What is The Freedom Fund?
The Freedom Fund is a new philanthropic initiative designed to bring much-needed financial resources and strategic focus to the fight against modern slavery.
With a team of experts and a global perspective, the Freedom Fund aims to raise $100 million for smart investments to reduce slavery in the countries and sectors with the highest concentration of slavery. Committed to achieving the greatest impact, the Freedom Fund draws on the investment heritage of our founders, investing in new initiatives and replicating and scaling-up proven programmes globally.
How we work
- We bring a global perspective, to match the scale of the problem with vision and resources.
- We invest in best-of-class anti-slavery interventions, scaling those that succeed.
- We open-source our knowledge, to encourage best practice and greater collaboration in the sector.
- We measure impact, to improve our investment strategy over time.
- We align diverse disciplines, to develop more effective approaches to end slavery.
Investing in Hotspots
The Freedom Fund offers donors the opportunity to invest in key geographic areas known to have a high incidence of modern slavery, where our interventions are most likely to result in a measurable reduction in slavery. In our hotspots, we invest in a range of local organisations working on the front-lines against slavery to enable them to protect those at risk of slavery, rescue and rehabilitate those enslaved, and prosecute those responsible.
These hotspot projects encourage cooperation between local grassroots organisations and ensure an integrated, cross-disciplinary approach. Experience has demonstrated that through organisations working together much more can be achieved. Hotspot projects enable knowledge sharing and greatly improve project evaluation; the result for donors is a better return on investment.
The Freedom Fund has launched hotspot projects in Northern India and Nepal. In 2015, subject to donor support, we plan to launch hotspot projects in Brazil, Ethiopia and Thailand.
Investing in systemic innovation
In addition to hotspot projects, the Freedom Fund invests in innovation through “sector initiatives”. Our sector initiatives coordinate actors and resources around a slavery-specific issue, including sectors, industries, or circumstances. This allows the Freedom Fund to tackle systemic issues like slavery in fishing or cross-border migration, or help develop new technological tools or legal initiatives. The Freedom Fund provides a channel through which funds, knowledge, or influence can impact international organisations, governments, media and the corporate sector to expedite action. These initiatives build on the Freedom Fund’s global leadership role; its design, monitoring, and evaluation expertise; its relationships with other anti-slavery actors; and its ability to encourage collaboration through funding and small grants.
Building a community of action
Exceptional work is being done around the world to eradicate slavery, but too often these efforts are fragmented and underfunded. We aim to build a global community of activists, experts, and donors by providing the platform, knowledge, and tools for them to connect and work together more effectively over a sustained period. We use our global leadership role, and the credibility conferred by the backing of our founders, to bring actors together and to encourage greater collaboration and coordination.
