Highly ambitious talent who wants to found a high-growth tech company. We support talent in th earliest stages of building, so you don’t need a team or idea to join. If you are further along in your founder journey (have already $10K+ MRR or have raised funding), we may still be able to support you. Reach out to jacintha@charityentrepreneurship.com. Builders with demonstrated high velocity and comparative advantages, including: Technical talent: software engineers from startup, scaleup, academic, or bigtech backgrounds Entrepreneurial backgrounds: former founders or early employees of startups/scaleups Domain expertise or “earned insights” from a specific industry or in emerging markets in Africa, Latin America, and Asia Those with an altruistic track record of doing good and who want to donate a portion of their potential personal exit earnings --5% of earnings under a $1 million exit value and 50% of earnings over $1 million -- to effective charities We are excited about global talent from all regions. If you’re not sure if you’re a fit, we encourage you to fill out our application form, which is the best way of finding out if this program is right for you.

It doesn’t matter. We support founders who have zero idea what to work on and founders who already have partially validated ideas for their companies. In our experience, top founders tend to iterate on their ideas quickly with feedback from customers, so most ideas evolve significantly throughout the program.

You don’t need a cofounder or team to join. One of the major value adds of joining the program is getting access to a pool of highly vetted potential cofounders and going through our matching process. If you already have a cofounder, we still encourage you to apply. Both cofounders should apply, and note in the application that you are cofounders.

We are interested in launching high growth tech companies that have the potential for a significant exit through acquisition or IPO ($10M-$1B+). We are sector agnostic and prioritise top tier talent that wants to build in venture scale markets. We also have interest in supporting companies that directly create positive impacts in spaces like healthtech and mental health, biotech, edtech, emerging markets like Africa, APAC, or LATAM, and across fintech, recruitment, talent, or productivity (specifically products that aim at increasing the flow of people and money between countries). We are not prescriptive on team or funding sources: We are currently supporting solo founders up to teams of 3. We support traditional VC-funding paths, and also bootstrapping and seedstrapping. We are not interested in companies that: Are not pure tech or tech-enabled, for example: consultancies or services-based companies Are likely to create harm or negative externalities

We want to be respectful of your time. We’ve therefore designed a quick first application round. From there on out, we only invite candidates to a next phase if we feel they have potential of progressing all the way to the end. There are four stages in the application process: Initial application including CV, LinkedIn, and short application form (20-30 mins) Intro Interview (20 mins) Test task (2.5 hours) Partner Interview (1.5 hour) Our team reviews applications on a rolling basis. If we’re excited to move forward, we’ll reach out and invite you to the next step in the process. Because we receive a high volume of applications, we aren’t able to give feedback on all applications.

Yes, we’re happy to share the pledge agreement and talk about how we can potentially support your journey. You can contact jacintha@charityentrepreneurship.com

Yes, apart from people with technical experts, we’re also interested in ‘domain experts’ with deep knowledge in particular fields, and ‘catalysts’, who have experience in building enterprises or taking products to market. The best way to find out if you’re a good fit is by filling out the application form.

Yes and no. We are looking to maximize impact, both through donations as well as through direct impact of the companies. We currently believe, however, that this is best achieved through companies that have the ability to scale. This means this program does not aim to produce companies that cannot compete in a regular market or companies that need grants to be able to survive.

Yes, we provide a monthly stipend to cover living expenses for 3 months during the program, and we cover accommodation, flights, and workspace during the first month of the program where we host the cohort in-person. We do not take equity and we do not provide equity investment directly into your company. In some cases, we can help to connect you with aligned capital from angel investors and supporters in our network.

The program is full-time, so it is not possible to join if you are also a full-time employee or student. We are here to build high-growth tech companies from -1 to 1, which takes talent, commitment, and time.

All founders who are invited to join the program formalize their participation by signing the Founder’s Pledge to donate 50%+ of their personal exit earnings over $900K from a future exit to effective charities. Since personal exit donations are unlikely to materialize until years in the future, we also encourage participants to create or maintain a habit of giving to effective charities by doing a trial pledge of 1% or more with Giving What We Can.

Jacintha and Trish lead the Founding to Give program. Jacintha is an entrepreneur with over 10 years of experience in founding & scaling organisations. In her role as cofounder of a sustainable tech scale-up, she grew the company to 30+ staff. Her achievements have been recognized by the Next Women To Watch, the Inspiring Fifty: Women in Tech, and the Forbes 30 under 30. She holds a degree in Sociology from the London School of Economics. Trish has spent her careers around early stage startups. Previously, she was COO at On Deck, where she helped to grow the company from pre-funding through Series B and launch On Deck's acclerator. Prior to that, Trish ran programs for impact founders at Unreasonable Group, was the first employee at Remote Year where she helped to scale the company through Series A and acquisition.

At the end of the program, our goal is to see early signs of traction with companies that have venture-scale potential. To get there, the program is designed to support you in: Validating problem spaces that are ripe for exponential scale Finding and establishing a strong founding team Increasing your velocity at every step as you build from zero to early traction The program will work like a funnel – we’ll start with unlimited ideas and many possible teams, and efficiently kill off possibilities until you have conviction in a founding team and problem space. The first ~four to eight weeks of the program will be highly structured. Then, as teams and problem spaces are established, our support will become much more personalized.

Founding to Give is run by Ambitious Impact, where we help people use their careers to do as much good as possible. In addition to Founding to Give, AIM offers programs for charity founders, foundations, and researchers. We know that entrepreneurship as a career path can be highly impactful. Founders Pledge has already moved over $1B in donations to the world’s most pressing problems! But starting a high-growth startup is tough. The Founding to Give program was designed to remove the initial barriers to entry. You can read more detail in our 2024 report here. (Please note, some of the report is out of date and will be updated in mid-2025)

The next cohort kicks off on January 5th, 2026. Our team reviews applications on a rolling basis, so recommend applying as soon as possible. The early application deadline is June 30, 2025.

Month 1 – January 2026, In-Person We’ll host the full cohort together in person for a intense 4 weeks of exploring cofounder relationships and early idea validation. We will announce the location soon. Month 2–3 – February-March 2026, Remote Program moves remote, teams are free to move to the locations that suit them best. We are happy to host cohort members to work in our London office free of charge.

There is no cost to join the program. We do not take equity. We provide a monthly stipend to cover living expenses for 3 months during the program, and we cover accommodation, flights, and workspace during the first month of the program when we host the cohort in-person.