How we work
Taking a large-scale, locally owned approach to philanthropy.
Our vision
With our partners, we are working towards a world where children are healthy, safe, and have opportunities. A world that is prosperous and secure for everyone.
Our approach
We support our partners to tackle some of the largest and most complex challenges worldwide, which result in children being left behind. This requires us to use our heads and our hearts, remembering our motivation, the children we serve, and turning that passion into results.
This means:
We work with partners to deliver and sustain large-scale improvements to the systems that shape children’s lives, helping to better address their needs.
This includes using quality data and evidence to prioritise solutions that deliver the greatest impact for every dollar spent.
We work as a bridge-builder, forging connections, sharing knowledge and unlocking resources to accelerate progress towards societal goals that impact children.
This is why we align our work with national and global objectives and obligations, including the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate agreement, to help galvanise and support partners who are united by common targets.
We are committed to locally led change, collaborating with dedicated leaders inside and outside government who are striving to create a brighter future for their communities. By doing so, our efforts become more meaningful, effective and enduring for generations to come.
We centre children and their experiences. Children, their families and communities do not live their lives in silos, so we need holistic solutions, which recognise those intersections. This includes taking a proactive approach to safeguarding, embedding safety in programme design, not as an afterthought. We champion this approach not just in CIFF’s work but with all our partners.
Approach in practice
To put these principles into practice we have several enabling teams and workstreams, which extend across all our priorities.
Nurturing resilient ecosystems
The challenges we face globally do not sit in silos, and neither should our approach to solutions. That’s why we support ecosystems, helping organisations that are working towards the same goal collaborate more effectively. This includes strengthening funding, civil society, and spaces for learning and collaboration.
Building on this commitment, CIFF’s Ecosystem Development team provides strategic guidance and support to our staff and partners. By connecting people, ideas and organisations, we build the relationships and infrastructure that support our charitable mission and thematic priorities.
Evidence, impact measurement and evaluation
We use data, impact measurement and evaluation to hold ourselves and our partners accountable to the children we serve. At CIFF, we follow a results-based management approach, embedded within our teams and applied across our investment cycle.
Evidence-led planning enables us to inform programme design, as well as helping to define the problem we are working to resolve. This includes identifying the target areas with the highest burden, designing robust theories of change and setting cost-benefit benchmarks.
Measurement helps to set investment impact expectations through our ‘Cascade to Impact’ framework with clear, quantifiable targets and baselines.
Continuous monitoring ensures we verify results and drive adaptive programme management for maximum results.
Evaluating and learning means we continuously assess impact – both achievements and learnings, which can then be shared with others. This stage also helps feed into programme design and so the cycle begins again.
To support this approach, CIFF’s Impact Knowledge Hub is focused on measuring real-world impact, building collective insight, and sharing knowledge to help direct development resources to sustainable high-impact solutions.
Technology for impact
Technology is a force multiplier for outcomes – not an end in itself. CIFF supports proven, scalable digital tools, and data systems that are secure, relevant and locally owned. Through technology we are able to accelerate progress where digital solutions can maximise impact, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and accountability.
CIFF’s Tech4Impact team works to proactively track, test, and de-risk emerging tools that can be integrated into government systems and strengthen local partners’ capacity.
Technology is crucial to increase the effectiveness of philanthropy and to drive global sustainable development progress, whether it’s improving the reach of programmes through offline-first and mobile tools or using real-time data to improve decision-making.
Development finance
For countries to meet their development goals, finance must be accessible, affordable and equitable – at scale.
As part of CIFF’s commitment to locally owned change, our development finance grant making plays an enabling role. This work helps to strengthen and improve the global financing mechanisms required to advance shared development priorities.
Across the organisation, we focus on enabling outcome-based financing, from country platforms to partnerships with multilateral development banks. This helps shift the world towards a more sustainable development model.
A commitment to safeguarding
Safeguarding is a non-negotiable principle in our work and operations. Our commitment to the highest standards of safeguarding means ensuring the well-being and safety of all individuals involved in our organisation and activities, particularly those who are most vulnerable. We take a proactive approach, embedding safety by design, not as an afterthought, and we champion this approach with all our partners.
Our safeguarding policy has been developed in alignment with guidance issued by the Charity Commission of England & Wales, as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and wider international safeguarding regulations.
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