Umsizi Fund

Umsizi Fund is a small, husband-and-wife-run private foundation (Amy Brakeman, President, and Roy Edgar Brakeman III, Secretary/Treasurer/VP — both uncompensated, administered through Foundation Source in Wilmington, DE) with roughly $7.3M in assets. It is not a general education or community-development funder despite its IRS NTEE classification (B82 — Scholarships/Financial Aid); in practice, since 2005 it has focused almost exclusively on African youth economic opportunity, funding organizations that are based on the African continent and led by Africans (its own language: 'proximal leaders'). This is the single most important filter for any prospective applicant. The fund's grantee list is dominated not by direct-service African nonprofits but by U.S.-domiciled intermediaries and fiscal sponsors that regrant into Africa — African Leadership Foundation ($1,866,000 across 5 grants), King Baudouin Foundation United States (a $500,000 fiscal sponsor for the African Visionary Fund), Myriad USA ($250,000, also for African Visionary Fund), and Shujaazinc Limited ($300,000 under an Expenditure Responsibility Grant). This signals a strong preference for working through vetted, structured re-granting vehicles rather than one-off direct grants to unfamiliar organizations. Critically, Umsizi does not accept unsolicited applications: its published criteria state that organizations 'should be nominated by a third party knowledgeable about their capabilities.' There is no public LOI portal, application form, or posted deadline (application_form_url and application_deadline are both null in Umsizi's own data, and application_instructions is explicitly '__none__'). For first-time prospects, the realistic path in is relationship-based: get introduced through a program officer at a peer funder, an existing Umsizi grantee, or a network like the African Visionary Fund ecosystem, rather than submitting cold. Once inside the funnel, expect a due-diligence-heavy relationship that favors multi-year, often unrestricted support to organizations with proven leadership and governance — not first-time or unproven programs.

Umsizi's own disclosed typical grant size ranges from $1,000 to $630,000, with a median of $30,000 and an average of $138,571 across a small disclosed sample (n=7) — a wide spread reflecting a mix of large multi-year institutional grants and small individual scholarships. Looking at the fuller grantee history (36 grants, $3,371,746 total, averaging $93,660 per grant), giving is heavily concentrated: African Leadership Foundation alone accounts for $1,866,000 (55% of all disclosed grantee dollars) across 5 grants tied to 'ALA and Umsizi early career success' work and general support. The top two recipients (African Leadership Foundation and King Baudouin Foundation US, as fiscal sponsor for the African Visionary Fund) together account for roughly 70% of total giving. Below that concentration, funding drops off sharply: Shujaazinc Limited ($300,000), Myriad USA ($250,000), Education For Employment ($116,102), Generation - You Employed / Generation Kenya ($75,000), Educate ($60,000), and One World Children's Fund for the Kliptown Youth Program ($50,000). At the small end, Umsizi also makes direct scholarship grants to individuals (J. Lema, $30,000; S. Dlamini, $12,000; M. Tarawally, $3,000) and modest grants to U.S. university partners (Harvard College, $45,644; Harvard Business School, $10,000) tied to African Leadership Academy collaborations. Total annual giving has risen sharply even as the endowment has shrunk: total giving grew from $431,534 (2019) to $1,187,285 (2023), while total assets declined from $10,649,247 (2019) to $7,315,073 (2024) — consistent with an intentional multi-year spend-down. Grants paid tracked closely with total giving in the most recent years disclosed: $970,000 (2021), $984,500 (2022), and $1,125,000 (2023). Recipient geography (by state of the grantee's registered address, since Umsizi funds U.S.-based intermediaries operating in Africa) skews toward NY (10 grants), MA (7), and smaller clusters in CA, DC, OR (3 each) and CO, TX, VA (2 each).

Umsizi sits among a cluster of small, similarly-sized private foundations classified under the same broad Education NTEE category, though its actual program focus (African youth employability, funded largely through U.S. intermediaries) is narrower and more specialized than most peers of its size, which tend to be conventional domestic education funders.

