Children’s Investment Fund Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) was founded by hedge fund billionaire Christopher Hohn and Jamie Cooper. CIFF works to support vulnerable children in developing countries.
IP TAKE: Projects with the capacity to deliver large-scale impact driven by measurable evidence and data are crucial here. Grants are very large, but are given to preselected grantees, making it a less accessible funder that likes to play its cards close. This is a tough nut to crack, unless you are a large, established global development organization that can mobilize millions of dollars towards your proposal goals. Grassroots and small organizations should look elsewhere. It likes to conduct big projects for big impact that’s scalable, often taking a business approach, so your project should have clear financial guidelines and reflect how it can scale up.
PROFILE: Christopher Hohn and Jamie Cooper established the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) in 2002. It seeks “to improve the lives of children in developing countries who live in poverty.” Early programmatic interests included increasing pediatric AIDS care and treatment in developing countries. The foundation—which has grown to be one of the largest in the United Kingdom—has since expanded its grantmaking priorities to broadly fund Global Health and Development, Environmental conservation and Climate Change, and Human Rights.
The Children’s Investment Fund and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation were established by billionaire Christopher Hohn and his ex-wife Jamie Cooper. While the Children’s Investment Fund—a hedge fund—used to donate a portion of all of its fees to charitable organizations, these days, most of Hohn’s philanthropy takes place through the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. Before the couple divorced, Hohn steered more than $2 billion to the foundation.
Grants for Global Health and Development
Using a rigorous business approach to philanthropic funding, the foundation heavily supports Child Health & Development in developing countries. Its Nutrition grantmaking awards organizations with innovative solutions to undernutrition and stunting reduction. The foundation’s Health grants focus on diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, improving prenatal outcomes, adolescent reproductive health, and preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Education grants seek “to ensure that every young child is prepared mentally, emotionally and physically for primary school and later life.” Deworming grants focus on large scale deworming efforts. Finally, this funder also supports Adolescent pregnancy and AIDS initiatives in order to create “an AIDS-free generation where every teenage girl has agency to avoid unwanted pregnancies and is able to access their sexual and reproductive rights.” CIFF has helped to shape the market for children’s antiretroviral medications, a long-neglected area in children’s health. The result helped reduce the wide disparity between AIDS treatment offered to adults and children.
Past CIFF grantees include Power of Nutrition, to create an independent children’s nutrition fund, SURE—Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia, to “support to the Government to implement a nutrition programme that integrates health and agriculture services to deliver a package of community-based nutrition interventions for women and children under two years old,” and NEST—Newborn Technologies, to reduce preventable deaths among newborns in Sub-Saharan Africa. To learn more about CIFF grantees and to obtain a broader sense of the type of work this funder supports, explore its current grant portfolio.
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
CIFF conducts conservation and climate change work through its Climate Change program, which believes climate change to be the “single biggest threat” to children today. To combat that threat, the foundation seeks organizations supporting the “global transition to a zero-carbon society underpinned by a bio-material-based sustainable economy.” Regarding conservation efforts, the foundation supports larger-scale land restoration pursuits at the city, regional, national, and global levels. According to CIFF, it seeks to “accelerate biological carbon capture and storage globally...by supporting key leaders who are committed to restoring 350 million hectares of land by 2030 as part of the New York Declaration of Forests.” The foundation currently focuses its reforestation efforts on Brazil.
Past CIFF grantees include the European Climate Foundation, which works to secure Europe as a leader in global carbon emissions reduction. Another past grantee is the organization More Transparent Climate Action, which received a grant for its work building transparency in national and international climate policies. To learn more about CIFF grantees and to obtain a broader sense of the type of work this funder supports, explore its current grant portfolio.
Grants for Security, Human Rights, and Violence Prevention
The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation centers its human rights grantmaking on protecting vulnerable and underprivileged children. It prefers to support local organizations in an effort to drive community-based change. CIFF’s Child Protection grants focus, not only protecting trafficked and exploited children, but also on raising awareness of modern day slavery. Areas of specific giving interest include child protection, child labor, access to justice for children, and survivor services.
Past grantees in the human rights space include the Freedom Fund, which received support for its work mounting a global movement to end modern day slavery; and the Association for Voluntary Action, which received funding for involving decentralized institutional systems for children and ensuring child protections. To learn more about CIFF grantees and to obtain a broader sense of the type of work this funder supports, explore its current grant portfolio.
Important Grant Details:
CIFF emphasizes “quality data and evidence,” and as a result, before making an investment and throughout the grant process, “CIFF works with partners to measure and evaluate progress to achieve large scale and sustainable impact.” The foundation often looks to support organizations that have the potential to catalyze change for children in market areas that are either neglected or largely uncrowded.
Grants range from $1 million to $90 million. To get a more concrete idea of the types of projects CIFF funds as well as their size and scope, explore the foundation’s helpful Grant Portfolio tool. Although CIFF has ramped up its giving, it only contributes to pre-selected organizations and states that it does not “normally” accept unsolicited proposals. Grant seekers are advised to delve into this funder’s complex and excellent website.
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