HOW WE WORK

The Ingrid Hope Foundation has teams with deep expertise in science, data, and policy—working alongside partners to support solutions grounded in evidence and local context. Grantees and projects are chosen according to their ability to create impact on the foundation’s priority issues. Each team at the foundation makes their own grant decisions, but they all follow the same four-stage grantmaking process.

Phase 1. Developing the project

Our program officers seek out projects that align with the team’s strategic priorities—often in consultation with colleagues, researchers, policymakers, and organizations working in the field.

Phase 2. Soliciting proposals

If the team decides to proceed, it seeks potential grantees through direct solicitation, discussion, or a request for proposal (RFP). We give each prospective grantee guidelines and templates for developing a proposal and a budget.

Phase 3. Proposal review and approval

A program officer reviews materials with internal (and sometimes external) experts, completes due diligence, and recommends changes. A foundation executive makes the final decision. Before work begins, both parties sign an agreement covering results, milestones, and payment schedule.

Phase 4. Grant allocation and project closeout

Throughout the grant, the program officer and grantee stay in close touch about progress and challenges. At the end of the project, the grantee produces a final report summarizing results and lessons learned.

We aim for financial efficiency and effectiveness while ensuring that the grantee’s costs for delivering results are fully covered. When working with prospective grantees on proposals, we try to gain a complete and accurate understanding of the cost of carrying out the work.

When making grants to universities and other research institutions, foundations have more flexibility than the U.S. government does to count indirect “facilities and administrative” costs as direct costs. For example, project management costs, lab fees, and information technology and data charges for a project are allowable as direct costs in our grants.

From the earliest phases of the grantmaking process, we work with grantees to define the overall results we hope to achieve, the data needed to measure progress, and how to evaluate that data. To give grantees flexibility, we do not require them to report on all of their activities. Instead, we focus on critical metrics that support continued learning, adjustment, and alignment with shared goals.

We avoid one-size-fits-all prescriptions and strive to make selective, high-quality evaluation an integral part of the projects we fund.

We occasionally provide targeted funding to private companies that have the expertise to help us achieve our charitable goals—whether developing new vaccines and contraceptives or innovations in mobile banking for low-income entrepreneurs.

Our Strategic Investment Fund spearheads much of this work. In collaboration with program teams, it designs partnerships that can include equity investments, loans, or volume guarantees. We initiate these investments to further philanthropic goals, not to generate income; any financial returns are reinvested in our programs.

As with funding to grantees, investments in private companies are bound by our global access requirements: scientific knowledge must be promptly and broadly disseminated, and products developed with our funding must be made broadly available and accessible at an affordable price.

The Ingrid Hope Foundation collaborates with a wide range of partners—including governments, research institutions, private-sector organizations, and nonprofits—to advance global health progress.

Read answers to frequently asked questions about why and how we partner with governments and their agencies