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Mayyan — Impact Spotlight

erable°

5 min readMay 25, 2022

What challenge is Mayyan tackling ?

MAIN CHALLENGE = Lack of funding for impact projects in Africa

Africa is one of the last frontier markets with a population with 1.2 billion people and half of whom are under the age of 25 by 2050. To unlock the human potential and untapped natural resources, non-profit works allow the building of core infrastructure. Bridgespan group analysis indicates that there was a sharp increase in large philanthropic gifts in 2020, specifically 7 times the annual average given compared to the previous decade. Despite the large philanthropic giving ($269 million), only 7 percent of the funding went to the public sector entities and the majority is directed towards relief funds. Furthermore, giving is also locally concentrated but the proportion of total large-scale funding going to these organizations remained constant, at 9 percent. The research conducted also indicated that leaders of these funds were predominantly from the private sector and government with minimal representation from NGOs. It specifies that while the magnitude of funding grew, local NGOs didn’t increase their share and 56% of surveyed organizations had lost their funding. 46% of surveyed organizations had already been informed that continued donor support may be impacted.

PROBLEM = Current funding opportunities incentivize silver bullet approaches to solving complex, interdependent challenges.

Most of the government, and corporate approach regarding impact funding and problem-solving in Africa, is centralized, based on competition against another project/company, not distributed and based on collective impact and impatient/driven by funding fads and funding project cycles.

According to a recent report from the African Philanthropy Forum and The Bridgespan Group, African NGOs are being underfunded by African and non-African philanthropists alike.

What solution does Mayyan provide ?

Solution

Around 6,9 billion queries are made on a search engine daily and the global digital advertising market to surpass USD 1136.3 billion by 2030. Mayyan is a search engine that aims to redirect digital advertising revenue to social impact in Africa. They want to invest 30% of revenue generated to support non-profit organizations working towards food and energy access; and healthcare.

When considering the funding landscape for African NGOs, the predominant funding vehicles are either operating foundations or grant-making foundations that include private foundations and high-net-worth individual giving. Mayyan as a solution makes investing in African NGOs easy plus accessible while reducing dependencies on above-mentioned organizations.

Roadmap and Ambition snapshot

Short term roadmap goals include creating an in-house advertising platform. The advertisements will be enhanced in a manner to target the African market and diaspora spread across the world.

Since launch, most of the traffic generated was organic and did not include any influencers or celebrity partnerships. Going forward, Mayyans aim at developing partnerships with influencers across the 54 African countries.

They are also focused on having corporate partnerships in Africa that can deploy the solution internally on corporate devices as default search engines. This initiative is to drive the scale of the project and ensure sustainability of the search engine itself.

Long term vision is to deploy AI to translate African language across the continent to further adoption, contribute to Wiki Africa and enable features to geolocate impact projects that are in need of funding.

Why is the project important and what do we like about it?

3 main reasons

Sustainable funding mechanism that is Africa and development-oriented

The funding gap for African non-profit organizations is significant as highlighted by the data above and the funding flows are diverse and implemented through different vehicles.
Funding on a long term basis is essential to ensure that these grassroots organizations can continue to play a distinct role in the development of Africa and in communities within proximity. These organizations have local credibility and trust among stakeholders; community-specific understanding of nuances and are committed to the communities they serve.
A new independent research report funded by the Vodafone Foundation indicates that international development funding to Africa has a “colonial” approach that favors Western organizations and fails to channel resources for local NGOs. Mayyan is a solution to give power back to the African people to be citizen investors and actively contribute in the development of their communities.

Supports building an ecosystem of citizen investors in Africa

The search engine model coupled with advertising channels has the potential to increase the audience for African NGOs and thereby drive digital traffic to the work being done by them.
This exposure works in two-ways. It gives NGOs a platform to present their work and the platform in turn behaves like a portfolio of projects that citizen investors can refer to prior to investing.
This citizen investor model can further strengthen community and grassroots relationships. For example: Impact generated by the funded nonprofits can be further rewarded by increase in contributions from citizen investors.

The digital advertising industry is growing and Mayyan can scale with this trend significantly

Data suggests that 84% of millennials give to charity and 59% of Generation Z’ers are likely to donate to charity after seeing a message on social media. The younger generation is passionate about giving and Mayyan can help facilitate youth activism for causes with a concrete project investment pathway.
Mayyan is leveraging the industry at an opportune time to raise funds for NGOs by creating an active donor base that includes anyone who makes a search on the engine. It is making ‘search’ a dynamic action and increases efficiency of raising funds by decreasing the cost input for fundraising.

What are the main concerns? Are there any key negative externalities that need to be addressed for this project?

The main concerns for this project include using the advertisements ethically and only allowing legitimate, value-aligned organizations to advertise on the platform. There are risks of greenwashing and misrepresentation by endorsing/featuring advertisements that could negatively impact the missions of nonprofits supported. Additionally, the non-profits screening process and flow of funds conducted by Mayyan must be transparent to the community to ensure longevity of the project.

Mayyan should also be conscious of the environmental footprint of their search activities. For example: What is the carbon impact of search generated? What is the carbon impact of Mayyan search engine versus app?

Any follow-up questions? Want to talk directly to the founders?

Please, join their dedicated Discord channel: https://discord.gg/JeYQrpfeww

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