What Happens When the Funding Stops?

Every year at Skoll, African organizations show up with energy, insight, and ambition. They pitch. They network. They collect business cards from funders who say they'll follow up. Some do. Most don't. And the organizations return home to the same structural reality: their survival depends on the next grant cycle.

This is the elephant in every Skoll meeting room. Funders write “sustainability” into every strategy document. Grantees include “sustainability plans” in every proposal. But the fundamental dynamic rarely shifts. Grant-dependent organizations remain grant-dependent, and the sector keeps pretending otherwise.

This session breaks that pattern. Instead of another panel where experts talk and funders listen politely, we're putting practitioners and funders at the same tables to confront the problem together. Not to perform. Not to pitch. To work.