The Environmental Foundation of Jamaica

1
The Environmental Foundation of Jamaica

• 13 years old
• Board of 9
• 5 Standing Committees HR and Compliance,
  Finance and General Purposes, Grant Management,
  Membership and Executive
  
• 20 staff members main departments Finance, -
  Programme, HR and Admin, Executive Office
  
• 42 member groups (environment and child sector
  organizations and educational institutions
  

2
EFJs Grant Making

• Since 1993, 931 grants approved for a total of
  J1,702,020,000B (USD 20M)
  
• Two Calls for Proposals (The Call) sent out each
  year on selected themes in the child development
  and survival (40 funds) and the environment
  (60)
• Discretionary grants, of up to J200,000 (approx
  USD3000) introduced 2005/2006 as a small
  responsive grants programme outside of the Call
  process
• Project approval by Board based on
  recommendations of the Grant Management
  Committee
  

3
Evaluating Our Grant MakingLessons Learned

• Call process brings strong degree of
  transparency, and process accountability
  
• Use of Due Diligence tool in process promotes
  fairness
  
• Many successful projects yet impact more at the
  local level than nationally linked with
  national priorities
  
• Capacity building component of the EFJs work
  has been successfully applied and should be
  focused and possibly increased
  
• Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms can be
  improved and linked to baseline indicators and
  targets

4
The Road Ahead

• Capital Campaign negotiating second generation
  funds and identifying new sources of funds
  
• Leveraging other grants on behalf of members and
  grantees through EFJs influence and through
  funding partnerships
  
• Identifying other sources of funds that grantees
  and members may want to access
  
• Re-looking components of the investment portfolio
  in order to improve investment earnings
  
• Keeping administrative expenses controlled

5
Investing for Sustainability

• EFJ has invested funds through fund managers in
  commercial banks and investment houses over 13
  years
  
• Investment instruments have been largely safe,
  high interest rate government papers
  
• As a result, fund has essentially more than
  doubled from original total expected to be about
  USD20M over 18-19 years
  
• A staff member monitors the investments weekly
  even though all instruments are held by external
  bodies

6
Diversifying Investments

• The EFJ as part of its sustainability plan
  identified and engaged in several partners to
  increase its corpus
  
• Go Green facility with a commercial bank
  small and medium sized enterprises access loans
  for enviro-retrofitting the bank handles the loan
  portfolio interest shared by bank and EFJ.

7
Diversifying Investments 2

• Investment in Jamaican company with an
  international brand name product company arose
  out of a community based agro-processing industry
  - Walkerswood Partners Limited - selling
  Jamaican sauces, spices, etc.
• EFJ invested in and has preference shares in the
  company and the agreement is to collect dividends
  on an annual basis based on loan repayments at a
  very competitive rate

8
Diversifying Investments 3

• The EFJ has also allocated some of its funds to
  the seeding of an endowment funds from the Go
  Green Facility and the Walkerswood Investments
  will be flowed into the Endowment fund
• In addition the EFJ is negotiating a second debt
  for nature swap and meeting with international
  foundations to attract funds to the region with
  the EFJ as fund manager

9
EFJ as Fund managers

• Currently the EFJ is developing its skills as
  fund managers for other projects.
  
• Two partnerships currently operate within this
  context administrative and programme
  partnership with the Bernard van Leer Foundation
  (Child Development) and one with the TFCA and
  Nature Conservancy Forest Conservation Fund.

10
Co-Financing

• The EFJ is embarking on several co-financing
  arrangements in order to leverage resources to
  its grantees
  
• Projects have been co-financed with the Jamaica
  Social Investment Fund
  
• Agreements are being finalized with the GEF-Small
  Grants Programme and with the Commonwealth
  Foundation (England)
  
• NGO Strengthening projects have taken place with
  IDB - Jamaica
  

11
Important Lessons

• All arrangements must be formalized through
  written, legally vetted agreements with party
  
• Investments and arrangements should err on the
  conservative side to minimize risks
  
• Reports must be made on schedule so that at all
  times the Foundation has knowledge of the status
  of the investment
  
• Start early the process of investment
• Have a diversified investment portfolio