Impact Report 2025
In one of the hardest years the development sector has faced, we asked one question of everything we do: not just does it work — but can it last, and can it reach far beyond where it began?
Max Foundation in 2025
2025 reshaped the world development organisations work in. The dismantling of USAID ended decades of United States leadership in international development, and the Netherlands and other major European donors cut deep into their aid budgets. In the countries where we work, that turbulence meant real instability — for governments, for civil society, and for the communities counting on continuity.
In a world where donor funding can no longer be assumed, impact cannot only be measured by what a programme delivers while it is funded. The more important question is what keeps working when external support ends — and how proven solutions reach far beyond the communities where they were first tested. That question runs through this year’s report, Scaling What Lasts.
Across our programmes in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nepal
Working with the Federal Ministry of Health and the Seqota Declaration team, the Healthy Village approach and the government’s Malnutrition-Free Village concept became one unified framework — the Malnutrition-Free Healthy Village. The Ministry adopted it as the village-level unit for ending child stunting by 2030, designed to scale to 125 million people across 1,050 woredas.
The National Nutrition Council formally recognised two tools co-developed through Right2Grow — one tracking how local governments spend public money on nutrition and water, the other costing what children need. Across 40 Union Parishads, allocations for child nutrition and clean water grew from 1.45% in 2021 to 18% by the end of 2025.
Our social water enterprise, Max TapWater, added 41 piped water grids, reaching 98 grids and 22,000 people with safely managed water. Each connection saves women and girls one to one-and-a-half hours a day. With smart-grid technology and Public–Private Partnership pathways in preparation, the focus is making safe water financially sustainable as it grows.
Healthy Village launched in Jwalamukhi Rural Municipality, Dhading District — the third country to adapt an approach proven in Bangladesh and Ethiopia. From the outset the municipality leads: it owns the certification process and embeds it in local planning and budgeting. Scale begins when local ownership is built into the design.
How we work
We generate proof through our programmes, then put it in the hands of the governments and partners who can take it to scale.
Child health is never a single-sector problem, so we never treat it as one. Water, nutrition and maternal health move together in one community process.
We back entrepreneurs and markets as part of the solution, building demand and supply for healthy products side by side.
Impact is what keeps working after our support ends, so we work through government systems rather than around them.
I started my business with just BDT 3,000 taka (€21). I sold sanitary napkins, diapers, biscuits, soap, shampoo, and mothers’ supplements.
Lata Debi — Health Promotion Agent, Lalmonirhat, Bangladesh. One of 63 women who built a market where none existed. Her store now stocks more than 50 products and earns 15,000–18,000 taka (€105–€126) a month.
In the spotlight: Right2Grow
Right2Grow closed in 2025: a consortium programme strengthening community-led advocacy on child nutrition and water across Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, South Sudan and Uganda. Max Foundation was active in Ethiopia and consortium lead in Bangladesh.
The families, entrepreneurs, government partners and colleagues scaling what lasts are all in the full Impact Report 2025.
