The Agency Fund

When you invest in people’s beliefs about their own capabilities and in their sense of belonging and adequacy — what happens?

In 2024, the third year of our journey, The Agency Fund has continued to explore this core question, motivated by evidence that activating human agency can unlock remarkable outcomes for individuals and communities.

We’re a team of psychologists,  economists, data scientists, and software engineers.  Together with our network of grantees and partners, we’ve developed, tested, and scaled approaches that empower individuals to navigate towards the futures they want.

As we look ahead to 2025, we’re optimistic about the potential of our approach—and we’re always looking for partners to join us on this journey.
Watch the film and join the movement⬇️

The Agency Fund operates on the thesis that social and psychological supports can unlock remarkable outcomes for individuals and their communities.

But around the world, societies are struggling to deliver mental health support at the scale required. In our latest blog, @DrGaryBelkin , a psychiatrist and former Deputy Health Commissioner for New York City, reflects on his efforts to close this gap.

A central component of Gary’s programs has been task sharing—training non-specialists like teachers, pastors, and other community leaders to deliver evidence-based mental health interventions. The goal is to make care more accessible, scalable, and better integrated into community networks.

From introducing mental health tools in NYC daycare centers and housing communities to working with youth leaders in climate-vulnerable informal settlements, Gary discusses how different approaches to building psychological resilience and agency can mitigate social challenges.

Read the full blog here: open.substack.com/pub/theagencyf…

Modern development economics is based on a model in which the intervention stays fixed. You build an intervention, rigorously test to see if it works, then try to scale it. This can be thought of as a “nail it, then scale it” approach.

As a model it has well understood virtues, in that it generates solid evidence of impact. But it can create brittle and inflexible solutions.

At the Agency Fund, we invest in organizations that provide inputs like coaching support, where flexibility is key. In our view of development, the best organizations are constantly learning and adapting. They pilot new ideas, they sandbox, they A/B test, which means that their interventions are constantly evolving and improving.

We find this approach incredibly exciting. We think it’s time to stop fixating on fidelity, and for organizations to build interventions that shed their skin.

Read more from Richard Sedlmayr and @pwprojects on our blog: theagencyfund.substack.com/p/shed-your-sk…

🤝 How do we foster open source mindsets in social sector tech?

At The Agency Fund, our strategy for building the development tech stack is rooted in openness and collaboration. When we accelerate promising deployments of LLMs, user engagement solutions or back-end automations in individual organizations, our ultimate goal is to share those innovations and catalyze progress across the entire sector.

Sprints are an important part of this mission, an opportunity to bring developers together from different NGOs, to surface common challenges and co-create solutions.

Hear more from Project Tech4Dev on how sprints and community meet ups inspire change⬇

We often see agency framed as freedom—freedom from constraints. But this view misses how agency actually develops. Here's why👇

For socially privileged people, it's easy to take a sense of agency for granted. If you've always had access to role models and opportunities, if people have always been willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and trust you to succeed, you may see your good choices—and your ability to make them—as privately produced.

From this perspective, government intervention to support agency might seem unnecessary, or even like overreach.

But many people face invisible deprivations that limit their ability to set goals, navigate towards them, or even to imagine a better future in the first place. For example, in a community where no one has moved beyond subsistence farming, it’s exceptionally difficult for any individual to envision alternatives for themselves without specific support.

While agency is manifested in individual choices, it’s always situated in social context. This, we argue, is the paradox of agency.

In a recent article, The Brookings Institution, James Walsh and Karla Hoff take on the Agency Paradox, arguing that while policymakers shouldn’t manipulate choices, they can and should intervene to expand people’s capacity to make choices and envision better futures.

📖 Read the full piece here and share your thoughts on this thread: brookings.edu/articles/the-a…