All five peers cluster tightly around $7.2M-$7.4M in assets — nearly identical in scale to Umsizi — but the platform's data bundle does not include their annual giving levels or application processes, so a direct payout or access comparison isn't possible from this data alone. What is distinctive about Umsizi within this peer set is its geographic specialization (Africa-focused rather than the typically domestic, Texas- and Illinois-based footprint of its size peers) and its explicit closed-door, nomination-only intake model, which is more restrictive than the median small family foundation.

Umsizi's most recent public disclosure is its 2023 Annual Report (published March 5, 2024), which announced revised grantmaking criteria sharpening the fund's focus on organizations that deliver tangible work experience — internships, apprenticeships, paid employment — rather than general training or education. Around the same period, the fund brought on consultant Melissa Mbazo to help build more equitable, African-led decision-making into its process, part of a broader stated shift toward proximate leadership. The most consequential structural move in Umsizi's recent history is its role as lead donor in spinning out the African Visionary Fund (AVFund) as an independently governed, participatory grantmaking vehicle — now fiscally sponsored through King Baudouin Foundation United States and Myriad USA and supporting 25 African Visionary Partners with multi-year, unrestricted grants. This reflects Umsizi's evolution from direct grantmaker toward field-builder and ecosystem funder. On the grantee-impact side, Umsizi highlights two individual success stories tied to its funding: Mauritanian filmmaker Mohamed Echkouna, whose Umsizi-backed proof-of-concept work led to a Netflix win in the 'African Folktales, Reimagined' competition (April 2023) for his short film The Enmity Djinn; and Eddie Oketch, an early Umsizi grantee (founder of Ongoza and Peace in Africa Development), who was subsequently elected to the Kenyan Senate. No 2025 or 2026 grant announcements, new RFPs, or leadership changes turned up in public searches or on the foundation's website as of this research — the fund maintains a low public profile and communicates primarily through its own annual report and 'Impact in Action' page rather than press releases.

The single most important fact for any organization researching Umsizi is that it does not accept unsolicited applications: its own criteria page states applicants 'should be nominated by a third party knowledgeable about their capabilities.' There is no LOI portal, no application form URL, and no posted deadline in the fund's own records — treat this as a closed, relationship-driven funder, not an open RFP process. The realistic entry point is a warm introduction: from an existing Umsizi grantee (African Leadership Academy/African Leadership Foundation, the African Visionary Fund network, Generation Kenya, Education For Employment, or Educate), from a co-funder in the African youth-employment space, or from a recognized field intermediary who can vouch for your organization's track record. Because Umsizi's grant list is dominated by U.S.-based fiscal sponsors and intermediaries regranting into Africa, organizations without existing U.S. 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsorship should identify one before approaching Umsizi or its network — this materially eased past due diligence for grantees like Shujaazinc (routed as an Expenditure Responsibility Grant) and AVFund partners (via King Baudouin Foundation US and Myriad USA). When a referral does happen, align your pitch to Umsizi's specific criteria language rather than generic education-funding appeals: emphasize (1) hands-on work experience — internships, apprenticeships, paid employment, not classroom training; (2) African-based, African-led leadership (the fund explicitly screens for 'proximal leaders'); (3) active collaboration with government, vocational schools, educators, or employers rather than a stand-alone program; and (4) a governance team with demonstrated capacity to execute. A common mistake for applicants unfamiliar with the fund is pitching broad 'education access' or scholarship programs — Umsizi's shift since its 2023 criteria revision is toward employment-pathway outcomes specifically, and toward funding networks/ecosystems (as with the AVFund spinout) over isolated single-org programs. Given the small size of the sample (7 disclosed typical grants, median $30,000), first-time relationships likely start at the lower end of that range or as scholarship-style support, with larger multi-year commitments (the $250,000-$630,000+ tier) reserved for proven, multi-year partners like African Leadership Foundation.