Every year, we open our doors and ask a simple question: who is ready to build the next generation of high-impact nonprofits for the food transition? This year, more than 1,200 people from 113 countries answered. We accept ~2% of them.
The data we collect (90+ questions per applicant) is one of the richest portraits we know of the talent that wants to enter this movement. We’ve spent time with that data, and what it tells us is both more encouraging and more urgent than you might expect.
The talent bottleneck isn't what you might think
There’s a well-worn narrative in our movement: we lack the talent. The movement is small and not enough of the people who care have the professional skills to build effectively. Our applicant data tells a different story.
We can see that the people applying to K4G are not newcomers looking for a first foothold. Close to 70% have been involved in the cause area for four years or more. Nearly one in five has over a decade of experience. Only 10% are in their first year. Three quarters have already founded or co-founded at least one initiative and over 40% have done it more than once. 83% hold a bachelor’s degree or higher and there are 80 doctorates in the applicant pool and 40 professional degrees (such as law and medical degrees) alongside them.
These are experienced, highly-educated, proven builders. They are not the people that fit the “talent bottleneck” narrative.
So why are they applying to an incubator? Because experience alone doesn’t close the gap between a good idea and an impactful organisation. When we asked applicants what they most anticipated needing to launch their initiative, 84% cited connecting with the right experts, mentors, and funders as their primary challenge. 66% named access to seed funding, 51% wanted to connect with fellow impact entrepreneurs, and 42% were looking for practical guidance on how to actually launch.
The bottleneck, in other words, isn’t the absence of capable people. It’s the absence of the structured support needed to turn capable people into effective founders. That’s a fundamentally different problem, and one that incubation programmes aim to solve.
The bottleneck isn't the absence of capable people. It's the absence of the structured support needed to turn capable people into effective founders.
Ready to commit, not in it for the money
What we learn about the people behind the applications from our application data reinforces this. These are not people testing the water. When we asked applicants to rate their agreement with “I’m willing to make significant sacrifices in order to have a positive impact on the world” on a scale of 1 to 5, 71% gave the maximum score. The average was 4.64 out of 5.
They’re not doing this for financial reward, applicants largely reject the idea that nonprofit compensation should match the private sector. And they’re not ‘lone wolves’, the vast majority say they feel well-supported by the people closest to them. They’re self-aware about the challenge (most know they have a lot to learn) without being under any illusions about the sacrifice required.
Perhaps most strikingly, only 8% said they couldn’t leave their current job to pursue their initiative. The majority are ready to go full-time when the conditions are right.
Developing a global pipeline
Talent is also not where convention might suggest. Applications came from 113 countries with India rising to the top of applications for our programme – where we’ve already incubated a number of successful organisations and changemakers in past cohorts. Applications from African countries remained strong while the US has gone from being our largest source of applications in 2024 to fourth by 2026, as applications from African and South Asian countries have grown much faster around it.
The global interest in changing food systems is real and growing, pointing directly to the need for more regionally specific support structures – fellowships, ideation programmes, and regional pathways that can meet people where they are, in the contexts they know, and help raise the most promising talent. At K4G we’re already exploring what those models look like, and our application data makes the case for building them.
AI: the movement needs builders, not just adopters
One of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves, and hearing across the sector, is whether AI is reshaping who applies and what they want to build. The answer from our data is nuanced.
29% of applicants mention AI, machine learning, or related tools somewhere in their application. But only a small fraction (~4%) name AI as the primary focus of their proposed initiative. For most applicants, AI is something they’re reaching for as a tool rather than something they’re meaningfully building around.
This matters – because the movement’s AI challenge isn’t just knowing that AI exists. Adoption across the sector – embedding AI meaningfully into how established nonprofits operate – is going to require people with hands-on implementation skills who are also deeply embedded in the mission. Right now, those people are rare. The pipeline of applicants wanting to build AI-native food-system initiatives is smaller than the discourse might suggest. Growing it, and equipping current founders with the practical AI literacy they need, has become a big part of how we have been thinking about programme design going forward.
For most applicants, AI is something they're reaching for as a tool rather than something they're meaningfully building around.
What people want to build
For those thinking about where the movement’s energy is heading, the idea areas applicants gravitate towards give us some indication. Food System Transformation is the dominant cause area (61%), as you would expect from people applying to our incubator. But Climate Change (37%) and Animal Welfare/Animal Rights (29%) follow closely, reflecting the overlapping motivations of the people we attract.
When it comes to specific programme ideas (based around our list of identified, needed, idea areas), expanding high-impact programmes leads on interest, but Plant-Forward Policies emerges as the strongest single focus when applicants are asked to name their primary goal. Policy work is more central to this year’s applicants’ ambitions and it’s an area where structured incubation support, mentorship, and connection to the right networks can be transformative.
Going beyond the 2%
Our role at Kickstarting For Good has never been to manufacture talent from scratch and the 2026 applications confirm that the talent is there. What’s missing is more infrastructure to activate it: the mentors and expert networks, the peer cohort, the practical training in theory of change, MEL, fundraising and operations, the connection to funders, and critically the structured time and space to turn ideas into organisations.
We accept ~2% of applicants. Within the 98% who don’t make it onto the cohort are future founders and a wealth of impactful potential employees and volunteers. We’re increasingly building the infrastructure to support these people too: application feedback, resources, and open-access tools that mean even people who never join the programme feel that K4G shaped their career.
The data from 1.2k applications tells us the movement has the people. What it needs now is more structured on-ramps for them to do their best work.