the regulators, investors, and funders who’s partnership is necessary to achieve digital equity for all.
5. We are mindful of power — both the power we must build with all our partners to ensure the political will necessary to achieve digital equity, and our power as a funder committed to fostering justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion with those we support and within the ecosystem.