TL;DR
- We incubated 8 new nonprofits in Latin America using an evidence-based, cost-effectiveness–driven approach.
- Each organization is tackling a high-priority, neglected problem with proven interventions adapted to their context, all designed to scale.
- These orgs would not exist without this process, supporting them creates real counterfactual impact.
- 📅 We are hosting a “Meet the Founder” session on April 9th — connectors, funders, and mentors are invited to join and meet the teams.
- Donations are now open to support these new orgs pilots.
🚀 We are also opening applications for our 2026 cohort.
Why this work exists
In Latin America, many social organizations are driven by strong intentions — but far fewer are built around:
- rigorous prioritization
- strong causal evidence
- cost-effectiveness thinking
We started Theory of Change Makers (ToCM) to help close that gap.
Instead of launching a single organization, we asked:
What if we could help create many high-impact organizations, designed from day one around evidence, scale, and cost-effectiveness?
This post shares the result of this endeavor.
The process (briefly)
Over 8 months, founders:
- Identified and prioritized problems using ITN (Importance, Tractability, Neglectedness)
- Reviewed global evidence (RCTs, meta-analyses, systematic reviews)
- Selected and adapted proven interventions
- Built a Theory of Change
- Developed a cost-effectiveness model
- Tested key assumptions through real-world prototypes
What emerged are organizations ready to be built. And behind each one, there is a group of brave founders willing to take the risk of building them from scratch.
The organizations
Below are the 8 organizations incubated in this cohort. Each includes a short summary and links to their full work.
You can explore all project information here: https://www.emprendimientosocial.org/tocm
💧 YAKU (Bolivia / Mexico) — Water & Health
Problem:
Millions lack access to microbiologically safe drinking water in rural areas.
Intervention:
Rainwater harvesting and filtration systems for safe household water.
Key metric: ~$982 per DALY averted
🧠 LUNAVA (Mexico) — Mental Health
Problem:
Untreated depression and anxiety in women aged 40–59 during menopause and perimenopause.
Intervention:
Group-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) program tailored to women in climacteric stages.
- 📄 LUNAVA - Research report
- 📊 LUNAVA - Cost-effectiveness model
- 🌐 LUNAVA - Website
- 📄 LUNAVA - EA Forum post
Key metric: ~$663 per DALY averted
🧠 GRANA (Colombia) — Mental Health
Problem:
Over 7.4 million children and adolescents in Colombia face mental health challenges, with limited access to care — especially in rural schools.
Intervention:
School-based group program to improve socio-emotional wellbeing and reduce anxiety and depression.
Key metric: ~$312 per DALY averted
🍎 VIVIR BIEN (Guatemala) — Child Health
Problem:
40% of primary school children in Guatemala face overweight/obesity, with no structured behavioral interventions.
Intervention:
Family-based behavioral program with digital support to reduce childhood obesity.
📚 CAYAMBE (Ecuador) — Education
Problem:
65% of students in Ecuador cannot read or understand a simple text by the end of primary school.
Intervention:
Differential Learning (TaRL-style) program for literacy and numeracy.
Key metric: ~$13 per LAY
💼 PROPIA (Spain / LATAM migrants) — Livelihoods
Problem:
Latin American migrants in Spain face structural barriers to formal employment and income mobility.
Intervention:
Employability program combining training and employer connections.
- 📄 PROPIA - Research report
- 📊 PROPIA - Cost-effectiveness model
- 🌐 PROPIA - Website
- 📄 PROPIA - EA Forum post
🐔 CENTINELA (Chile / Mexico) — Animal Welfare
Problem:
Organizations have significantly advanced farm animal welfare; however, the inherent lack of transparency in the animal-ag industry limits the ability to monitor and report relevant outcomes.
Intervention:
A corporate transparency initiative that focuses on monitoring and reporting significant animal welfare outcomes.
Key metric: ~$0.0038 per SAD
🐣 DeNovo (Chile) — Animal Welfare
Problem:
Millions of male chicks are killed annually due to lack of viable alternatives in egg production.
Intervention:
Corporate advocacy to accelerate adoption of in-ovo sexing technologies.
