Children's Investment Fund Foundation
Overview
CIFF are an independent, non-profit, philanthropic organisation formally linked to an investment fund, which contributes a portion of its management fees and profits to the Foundation. CIFF’s staff and Trustees come from diverse business and development backgrounds seeking to bring the best of both sectors to every grant.
CIFF aims to deliver large-scale, long-term transformational advances for children as evidenced by clear indicators for children to survive, thrive and mature successfully into adulthood.
They do this by:
- Finding opportunities to make major improvements to well-being for large numbers of children
- Designing investments with like-minded partners to grasp these opportunities head on
- Engaging with partners throughout the investment process to optimise direct and indirect impacts.
Working primarily in Sub Saharan Africa and India, CIFF strives to build a portfolio of consistently high-performing investments for children and their 1,643m (USD) in current multi-grant commitments covers Africa, India, China, Europe and "Global". Find out more here.
Funding Priorities
They aim to play a catalytic role as a funder and influencer to deliver urgent and lasting change for children at scale.
- CHILD HEALTH & DEVELOPMENT - Every child deserves to survive and thrive, today and in the future.
- CLIMATE CHANGE - A low carbon world will help secure a healthy and prosperous future for children.
- SEXUAL & REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH & RIGHTS - Universal access to sexual and reproductive health is fundamental for individuals to achieve their full potential, and essential if countries are to harness their demographic dividend. Their goal is to prevent unintended pregnancy and HIV infection and accelerate a demographic transition.
- GIRL CAPITAL - They seek an equal world for girls and young women.
- CHILD PROTECTION - Fighting to end the scourge of child labour and sexual exploitation, the most horrible of crimes.
Key Attributes of their Grant-Making process
They identify opportunities by talking to and meeting individuals and organisations working within their priority areas. There are a number of key attributes they seek to achieve in grant-making:
Transformational impact – They're looking for ways to catalyse systemic change – through new policies, new large-scale programmes, innovative delivery, sustained behaviour change, or dynamic business models. They seek ambitious and large scale change with a clear pathway to impact which can be monitored and measured. Putting forward a compelling investment proposition with a clear theory of change to achieve large scale impact is crucially important.
Evidence-based approach – They are a data driven organisation. They look for the best available evidence and approach. Where evidence is weak (as is often the case when trying to understand high impact delivery approaches) they seek to highlight what more needs to be generated through the investment. Their focus on the use of evidence and data to drive decision making also means that robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks will be developed as part of any investment.
Cost-effectiveness – Understanding the ‘social return on investment’ for each of their programmes is critical to ensure that they continue to achieve maximum impact for children. They will look at the cost-effectiveness of each investment proposition during development to make sure that they are deploying all resources (theirs and partners) in the most effective way.
Scale and sustainability – They believe that to achieve truly transformational impact for children they need to deliver long-term solutions at scale. All investment proposals should try to outline the scale and potential impact, as well as making clear any considerations for sustainability (financial, behavioural, political etc.) from the outset.
Measurement and evaluation – In order to ensure programmes are on track to deliver maximum potential impact, all investments will include robust monitoring systems, including key performance indicators, to generate data that can be used for decision-making, including course correction. They will often commission independent third party evaluations to measure the outcomes and impact of their grants as well as operational feasibility and cost-effectiveness, among other things.
To view their grant portfolio, visit here