The Legatum Foundation's mission is to liberate the human potential of those suffering abject poverty. Through the Foundation, Legatum allocates grants which have meaningfully improved the lives of more than 30 million people in the last decade.
For over a decade the Legatum Foundation has funded thousands of small, community-based organisations across the developing world, in places where the need is greatest and where the Foundation’s grants can address an unmet need. In many cases, only a modest initial grant is required to build upon an existing project and to ensure its sustainability. These projects are clustered into a series of Strategic Initiatives, each lasting for three years, which maximises the impact of the grant and provides enough time to produce measurable results without encouraging over-reliance on a single donor.
Legatum's successful programme to reduce the prevalence of seven neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Rwanda and Burundi has resulted in the creation of the independently-managed $100MM END Fund, a private sector funded initiative dedicated to the eventual eradication of seven NTDs in sub-Saharan Africa. For more information, please visit www.end.org.
We intend to improve the effectiveness of philanthropy by bringing the disciplines and tools associated with investing in the capital markets to the development sector. Thus, we require that every grant demonstrates effectiveness, efficiency and measurable results. We engage an expert advisory firm to thoroughly vet every project: projects are evaluated in advance based on their potential impact. Once allocated, each grant is monitored for its effect on positive life change using the Social Impact Index (SII), a proprietary analytic tool.
The Foundation’s priority sectors are:
Health
Interventions to tackle NTDs, HIV/AIDS, clean water and sanitation.
Education
Emphasis on private sector solutions such as ‘Speed Schools’
Disaster Recovery
Support for grassroots implementers responding to natural disasters
Human Liberty
Rescuing children and women from slavery and trafficking
Economic Empowerment
Creating income generating opportunities for families
Environment
Maintaining ecological balance and the sustainability of human life
For more information on how we seek to influence and redefine conventional approaches to social development please visit www.legatum.org.