Key metric: ~$0.009 per SAD
Why supporting these orgs matters
These organizations:
- are highly leveraged bets on impact
- are grounded in evidence and cost-effectiveness
- are tackling large, neglected problems
But most importantly, they would not exist otherwise. Supporting them is funding counterfactual organizations.
📅 Meet the Founders — April 9th
We will be hosting a “Meet the Founder” session on April 9th, where each team will present their organization and connect directly with potential supporters. We are inviting connectors (who can open doors), funders (who can support financially), and mentors (who can guide with expertise) to join us in this space.
The format will be: break-out rooms by topic + short presentations + small group conversations with teams.
Event timing (2 hour meeting)
- 🇲🇽 Mexico City: 09:00 – 11:00 (UTC-6)
- 🇨🇴 Colombia: 10:00 – 12:00 (COT, UTC-5)
- 🇺🇸 New York: 11:00 – 13:00 (EDT, UTC-4) (please verify daylight saving time)
- 🇬🇧 London: 16:00 – 18:00 (BST, UTC+1) (please verify daylight saving time)
If you are interested in attending, please fill out this short form (≈3 minutes), and we will share the meeting link and details:
👉 https://forms.gle/sb5bYBUihReiexJv8
💛 Support the work
We are launching a collective fundraising effort to support these organizations, and we invite the EA community to contribute to the projects that best align with your priorities. This funding will enable teams to pilot their interventions over the next year and generate early evidence of impact.
👉 Donate here: https://www.every.org/laboratory-of-social-entrepreneurship
Applications open — ToCM 2026
We are opening the next cohort of Theory of Change Makers - 2026.
We are looking for LATAM founders ready to build evidence-based organizations from scratch.
Please share the opportunity with your network:
- 📄 Program info (in Spanish): https://bit.ly/Info_ToCM_2026
- 📝 Apply here: https://bit.ly/Form_aplicación_ToCM2026
Timeline:
- Selection: April – May 2026
- First 6 months: July – December 2026
- Next 6 months: January – June 2027
Acknowledgements
This work would not have been possible without the support of:
- Coefficient Giving and donor from the Meta Charity Funders, we are very grateful for their trust and support.
- All mentors and experts who have guided us, and the founders, throughout the process.
- And everyone who contributed time, feedback, and encouragement.
Final reflection
Building something from scratch, without funding, without guarantees, is hard. Doing it alongside their full-time responsibilities, with rigor, discipline, and intellectual humility is even harder. What these founders are doing is an act of commitment to the possibility of a better world.
And if this works, and we have strong reasons to believe it can, it will not only shape these 8 organizations, but expand what is possible across the region.
We are in a continuous learning and improvement process, and we would deeply value your feedback and support.
If you would like to connect, please reach out at: veronicasuarez@emprendimientosocial.org
Thank you for reading, and for being part of this journey.
Many exciting ideas here - thanks very much for sharing.
From an initial read, there seem to be a lot of similarities to the approach taken by Ambitious Impact's Charity Entrepreneurship Program. Would you be able to share a little bit of context about how this program compares and contrasts to Ambitious Impact, aside from, of course, the geographic focus on Latin America?
Aside from financial donations, are there other ways to support these organizations? I'm thinking in particular in terms of providing advisory support or connections.
Finally, is it possible to share a little bit of context about the meta organization leading this incubation program, and in particular any details on any track record from prior cohorts, if conducted?
Hi Tony, thanks for the thoughtful questions!
Regarding Ambitious Impact/CEIP, we’ve definitely drawn inspiration from their model and have received direct mentoring from them throughout our implementation. They have been very generous with their knowledge and support! Some key differences:
Thanks for wanting to support! We are hosting a Meet the Founder session on April 9th to facilitate this; connections, mentorship, and feedback are exactly what we’re looking for. If you’d like to join, please fill out this short form (≈3 minutes), and we’ll share the meeting link and details: https://forms.gle/sb5bYBUihReiexJv8
It would be great to have you there!
As for the Laboratory of Social Entrepreneurship, we are a relatively new organization (~1 year), and this is our first cohort, but it builds on prior experience in the sector (M&E, program design, and implementation) and in the region.
