About Us

Our mission is to improve the welfare of humanity by providing scholarships and other educational opportunities that nurture transformational leadership, and by investing in evidence-based strategies to address climate change, preserve our natural environment, and improve health outcomes.

Our Story

The Foundation was established in 2007 by John and Marcy McCall MacBain, who have roots in Canada and experience working globally in entrepreneurship and higher education. John and Marcy credit their success to finding the right educational opportunities and supports and have dedicated most of their philanthropy to scholarships and initiatives that help young people reach their full potential, while also tackling some of the world’s most pressing environmental and health challenges.

Read Our Story

Our Beliefs

We believe in the power of education, and scholarships in particular, to transform lives and in turn transform our communities to be fairer, healthier, and more prosperous for all.

We believe that climate change is the single most pressing problem facing our planet and that we must all do our part to address it.

We believe in an evidence-based approach to health care that will lead to more efficient use of resources and greater impact for our communities.

Our Approach

We seed, scale, and support initiatives that enable meaningful and lasting change in the Foundation’s focus areas of education, environment, and health. We have also built our own scholarship and fellowship programs that aim to expand conventional scholarship models to include a comprehensive focus on leadership development.

Our approach to granting to institutions and nonprofits:

1. We take a strategic approach grounded in continuous research and a deep understanding of the areas we work in.

We lead with the latest evidence and research to build, refine, and renew detailed funding strategies that guide our giving with the aim of addressing pressing needs that philanthropy is well-suited to address and where we believe we can have a positive impact.
Our team is dedicated to identifying and/or building the right partnerships that lead to actionable and measurable outcomes.
We fund initiatives of varying size and time-periods. We match our capacity for giving to initiatives where it can have the greatest impact.

2. We operate in partnership and collaboration with grantees to advance a common agenda

We collaborate with grantees to identify where we can add the most value and support initiatives that advance our shared objectives.
We facilitate mutual learning and sharing, connecting our grantees with each other, and leveraging our networks and expertise towards advancing their work.
We seek to support the creative, bold, and purpose-driven leadership we see in our grantees and partners because funding and leadership alike are needed to tackle the most pressing issues of our time.

3. We don’t accept unsolicited proposals

Our research-led, focused approach means we are unable to support unsolicited asks.
Instead, our team works consistently to identify and approach the right partners and build opportunities through a deep understanding of their work and its alignment with our strategic goals.

Our People

Careers

Contact

The Foundation has offices in Geneva and Toronto. We do not accept unsolicited proposals for funding. For general queries, please email info@mccallmacbain.org.