High-Impact Growth

Justin Steele gave away nearly $700 million leading Google.org’s philanthropy across the Americas, and he watched funding flow to the nonprofits closest to power rather than those closest to the problem. Now the founder of Kindora, a public benefit corporation using AI to help nonprofits find funders who’d actually say yes, he calls this the legibility trap. In conversation with Dimagi CEO Jonathan Jackson, Justin takes listeners inside a grant maker’s head: how a seven-person team ran a $150 million annual budget, why portfolios so often follow personal networks, and why honest feedback is so rare. They debate whether an LLM tuned on community wisdom could read a grant application more fairly than a program officer, why AI works best as a “junior staff member’s first read,” and why “not a fit” and “not competitive” are very different no’s. Justin also shares his bet on democratizing ownership of Kindora itself through a community crowd raise. Whether you’re fundraising, grant making, or building something mission-driven, you’ll come away with a sharper sense of how capital actually moves, and how it could move better.

Related Resources:
Kindora: Justin’s public benefit corporation. It uses AI to help nonprofits find high-fit funders, map warm connections and draft grant applications
Kindora’s Wefunder Campaign: Support Kindora’s active fundraising campaign and learn more about the opportunity to invest in its mission.
The Legibility Trap (EA Forum): Justin’s article on how “fund the most rigorous thinkers” can quietly favor the wrong organizations.
Outdoorithm Collective: the nonprofit Justin and his wife co-founded to take urban families out into nature. Kindora began as their own fundraising tool.
Incorruptible by Eric Ries: Ries’s new book on why good companies go bad, which Justin and Jon discuss.
The Steve Fund: a nonprofit focused on the mental health of young people of color, and one of the grantees in the Google.org teen mental health portfolio Justin describes.
Decolonizing Wealth Project: founded by Edgar Villanueva, whose “money as medicine” idea Justin cites.

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Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro

What happens when AI philanthropy actually arrives? Jack Lewars advises donors giving up to nine figures a year — and he argues the wave of wealth expected from AI company IPOs is more locked in than skeptics think, with potentially $130 billion or more committed to charity even in conservative scenarios. In this conversation with hosts Amie Vaccaro and Jonathan Jackson, Jack explains why concentration is the real risk ("two big funders beat one twice the size"), why the bottleneck to scaling global health organizations isn't money but managing directors and chiefs of staff, and why he has no patience for scaling plans that end in “…government adoption." Drawing on his experience running One for the World and building a mid-stage global health fund — the "Series A" of the sector — Jack lays out exactly what implementing organizations should do now to position themselves: be cost-effective, be evidence-backed, be visible to intermediaries like GiveWell and Coefficient Giving. And whatever you do, don't send a cold email.

Jack Lewars is the founder of Ultra Philanthropy, an independent advisory that helps major donors give for maximum impact. He advises donors giving up to nine figures a year, and is Chair of Trustees at High Impact Athletes. He writes the Funding Anthropalypse newsletter, commenting on the expected wave of AI philanthropy in 2027 and beyond.

He is also the Fund Manager of the Ultra Philanthropy Mid-stage Global Health Fund, which makes strategic grants and offers hands-on technical and management assistance to bring high impact global health projects to scale.

Ultra Philanthropy – Jack Lewars's independent advisory helping major donors give for maximum impact, home of the mid-stage global health fund.
Jack Lewars's Substack – His newsletter on AI wealth and philanthropy, referenced throughout the episode. 
GiveWell – Charity evaluator that recently received a $1 billion commitment from Coefficient Giving and made its largest-ever grant to the Against Malaria Foundation.
Coefficient Giving – Major effective-giving funder discussed as a key intermediary for AI wealth. 
One for the World – Nonprofit Jack led as executive director, encouraging graduates to pledge 1% of income to cost-effective global health charities.
"What's Your Endgame?" – Stanford Social Innovation Review – The decade-old article on nonprofit endgames Jack references as the (only) canonical piece on scaling. 
Dimagi Connect – Dimagi's verified service delivery platform, discussed by Jonathan as a way to make performance matter through fast feedback loops.
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Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro

