Trust. World Connect believes in the talent, existing capacity, and social capital that already exists in communities around the world. We don’t build capacity; we identify it and then support it with direct investment.

World Connect embraces a participatory approach to development in which communities assess their own needs and priorities, establish their own project goals, and define success on their own terms. Communities are the leading actors guiding their own development. To achieve this, World Connect coordinates with a network of trusted partner organizations that intentionally take supportive and secondary roles, leading from behind, to ensure that community members and local leaders are the primary owners and drivers of development in their communities, strengthening sustainability. World Connect receives all proposals through its online grant application tool, and multiple team members review applications to ensure a diversity of perspectives on proposals. All funded projects must provide progress and final reports. World Connect maintains 400+ project indicators in a customized project management database.

On average, 80% of money raised goes directly to World Connect grants and the program support provided to grantees.

We invest primarily in local leaders in the Global South who identify local development priorities, which tend to fall within the health, education, livelihoods, and environment sectors.

World Connect requires communities to co-invest a minimum of 10% of the project budget in cash, which ensures that communities are committed to the projects we fund and that they see themselves as owners of the projects and the results, not as beneficiaries of charity. We have documented over the years how higher levels of community cash co-investment correlates to project success and sustainability.

World Connect identifies many locally-led development projects via trusted partner organizations, which we refer to as Established Field Partners (EFPs). In general, we look for EFPs that meet the following criteria:

• They share our philosophical commitment to local decision making, participatory development, and mobilizing women's leadership
• They work with us to align programming and communication to mobilize local social capital and momentum for projects
• They are willing to collaborate with World Connect and affiliated organizations to advocate for systemic change in favor of locally-led development

Past EFPs have included: Peace Corps (returned and active volunteers), Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), CorpsAfrica, Global Health Corps, LEAP Africa (Nigeria), Help Haiti, Village X (Malawi), and the Segal Family Foundation (Malawi).

Many communities we work with are cash-poor but resource and capacity-rich. While lending can be an effective approach in scaling small businesses, and lending in extreme poverty contexts has shown some impact in supporting individuals across economic and environmental shocks, the evidence for the transformative impact of micro-lending around the world is underwhelming. World Connect prefers to validate the ideas and the energy of our community partners with a different type of investment, grants, to communities who co-invest their time, talent, and treasure. We believe providing small grants to advance locally-led development priorities is a more cost-effective approach to delivering development, catalyzing local momentum, and community cohesion. We feel grants convey trust more so than loans.

World Connect on our sourcing network to surface new talent and ideas on which we conduct thorough due diligence, carefully vetting all project leaders and proposed projects. With over 2,000 projects completed, World Connect has a ready set of criteria to judge integrity, capacity, and planning. Less than 1% of World Connect's funding is reported lost or misused by grantees. In addition, by requiring community participation in project planning, communities are often aware of the opportunity, and the project leaders thus have a reputational stake in ensuring projects are successful. If we sense a higher than usual risk profile on a particular project, we work closely with our sourcing partners to ensure secure transactions and accountability processes and, in some cases, give a small grant first to test feasibility or partial funding until a project has progress satisfactorily.

We monitor 400+ data points that analyze project management and implementation success, impact and outcomes, and replication and scale. We mobilize staff and a cadre of field agents through site visits to communities to speak with participants and local implementers to better understand how projects have impacted community life and local realities, document knock-on effects and sustainability, and identify challenges or barriers to success and sustainability. In some countries we've visited every project we've funded. We also carry out regular impact analyses to dive deeper into our data and make conclusions about the aggregate impact of our work across the world.

To date we've launched projects in 42 countries around the world, primarily in the Global South but also domestically in New York City. We look closely at global data, particularly as it relates to the role of women in society and community, the opportunity context for women as leaders, and the climate for civil society actors to affect change. We work closely with sourcing partners to determine where we can have the most impact and which countries are well positioned to support local actors leading on development.

World Connect does lead small groups on trips to visit project partners. For more information on how to join a World Connect trip, email info@worldconnect-us.org.