ELMA Relief Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The ELMA Relief Foundation awards grants to organizations working in disaster response, rebuilding, and risk reduction in predictable disasters. The ELMA Relief Foundation funds organizations that work to improve the lives of Africa’s children, mainly through education, healthcare, and the provision of basic needs. The foundation primarily funds global development and global health work.
IP TAKE: ELMA invests in disaster response and relief efforts with measurable outcomes that are often related to health and healthcare in vulnerable populations struck by disaster. The ELMA Relief Foundation predominantly funds large, international organizations.
ELMA does have a few stated giving priorities; however, this is a funder willing to fund projects that don’t fall neatly into its grantmaking wheelhouse—as long as the work benefits children.
On a wide scale, ELMA centers its grantmaking on disaster response, recovery, and risk reduction, but make no mistake, this is a holistic disaster grantmaker that holds itself accountable to its own set of metrics.
PROFILE: Part of the ELMA Group of Philanthropies, the Elma Relief Foundation was founded in 2005 to materially improve the lives of Africa’s children, “through the support of sustainable efforts to relieve poverty, advance education, and promote health.” The ELMA Group of Foundations comprises the following arms: ELMA Foundation, ELMA Relief, ELMA Vaccines and Immunizations, ELMA Growth, ELMA South Africa, and ELMA Music. The foundation funds development and disaster relief grantmaking across the world, with an emphasis on children in Africa. ELMA Relief conducts related grantmaking through its response, recovery, and special opportunities programs.
Grants for Global Development, Health and Disaster Relief
The ELMA Relief Foundation conducts global development work, often focused on health or education, across all of its programs, which include its response, recovery, and special opportunities programs.
The foundation’s disaster response work objectives seek to not only “preserve life, health, and other assets during and after disasters and shocks,” but also to help ensure the continuity of education for children and other protective services for those living in regions affected by disasters. According to ELMA, children “often suffer disproportionately in the aftermath of such tragedies.”
ELMA Relief provides funding for organizations that respond to the "urgent needs of communities immediately after a disaster occurs;" groups that are helping to rebuild communities; and those helping alleviate the impact of predictable disasters in underserved communities. The foundation begins its response efforts by acting before a disaster strikes whenever possible so that groups can respond quickly and efficiently once it hits. ELMA Relief works to launch coordinated and appropriate response campaigns.
Global development and disaster relief grantees include organizations that help the displaced, whether they’re refugees or not, and seek to fund underfunded or underreported disasters that may affect multiple communities across nations.
ELMA’s disaster recovery grants focus on rebuilding and repairing infrastructure in affected areas while also paying attention to restoring access to critical resources such as healthcare, education, and clean water. This includes WASH efforts, COVID-19, infectious disease response, and other related issues. The foundation’s disaster response grants support mobilizing resources quickly with major outcomes that include decreased child mortality rates, malnutrition rates, and “negative coping strategies of affected households.” Elma Relief also supports improvements in making disaster logistics systems more efficient.
ELMA Relief works to be a responsive and nimble disaster grantmaker—which isn’t such an easy task when telecommunications and infrastructure is in shambles or at the very least, temporarily non-operational.
Global development and disaster relief grants range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Past global development and disaster relief grantees include Center of Global Development, Concern Worldwide, Edesia, the International Rescue Committee, NPH-USA, among many others.
Global health grants include Médecins Du Monde, among many others receiving hundreds of thousands in aid for work related to COVID-19.
Grants for Refugees
The ELMA Relief Foundation conducts grantmaking to support refugees through its related grantmaking to global development and disaster relief outlined above under Grants for Global Development and Disaster Relief. The foundation’s related grants benefiting refugees focus on investing in organizations that address the displacement of people in the immediate aftermath of a disaster or disease outbreak. While most of the foundation’s work tends to prioritize work occurring in Africa, its refugee-related work is evenly spread out across the world as situations may develop.
Past refugee-related grantees include RefugePoint, which received project support for support to refugee populations impacted by the COVID-19 crisis in Nairobi. Stichting War Child is another grantee, which received project support for the provision of psychosocial support for Syrian refugee caregivers, and building the knowledge base on how caregiver wellbeing contributes to child wellbeing.
General Grantmaking Insights:
While the ELMA Relief Foundation does not restrict its funding to specific geographical areas, the ELMA Group of Philanthropies often gives special preference to large-scale organizations that work to improve the lives of children in Africa, such as Doctors Without Borders. In addition, the majority of awarded grants tend to support health outcomes in some of the most underserved areas in the world. To learn more about the types of relief organizations the foundation supports, take a look at its Investments page.
The ELMA Relief Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals or applications, so it is best for grant seekers to reach out to ELMA staff.
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