The power to produce global visual narratives has long been concentrated amongst a few Western-centric media organizations and photographers. But this long-established hierarchy in global ‘image operations’ is shifting as more locally-based image producers become part of the supply chain. Research in this area has so far focused on the collisions resulting from this change. But collaborations between globally-established image producers and under-represented groups of visual storytellers from the Global South are also being undertaken by not-for-profit, philanthropic organizations. To shed light on this, findings are presented based on perspectives offered by photographers from countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America who are taking part in mentorship programmes run by different philanthropic organizations with global reach. The study offers empirical insight on the potentials and pitfalls of philanthropy-driven efforts to enrich global visual storytelling by including image-makers from the Global South.