100&Change is special in so many ways. In 2017, it was the largest single award ever offered through a philanthropic prize. More importantly, 100&Change offered no specific problem statement - participants from around the world could propose a solution to any problem for the benefit of humanity at the scale of $100M. These two elements of the program contributed to a wide range of interest and helped redefine how a foundation could offer an open call for proposals that invited new talent to apply for funding. Carrot was responsible for naming and branding the program, configuring our software features to ensure the program's operational success, and managing day-to-day tasks from the launch to the identification of Finalist candidates. From the start, 100&Change was a close collaboration between the parties and paved the way for the MacArthur Foundation’s ongoing interest in challenge-based solicitations.
Following the announcement of the first $100M awarded in 2017, the MacArthur Foundation made additional commitments and attracted third-party funders to allocate a total of $432M in capital within the applicant pool. The MacArthur Foundation then launched the second round of 100&Change in 2021 utilizing Carrot’s consulting and software services, and a third round of 100&Change is scheduled to launch in 2024 on the Carrot platform. Based on each award across all three rounds and subsequent investments in the applicant pool for each round, 100&Change represents the largest philanthropic prize initiative ever sponsored.
Further, while the MacArthur Foundation relied upon tools and tactics available through the Carrot platform, features that had been pressure-tested for over 7-years before the start of this initiative, the parties collaborated to ensure many other aspects of the program met stakeholder standards. For example, in the second round, 100&Change included Carrot’s Peer-to-Peer process, allowing applicants to review and assess each other before experts were assigned to scoring the top-ranking proposals. Under the direction of the MacArthur Foundation, Carrot’s counterparts conceived the idea of an Organizational Readiness Tool, allowing prospective teams to answer a handful of questions to determine their eligibility and/or likelihood of success before committing resources to completing an application. Carrot then built the Organizational Readiness Tool and still uses that feature today for many other clients. The close collaboration between the parties has led to a broad range of follow-on interest from third-party donor-sponsors and similar foundations seeking opportunities to inspire competition and collaboration for their resources.
