UBS Optimus Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The UBS Optimus Foundation is a grant-making foundation that offers UBS clients a platform to use their wealth to drive positive social and environmental change. The Foundation selects programs that work to end modern slavery and human trafficking, improve children’s health and education, and address environmental and climate issues.
IP TAKE: UBS is a proactive grantmaker that is not accessible. It also tends to support grantees for multiple years, especially those with which it partners, so while this is a collaborative funder, its giving space is crowded with less space for new work. Neither is it approachable or responsive, which is common for a corporate funder. New grantseekers will struggle to find support here. However, we’ve provided contact information should you have general questions. At the time of this writing, UBS is unable to take on new grantees as it is prioritizing previous grantee commitments. New grant seekers will find it difficult to get funding here.
PROFILE: The UBS Optimus Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the global financial services company UBS. It seeks to find “innovative ways to tackle some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems.” While the foundation is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, its website supports many different languages, making it accessible to grantseekers from all over the world. Much of the foundation’s efforts toward philanthropy involve soliciting and redirecting donations from other funders; however, it does make its own grants to support social and environmental issues.
Grants for Global Development, Women and Girls and Violence Prevention
UBS Optima Foundation makes grants in the global development and violence prevention space through partnerships with groups focused on ending modern slavery, human trafficking, and child institutionalization. It partners with the Freedom Fund to create what it calls “hotspot programs,” which are “clusters of the most effective community-based organizations in [regions with a high concentration of slavery] to achieve large-scale and sustainable change.” It also partners with Challenging Heights, “a Ghanaian grassroots NGO working to prevent child trafficking, reduce child slavery, and promote children's rights” in the country. Finally, in the global development space, UBS partners with Lumos, the Better Care Network, and Child’s i Foundation to create “sustainable and innovative evidence-based models of family-based care” and to address the number of “children who end up at orphanages […] as a result of poverty or a desire for education, not as a result of being orphaned.”
Grants for K-12 Education
UBS supports education across the globe and partners with organizations working to improve education outcomes in rural India and prepare out-of-school kids to return to school. UBS partners with Luminos Fund through the Second Chance program to help out-of-school children get back in the classroom in Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Liberia. It supports education in India through a Development Impact Bond (DIB) created with the British Asian Trust, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and Tata Trusts. Beneficiaries of the bond include Gyanshala, Kaivalya Education Foundation, a Piramal initiative, and the Society for All Round Development. UBS supplies “the working capital for the programs and will be repaid by the outcome funders once verified outcomes have been achieved.”
Grants for Global Health
The foundation’s health grants support health programs around the world. UBS partnered with Last Mile Health (LMH) “to bring a health worker to every Liberian who lives too far from the nearest health center.” It trains community members in health care “to recognize and treat diseases like malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia in children, and offer antenatal care and support to pregnant women.” It also established the UBS Optimus Foundation Maternal and Newborn Health DIB to improve healthcare for mothers and babies in Rajasthan, India.
Grants for Humanitarian and Disaster Relief, and Diseases
Current emergency funds the Türkiye and Syria Earthquake Relief Fund, Ukraine Relief Fund, Pakistan Relief Fund, and include an Emergency Humanitarian Relief fund that works to alleviate the crisis in Israel and Gaza. Previous response funds include a COVID-19 Response Fund and an Ebola Crisis Fund, both now completed.
Necessarily, these funds change regularly and are created or closed according to the needs of those affected by the crisis. Keep an eye on the website for updates in this area.
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
The foundation’s Climate Change program works to “identify and help scale a range of climate solutions to create a cleaner, safer and a more equitable future for all.” It does this by focusing on Sustainable Land Use, which seeks to protect terrestrial ecosystems at risk of conversion, restore the productivity of degraded land, and reduce demand for land conversion. The climate change program also supports Coastal and Marine Ecosystems, which seeks to protect healthy wetlands, restore wetland ecosystems, and better understand the risks and potentials related to blue carbon.
Important Grant Details:
Grants range from just a few thousand up to $500,000. UBS does not accept or review unsolicited applications or requests for funding; it does not “have the capacity to fund further programs at the moment.” However, the foundation does encourage grant seekers to keep an eye on its page as this situation may change.
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