The Fund will:

1. Mobilize at least $70 million in addition to the founders’ initial contribution of $30 million, for investment into the best of class anti-slavery initiatives.
2. Research and map anti-slavery efforts around the world to understand the problem in its entirety and develop a framework for coordination.
3. Invest and align resources to support interventions in those geographic regions with a very high prevalence of slavery (“hotspots”) and in those industry and thematic sectors (“clusters”) where it will have the greatest impact.
4. Build a community of actors and partners through a collaborative platform for information gathering and sharing, offender tracking and victim support coordination.
5. Inspire a new generation of abolitionists passionately opposed to all forms of human exploitation.

The Fund will support the full range of interventions that meet its strategic objectives, including:

• Partnership
  • Advocacy and Policy Initiatives
  • Coordination: Conferences and Coalitions
  • Academic Partnership
  • Corporate Engagement
• Prevention
  • Promoting Awareness
  • Health
  • Education
  • Economic Empowerment
• Protection (Liberation and Reintegration)
  • Victim Protection
  • Counseling
  • Legal Support
  • Rehabilitation: Health, Education, Economic Empowerment
• Prosecution
  • Legal Services (Victims and Prosecutors)
  • Criminal Justice Advocacy
  • Legislative Advocacy

The Freedom Fund offers a platform, vision and plan for partners to join in this global effort to combat modern-day slavery. This Fund is about demonstrating that strategic, targeted and measurable giving can help make a very real difference in ending this most horrendous of crimes. Potential donors will be invited to participate in the Fund’s work in three main ways:

• LEARN – Participate in convenings, build community, learn and share information and opportunities
• ALIGN – Coordinate independent funding in alignment with collective impact objectives
• PARTNER – Contribute to a pooled funding vehicle as a means of supporting a specific hotspot strategy.

The founding organisations are underwriting all of the start-up and initial overhead costs, so all future donor contributions will be spent directly on combating slavery.

The Fund’s key platform will be a ‘hotspot’ intervention model that targets resources to the geographic areas where the incidence of modern-day slavery is highest.

The Freedom Fund’s hotspot model will mean that its work on the ground will focus on those countries and regions with the highest incidence of slavery, such as South Asia and Africa. However the Fund will also be looking at ways to use technology to combat slavery, and how to mobilise a new abolitionist movement, which will necessarily see it active in the U.S. and other developed countries.

We take very seriously the responsibility of managing funds on behalf of others. In keeping with our investment roots, the Freedom Fund is relentless about measuring impact and improving performance, all with the aim of improving the performance of our programs and offering the best return on investment for donors. A summary of our M&E approach is available here. We provide quarterly and annual reports to donors and demand a high level of accountability and transparency from grant beneficiary organisations.

Humanity United, the Legatum Foundation and Minderoo Foundation are each committing $10 million to the Fund. This includes funding to rapidly establish the organisation so it can quickly begin directing resources to areas of greatest need.

The Freedom Fund began grant making in mid-2014 in our northern India hotpsot and December 2014 in our South-Eastern Nepal hotspot. Our impact results can be found here.

The Fund will support a range of actors in the non-profit sector. The Fund will be open to making grants to any non-profit organisation or group that works in a ‘hotspot’ and whose work aligns with the Fund’s anti-slavery strategy. This will include support to international non-profits, but we anticipate it will also provide significant resources to grassroots organisations working on frontline prevention, rescue and rehabilitation.

Yes, absolutely. Stardust Fund, C&A Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation have joined our founding investors as fellow investors in our work.

As currently conceived, the Freedom Fund will initially focus on engaging private donors. However, over the long-run bilateral and multilateral funding will be needed to achieve the necessary scale to eradicate modern-day slavery. As a result, the Freedom Fund will actively explore ways to work in a coordinated manner with government donors and will be open to receiving bilateral and government funding.

A key objective of the Freedom Fund is to demonstrate the impact that effective, targeted and measureable giving can have in preventing and reducing modern slavery. We believe that this model will be persuasive to innovative and outcome-focussed donors. The CEO will work closely with the Board to engage with potential donors on this vision.

The founding members are significant anchor investors, but ending modern slavery requires the efforts of many individuals, organisations and businesses. We hope to mobilise others who feel as passionately about this cause as we do, and we hope the Freedom Fund will serve as a convener and a catalyst for those organisations and individuals.

The board of directors will have oversight of spending and, the CEO and staff will use transparent accounting principles as required by U.S. and U.K. accounting and charitable laws.

Humanity United, the Legatum Foundation and Minderoo Foundation came together because of a shared vision of a fund that will catalyse philanthropic efforts to effectively combat modern day slavery.

This is the first coordinated global anti-slavery fund of its size that will deploy significant resources to areas of greatest need and potential impact.

The Freedom Fund will access and build upon available data, including the Global Slavery Index, and the Fund will support more robust data gathering and sharing.

The Fund will focus on all forms of modern-day slavery, including human trafficking, sex trafficking, forced labour, bonded labour and the use and recruitment of child soldiers.

To see a list of our Directors please click here.

In the future, organisations that make a significant investment in the Fund could potentially serve on the Board.