The Nonlinear Library EA - Spiro - New TB charity raising seed funds by Habiba Banu
Nov 17, 2023
08:49
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Spiro - New TB charity raising seed funds, published by Habiba Banu on November 17, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Summary
We (Habiba Banu and Roxanne Heston) have launched
Spiro, a new TB screening and prevention charity focused on children. Our website is
here.
We are fundraising $198,000 for our first year. We're currently reaching out to people in the EA network. So far we have between 20%-50% of our budget promised and fundraising is currently one of the main things we're focusing on.
The major components of our first year budget are co-founder time, country visits, and delivery of a pilot program, which aims to do household-level TB screening and provision of preventative medication.
We think that this project has a lot of promise:
Tuberculosis has a huge global burden, killing 1.3 million people every year, and is disproportionately neglected and fatal in young children.
The evidence for preventative treatment is robust and household programs are promising, yet few high-burden countries have scaled up this intervention.
Modeling by Charity Entrepreneurship and by academics indicate that this can be competitive with the best GiveWell-recommended charities.
If we don't manage to raise at least half of our target budget by the beginning of December 2023 then we'll switch from our intended focus for the next month from program planning to additional fundraising. This will push out our timelines for getting to the useful work.
If we don't manage to raise our full target budget by the end of 2023 then we'll scale back our ambitions in the immediate term, until we put additional time into fundraising a few months later. The lower budget will also limit the size of our proof-of-concept effort since we and our government partners will need to scale back work to the available funds.
You can donate via
Giving What We Can's fund for charities incubated through Charity Entrepreneurship.
Please also email habiba.banu@spiro.ngo letting us know how much you have donated so that we can identify the funds and allocate them to Spiro.
Who are we?
Spiro is co-founded by Habiba Banu and Roxanne Heston.
Habiba worked for the last three years at 80,000 Hours and before that as Senior Administrator at the Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Priorities Institute. Her background is working as a consultant at PwC with government and non-profit clients.
Rox has worked for the last few years on international AI policy in the U.S. Government and at think tanks. She has worked with and for various EA organizations including the Centre for Effective Altruism, the Future of Humanity Institute, Open Philanthropy and the Lead Exposure Elimination Project.
We have received Charity Entrepreneurship support so far:
Charity Entrepreneurship's research team did the initial research into this idea and shared their work with us.
Habiba went through Charity Entrepreneurship's Incubator Programme earlier this year. Rox started working with Habiba to find an idea together about halfway through the program.
Charity Entrepreneurship has provided stipend funding, advice, and operational support (e.g. website design). It will continue to provide mentorship from its leadership team and a fiscal sponsorship arrangement.
What are we going to do?
Spiro will implement sustainable household screening programs in low- and lower-middle income countries. Spiro aims to curb infections and save lives of children in regions with high burdens of tuberculosis by identifying, screening, and treating household contacts of people living with TB.
We will initially establish a proof of concept in one region, working closely with the government TB program. We will then aim to scale nationally, with funding from the
Global Fund, and expand to other countries.
Currently, we are planning a visit to Uganda to shadow e...
Summary
We (Habiba Banu and Roxanne Heston) have launched
Spiro, a new TB screening and prevention charity focused on children. Our website is
here.
We are fundraising $198,000 for our first year. We're currently reaching out to people in the EA network. So far we have between 20%-50% of our budget promised and fundraising is currently one of the main things we're focusing on.
The major components of our first year budget are co-founder time, country visits, and delivery of a pilot program, which aims to do household-level TB screening and provision of preventative medication.
We think that this project has a lot of promise:
Tuberculosis has a huge global burden, killing 1.3 million people every year, and is disproportionately neglected and fatal in young children.
The evidence for preventative treatment is robust and household programs are promising, yet few high-burden countries have scaled up this intervention.
Modeling by Charity Entrepreneurship and by academics indicate that this can be competitive with the best GiveWell-recommended charities.
If we don't manage to raise at least half of our target budget by the beginning of December 2023 then we'll switch from our intended focus for the next month from program planning to additional fundraising. This will push out our timelines for getting to the useful work.
If we don't manage to raise our full target budget by the end of 2023 then we'll scale back our ambitions in the immediate term, until we put additional time into fundraising a few months later. The lower budget will also limit the size of our proof-of-concept effort since we and our government partners will need to scale back work to the available funds.
You can donate via
Giving What We Can's fund for charities incubated through Charity Entrepreneurship.
Please also email habiba.banu@spiro.ngo letting us know how much you have donated so that we can identify the funds and allocate them to Spiro.
Who are we?
Spiro is co-founded by Habiba Banu and Roxanne Heston.
Habiba worked for the last three years at 80,000 Hours and before that as Senior Administrator at the Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Priorities Institute. Her background is working as a consultant at PwC with government and non-profit clients.
Rox has worked for the last few years on international AI policy in the U.S. Government and at think tanks. She has worked with and for various EA organizations including the Centre for Effective Altruism, the Future of Humanity Institute, Open Philanthropy and the Lead Exposure Elimination Project.
We have received Charity Entrepreneurship support so far:
Charity Entrepreneurship's research team did the initial research into this idea and shared their work with us.
Habiba went through Charity Entrepreneurship's Incubator Programme earlier this year. Rox started working with Habiba to find an idea together about halfway through the program.
Charity Entrepreneurship has provided stipend funding, advice, and operational support (e.g. website design). It will continue to provide mentorship from its leadership team and a fiscal sponsorship arrangement.
What are we going to do?
Spiro will implement sustainable household screening programs in low- and lower-middle income countries. Spiro aims to curb infections and save lives of children in regions with high burdens of tuberculosis by identifying, screening, and treating household contacts of people living with TB.
We will initially establish a proof of concept in one region, working closely with the government TB program. We will then aim to scale nationally, with funding from the
Global Fund, and expand to other countries.
Currently, we are planning a visit to Uganda to shadow e...