VOSS Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The charitable arm of the bottled water company VOSS of Norway dedicates its grantmaking to organizations that provide sustainable access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene in Africa.
IP TAKE: VOSS is an approachable and accessible funder that offers both project-specific and general operating support to WASH groups working in sub-Saharan Africa. However, it gives only a few dozen grants a year, making its giving space more competitive. This is a funder with an eye on the long term.
PROFILE: The VOSS Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the bottled water company VOSS of Norway. It seeks to fund “access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene as a means to enable community-driven development in Sub-Saharan Africa and raising awareness of the ongoing need in the region.” The foundation was established in 2008 after VOSS founder Knut Brundtland made a trip to Africa and witnessed the enormity of the global water crisis. Since then, the foundation’s grantmaking has prioritized sustainable access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (a.k.a. WASH grants) in sub-Saharan Africa. Citing a “ripple effect,” the foundation believes access to clean water is directly linked to health and hygiene. Overall, it supports WASH projects in rural and peri-urban regions of sub-Saharan Africa. It also seeks projects in areas that have a high burden of water related diseases. On occasion, VOSS will fund WASH projects in urban regions.
Grants for Global Development and Women
Voss Foundation prioritizes support for Projects in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the foundation has made grants to groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Swaziland, and Uganda. It does not limit the time of its partnerships, and offers both project-specific and general operating support.
VOSS’s Women Helping Women campaign seeks to lift the burden on women and girls to procure their family’s daily water needs. As VOSS suggests on its site, water is “disproportionately a women’s burden in Africa.” As a result, women must often sacrifice their own health and well-being in the process. Women and water, VOSS believes, are tied together by crisis and violence, and improving community access to clean water leads to increased access for women to education, political and community empowerment, health, and economic success.
Important Grant Details:
Although VOSS does not award many grants or take on many new partners, it is an approachable funder that accepts unsolicited grants throughout the year. Most grants fall in the $10,000 to $50,000 range. To see a sampling of past grantees, scroll down to the bottom of this page.
The VOSS Foundation has two global offices, one in Norway and one in New York. U.S.-based groups seeking additional grant application information should contact VOSS at info@thevossfoundation.org.
PEOPLE:
Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only).
LINKS:
