Marija Manojlovic and Natalie Shoup of Safe Online lead the only global collaborative fund dedicated to child online safety. After nearly a decade of addressing harms through reactive measures like content removal and abuse detection, they are shifting toward prevention—tackling the policies and design choices that shape young people’s digital environments. Their goal is to build a system that enables children to thrive online, not simply avoid harm.

Safe Online’s work includes:

• Redefining its role as a collaborative funder. Rather than passing through grants, Safe Online acts as an ecosystem builder that blends funding with intelligence and policy advocacy. Its model draws insights from grantees and frontline partners to shape broader investment priorities.
• Focusing on prevention and upstream design. The fund works with technology companies, governments, and researchers to address harms before they occur—encouraging safer platform architecture, age-appropriate interaction policies, and pro-social digital spaces.
• Bridging disconnected sectors. Through carefully designed convenings and communities of practice, Safe Online brings together actors who rarely collaborate, from child protection experts and policymakers to researchers and tech developers.
• Strengthening the field’s foundation. The team is developing a global landscape review, a living evidence base on digital wellbeing, and a “Friends of the Initiative” advisory group that helps guide its strategy and theory of change.

Manojlovic and Shoup emphasize that human connection remains their most powerful tool. Building trust between researchers, governments, and industry has helped them translate good intentions into action. Still, ecosystem-building is both underfunded and difficult to measure, and working with the tech sector carries reputational and ethical risks. Safe Online’s vision is to combine philanthropic, public, and industry resources responsibly—creating a future where online environments are designed for children’s safety, mental health, and long-term wellbeing.