What we fund
We invest in ideas and solutions that tackle the root causes of challenges and in turn enable all children to flourish.
Grant making
Every day CIFF’s partners are making a tangible difference for children: tackling climate change, improving health and nutrition, and promoting opportunity and choice for women and girls. We also support cross-cutting priorities, as well as providing contingency and evaluation funding, all with the aim of driving large-scale change.
While we refer to our grant making as ‘investments’, the ‘return’ is solely for the communities we work with, in the form of more resilient health systems, cleaner air, better access to nutrition and more.
Disbursements over past five years
To accelerate progress towards globally agreed targets, at CIFF we are scaling our grant making. In 2024 our approved charitable commitments were $923 million, a significant increase on previous years. Year on year our charitable disbursements have been steadily increasing, reaching $631 million in 2024.
“As CIFF continues to scale its level of philanthropic giving, finding opportunities to improve the lives of children continues to be the guiding rationale behind all our work.
Founder and Chair, CIFF
Active portfolio by global opportunity as of Q1 2026
CIFF’s investments often span multiple years. Our active portfolio accounts for the total funds committed to projects, combined with the funds already spent on live projects.
Our approach
We support our partners to tackle some of the largest and most complex challenges worldwide, which result in children being left behind, across all our societies. 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 financing to accelerate progress towards societal goals.
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 siloes, 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.
The process
We work closely with partners to develop ideas and proposals into an investment that aligns with CIFF’s charitable objectives. We adopt this approach to ensure we carefully cultivate relationships with partners who we know can make a difference. The average time taken to move from concept note to approval varies depending on the scale and complexity of the initiative.
A short concept note
At the beginning of a partnership CIFF may ask for a concept note, with an overview of the proposed programme of work, including evidence of feasibility and key risks for further due diligence.
Due diligence
For every grant we conduct a risk based due diligence process, including legal, finance and programmatic considerations, to ensure our partners have the ability to manage and execute our grants and strong safeguarding, governance, and financial structures in place.
Larger investments
Larger investments at CIFF often include multiple partners and a range of interventions, all working towards a shared outcome. These investments are all reviewed by a panel of experts, CIFF’s Programme Investment Committee (PIC). We approve all investments in line with good governance processes.
Smaller investments
Smaller investments are often for short-term programmes, which have a catalytic impact, whether that’s establishing a proof-of-concept, building evidence, providing a platform for unheard voices, or creating public awareness.
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