Jacob Lief

Instead of helping a lot of people in one area, say, health care or education, Lief’s Ubuntu is working with 2,000 children in one place—Port Elizabeth, South Africa—to help meet all their needs, from prenatal tests to education to medical care and counseling, from the womb to adulthood. That formula was novel enough to win Bill Clinton and Desmond Tutu as major supporters and attract a six-figure donation from Trevor Noah. Now, to scale the idea, Lief is building an institute in New York dedicated to helping other would-be do-gooders set up their own ­narrow-but-deep charities.