Disability inclusion in global development starts with a question most teams never ask: who is your technology quietly leaving out? Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda, executive director of Berkeley's Center for Independent Living, president of the global inclusion nonprofit World Enabled, and one of the youngest delegates to help draft the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, joins Amie Vaccaro and guest co-host Erin Quinn for a conversation that moves from a Caracas classroom, where his mother was told her son could never be educated, to the floor of the United Nations, to the frontier of artificial intelligence. Dr. Pineda explains why the assistive technology of today becomes the mainstream technology of tomorrow, why AI trained on averages risks erasing the people at the edges of the bell curve, and what implementers and funders can do differently starting tomorrow: hire disabled technologists, build to WCAG AA, optimize for screen readers, demand accessibility through procurement. Underneath it all is his central claim — we already have enough knowledge to unlock human potential. What's missing isn't know-how. It's the collective decision to use it.
Related Resources:
Podcast hosted by Dr. Victor Pineda: The Independent: Meeting the Moment for Disability Justice available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube
The Center for Independent Living (CIL), Berkeley – The world's first independent living center, founded in 1972 and now led by Dr. Pineda; the origin point for many principles later written into the UN CRPD.
Pineda Foundation / World Enabled – Dr. Pineda's global nonprofit advancing inclusive urban development, digital equity, and disability rights worldwide.
UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – The treaty Dr. Pineda helped draft, setting out the rights and dignity of over a billion people with disabilities.
Being Heumann (Apple Original Films) – Siân Heder's film of Judy Heumann's memoir and the 26-day 1977 Section 504 sit-in; TIFF opening night, in theaters November 6 and on Apple TV November 13, 2026.
Protect Section 504 (DREDF) – Tracks the multi-state lawsuit challenging Section 504 regulations that Dr. Pineda references, with advocacy tools.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – The W3C standard Dr. Pineda urges teams to build to at Level AA or higher.
Positive AI Labs – Nonprofit building open datasets and evaluations to steer frontier AI toward pluralistic knowledge of human flourishing, cited by Dr. Pineda as an example of getting wisdom traditions into models before the training loop closes.

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Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro

Five years ago, they were mid-level software engineers. Today, they hold giving accounts larger than major foundations — and the sector they want to fund may not be ready to absorb the money. Nick Allardice, CEO of GiveDirectly and former CEO of Change.org, joins Amie and Jonathan to unpack his widely discussed article "The Absorption Problem" and what the "third wave" of philanthropy means for global development. Nick explains why the biggest risk isn't money going to the wrong place, but money sitting on the sidelines for lack of credible places to put it — and why he regularly refers major donors to other organizations to "grow the pie, not divide it." The conversation digs into the voltage drop (research suggests 50–90% of programs lose substantial impact as they scale), why nonprofits rarely ask what their total addressable market is, and how GiveDirectly is winding down complexity to prepare to move much larger sums. Nick closes with candid advice for the newly wealthy: give away 10% of your net wealth in year one, learn by doing, and don't disconnect from the joy of giving.
Related Resources:
The Absorption Problem by Nick Allardice
The Overlooked Absorptive Capacity of Locally-Led Organizations by Jonathan Jackson and Neal Lesh
The Third Wave of American Philanthropy by Nan Ransohoff
Increasing Our 2026 Allocation to GiveWell's Recommendations to $1 Billion by Coefficient Giving
The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale by John A. List

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Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro

Could a funder deploy $100 million in global health tomorrow and know where every single dollar went? Dimagi CEO and co-founder Jonathan Jackson believes verified service delivery finally makes the answer yes. In this candid mid-2026 check-in, Jon joins co-host Amie Vaccaro, VP of CommCare Growth and Strategy, to unpack a year of profound change including why Dimagi retired its longtime value "embrace complexity for impact" in favor of "solving the right problems for impact," and what that shift reveals about affordability in a post-USAID funding landscape. Jon walks step-by-step through a single Connect-enabled home visit, from opt-in push notification to real-time payment, and shares the numbers behind the platform: over 1.5 million verified visits, 200+ local organizations expressing interest, and 80 cents of every dollar reaching frontline workers, local organizations, and commodities. The conversation also explores how AI is putting program design directly into the hands of local organizations, automating roles, not people. As Jon puts it: "When you do a better job today, the system knows it and can offer you even more work tomorrow."
Related Resources:
Dimagi Connect – Dimagi's verified service delivery platform connecting funders with local organizations and frontline workers.
CommCare by Dimagi – The open-source platform for frontline workers that Connect is built on, with a quarter million active users worldwide.
GiveWell – The evidence-based charity evaluator whose request for information on post-market malaria rapid diagnostic test surveillance inspired Dimagi's AI-built Connect pilot.
Steel Foundation for Hope – An early flagship funder that Amie credits with seeing Connect's potential.
Kevin Starr episode of High-Impact Growth – https://dimagi.com/podcast/funders-power-to-change-the-system/ 
Eric Ries episode of High-Impact Growth – https://dimagi.com/podcast/podcast-eric-ries-good-companies-go-bad/ 
Kikapu Gardens field visit video – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MLGVhiA0YCt_NpjuF4Gveu1s3kwygD7-/view 

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We are on social media - follow us for the latest from Dimagi: ⁠LinkedIn⁠, ⁠Twitter⁠, ⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠, ⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠
If you enjoy this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review and share your favorite episodes with friends. 
Hosts: ⁠Jonathan Jackson⁠ and ⁠Amie Vaccaro