The IDP Foundation, Inc. (IDPF) strives to do just that by leveraging its flexibility as a private family foundation to take risks in hopes of proving a concept that will foster a pivotal shift in the global community’s approach to education. The success of the IDP Rising Schools Program motivates IDPF to continue taking risk in return for big reward.

In 2008, Irene D. Pritzker, President of the IDP Foundation heard a very compelling speech by Professor James Tooley, the foremost researcher on low-cost private schools and author of The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves. Professor Tooley spoke of the widespread emergence of private schools serving the poor which are established in response to the market demand from communities frustrated with the poor quality or lack of reach by government schools.

Despite these schools being defined by poor infrastructure and largely untrained teachers, parents choose to pay small fees for their children to attend low-fee private schools due to the better accountability and time on task that they offer. Despite their need, Professor Tooley discussed how this sector was ignored by governments and funders. Irene was inspired to find a solution to empower these schools to continue and improve their important work of educating the world’s poor children.

Given Irene’s determination to find a sustainable solution to help these schools, she turned to the existing innovation of microfinance. However, she quickly discovered that banks determined the low-cost private school sector too risky and were not willing to provide access to credit to low-cost private schools. Rather than give up on her idea, she decided it was time to innovate. Recognizing that innovation does not require developing an entirely new idea, but oftentimes making an incremental change, Irene decided to figure out how to extend capital to the low-cost private school sector.

In partnership with Sinapi Aba Trust (SAT), a Ghanaian microfinance organization, the IDP Foundation determined that with intensive training in financial literacy and school management low-cost private schools would be able to take and repay microfinance loans. After developing training and targeted loan products, the IDP Rising Schools Program was born and began strengthening the low-cost private school sector through inclusion in capacity-building and financial services to increase access to education in Ghana.

As Gabriel Kasper and Justin Marcoux detail, funders introducing innovation into their work “seek out ideas with transformative potential, take risks on less proven approaches, open themselves up to exploring new solutions, and recognize that innovation requires flexibility, iteration, and failure.”[1]