Connect Humanity

Connect Humanity is a fund advancing digital equity. We support, catalyze, and scale holistic solutions providing people with the internet access and means needed to participate fully in a digital society. Our work centers on the 3.6 billion people who are currently disconnected from the online world and equal opportunity to essentials like financial security, education, and healthcare. We advance our mission by making philanthropic grants, providing structured loans, advocating for policy change, conducting research, and supporting a community of practice dedicated to connecting the unconnected backed by the capital to do so. Our expert team blends a deep knowledge of connectivity policy and technology with decades of experience managing multimillion-dollar philanthropic programs and global investments. We focus on the financial realities of this massive and multifaceted problem, offering support when, where, and how it is needed. Alongside our partners, we take a holistic approach to achieving digital equity, supporting projects in five interrelated areas:

• Infrastructure: Supporting, catalyzing, and scaling non-traditional operators to meet the needs of underserved communities and expanding access to devices.
• Affordability: Highlighting best practices and de-risking financing and business models to connect the unconnected, pioneering blended capital models to sustainably support network builds, and investing in technology at key points in the connectivity stack to reduce the cost of building networks.
• Digital Skills: Innovating in delivering digital literacy at scale while increasing the pipeline and community of network engineers working in the public interest.
• Locally Relevant Content: Developing and sharing best practices in scaling the production of locally relevant content, which is a critical incentive to use the internet.
• Policy: Building grassroots power and advocating for changes to accelerate the rate at which people are connecting.