Happy to share more if helpful, and thanks again for engaging!
Hi Verónica,
Thanks for sharing this! It’s inspiring to see such a rigorous approach being applied to the LATAM context. I’d like to highlight a few points that resonated with me:
One minor reflection: while I agree that founders should lead the strategy, I wonder if the profile of a great founder always overlaps with the profile of a researcher. To avoid potential blind spots in either the research quality or the organization’s execution, how do you mitigate this risk?
Excited to see how these 8 organizations grow!
Hi Gabrielle,
Thank you for your thoughtful reflection.
Regarding the research question: while fellows are making the decisions, they are doing so within a fairly structured methodology (we provide the tools, templates, and step-by-step process). For example, problem selection is guided by specific thresholds (e.g. Only selecting problems that are affecting >600k people or ~6M animals in the first country of implementation), alongside other criteria like depth, breadth, and trajectory of the problem in the region.
Similarly, intervention selection is constrained by requirements such as being evidence-based (e.g. supported by RCTs, meta-analyses, or strong evidence equivalents for animal welfare), proven to be cost-effective in other contexts, and feasible to adapt locally. We also have a (small) research support team helping throughout the process. And of course, we have used the help of certain LLMs (like Elicit and Perplexity).
Additionally, fellows go through theoretical training (e.g. M&E principles) to guide their reasoning, and we have the support from IPA Colombia, who provided lectures and office hours to review parts of the work.
We don’t think this replaces the depth of a trained researcher, but in a resource-constrained setting, it allows for reasonably rigorous, structured decision-making. It also has the advantage of making the reasoning process explicit so if something doesn’t work (as it sometimes happens in the real world, while implementing), fellows can revisit and iterate more effectively.
Always happy to receive feedback on how to improve things!
I’m so excited about these animal welfare projects! After 12 years working at an animal welfare organization in Chile (Latin America), I can attest that both of these issues are huge challenges for the region. Please, if you can support them, do so! 🙏
Thanks for the comment Marysabel; so much still needs to happen, and we know there are so many committed people (like yourself) willing to take on the challenge!
Thanks for sharing, Verónica. The cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) were done by Claude, right? How much did you review them?
Hi Vasco,
Thanks for the question, happy to answer.
The CEAs were built with different levels of involvement from the fellows, our team, and LLM support. Claude being the main supporting tool.
The template and overall structure of the CEAs were developed outside of Claude, based on our methodology (and heavily comparing different templates from different organizations).
As for the content of the models:
Once the models were completed, we held review sessions with each team to revisit key assumptions and refine the models. For example, asking whether certain implied assumptions made sense for the real world, and because the fellows themselves know their context and intervention details, many things were changed. However, the models are far from being final, but the template structure was created for them to be used as a planning tool (not only a fundraising tool), so teams will definitely adjust them with time and with their internal evidence, once available.
In full honesty, building the models was the part of the incubation process that scared me the most, so I’m very glad Claude appeared at the right time, and it also made me more confident in that using templates like this is a way to make CEAs more accessible: once organizations have clear cost structures (and many orgs have detailed budgets), assumptions, and external evidence, building a first model becomes much more feasible. It’s not perfect, but it’s a strong starting point.
Very happy to share the template or walk through it together, we’re very keen to improve it and learn further with feedback.
Thanks for the clarifying comment, Verónica. I strongly upvoted it. I would be happy to have a look into the CEAs of the animal welfare interventions (for free, sometime over the next 14 days or so). I just requested commenter access.
Thanks Vasco, hugely appreciated!
The CEAs of the animal welfare interventions looked very thorough. I left some comments.
Thanks for sharing @Verónica Suárez M. ! Extremely interesting work, and very excited for the upcoming event. This is one of the most promising types of program that I've come across in a long time, would love to see this model grow!
Thanks Brennan, always open to suggestions and feedback!
Super cool @Verónica Suárez M.
It's so amazing to finally see these charities being incubated. Can't wait to see more effective charities being incubated through emprendimientosocial in South America.
Thanks Patrick, very grateful for all the support!!!