Foundation Roundup
MFX Solutions- Reducing Currency Risk in Microfinance
For the first time, microfinance lenders in developing markets will have access to modern hedging instruments to help stabilize and reduce currency risk in underserved markets. MFX Solutions Inc., the product of a three year collaboration involving a group of U.S. and European microfinance funds, networks and foundations, has pooled resources to make modern currency risk management tools available to the industry in the developing world.
MFX’s mission is to help microfinance institutions and investors analyze, quantify and reduce currency risk, which is often a key impediment to the growth of underserved markets. It addresses the risks faced by microfinance institutions when they borrow dollars or euros and lend in local currency. The company offers hedging products that allow lenders to offset currency risk and lend safely in high risk markets such as sub-Saharan Africa. It also provides free online analytic tools to help MFIs develop safe and sustainable funding strategies in volatile markets.
By offsetting of lenders’ risks and lowering the costs, MFX can help unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in local currency loans to underserved markets. “Getting microfinance to scale isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about reducing vulnerability at the base of the pyramid,” said Monica Brand, Director of ACCION International’s Frontier Investments, an investor in the initiative. MFX funders include 17 MF organizations, as well as USAID and the US Government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).
To find out more about MFX Solutions, please visit: www. mfxsolutions.com
Innovative tool helps grantmakers see impact
The Foundation Center has launched Philanthropy In/SightTM. This new interactive mapping tool enables users to visualize the spending patterns of private foundations and public charities through a familiar Google map interface. In/Sight is a Geographic Information System (GIS) that displays various data sets in quickly grasped visual formats and provides ease of navigation through drill-down and cross-linking technology.
Users can create customized Google maps to explore not only giving patterns but emerging trends and funding relationships globally, nationally or at the community level. The maps are updated weekly via the Center’s data on over 97,000 grantmakers and 1.6 million grants. Information is combined with dozens of demographic and socio-economic overlays, which vividly depict foundation dollars and their effects.
As a result, people can begin to see not only patterns of giving, but where funding is lacking, bringing a whole new level of transparency to the $46 billion philanthropic industry.
The demographic and thematic data for In/Sight is drawn from numerous sources such as the American Human Development Project of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
While the tool is available only by subscription, it will enable funders a choice of filters and more granular criteria, displaying giving geographically by country, state, county, city, metro area, and congressional district.
With support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation for ongoing development and improvement, the Center also plans to offer In/Sight to regional associations of grantmakers and funder affinity groups worldwide, free of charge for one year, through their organizations’ membership sites. Organizations can request a free trial of Philanthropy In/Sight by calling (800) 424- 9836 or sending an e-mail to insight@foundationcenter.org
To find out more about In/Sight, please go to philanthropyinsight.org/About.aspx.
Sundance Film Festival Gets Funding from OSI
Sundance Institute will receive a $5 million grant for its Documentary Film Program from the Open Society Institute (OSI) to help raise awareness on human rights. The Institute works to support the dissemination of filmmakers’ work on some of the most challenging issues of our times. Support for the Sundance Documentary Film Program renews OSI’s commitment to the endeavor that began in 1996.
OSI has a history of supporting documentary storytellers and is part of a dollar-for-dollar matching grant program that the Sundance Institute hopes will raise $10 million over the next five years. Since its inception, the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund has awarded grants to more than 450 films in 54 countries, from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, China, India, Africa, North America and elsewhere.
“This critical funding at a very fragile time is a significant commitment to supporting the belief that documentary storytelling has a meaningful role in the international work toward justice and equity across a range of issues,” said Cara Mertes, director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program.
For more information on The Open Society please go to www. osi.org
Or for the Sundance Film Institute go to: www. sundance.org
Philanthropic Foundations: Growing Funders of the News
The current crisis in journalism is eliciting new support from leaders in the foundation, education and nonprofit worlds. Acting as a “firewall against the disappearance of critical news and information,” these unusual bedfellows convened a meeting with journalists in 2008 to discuss the current state of the industry.
Stemming from that meeting, a new report out of the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP) at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, highlights the work of foundations in supporting journalism. Philanthropic Foundations: Growing Funders of the News was authored by David Westphal, former Washington editor for McClatchy Newspapers and now a senior fellow at CCLP, who conducted extensive interviews with leaders in the philanthropy, journalism, education and non- profit fields. The report reveals a grave need for intervention to transform the traditional economic model of journalism. Nonprofit partnerships are a new idea that many in the industry and foundation world look toward with enthusiasm.
“I think it’s safe to say there’s a growing understanding you can’t run a democracy without a free flow of information,” said Alberto Ibargüen, CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “Communities will soon become aware that a core need is communication.”
Foundations have already become increasingly involved in the journalism industry, supporting topical journalism projects and community news Web sites. Westphal presented his research, along with initial findings from a new Carnegie Corporation sponsored project on the role of government in supporting news and information, at the annual convention of the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communications in August.
For a free copy of the report please visit the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy: http:// communicationleadershipblog. uscannenberg.org/2009/07/cclp-report-details-growing-ph.html
Soros Helps Those Hurt by Financial Turmoil
Hoping to inspire other foundations to continue their optimum level of giving, George Soros and the Open Society Institute pledged $50 million to help New Yorkers in need. The matching grant, pledged to the Robin Hood Foundation, will go toward services such as food and shelter. It is deemed one of the largest gifts made to satisfy basic needs.
The financial meltdown has been particularly bad for New York, with the city seeing record-level family homelessness over the past few months. The grant will help to fill the gap left by foundations and charities that were also hit by the financial downturn. “Just as needs have increased so tremendously, the philanthropic organizations have also been victims of this crisis and they have had to cut back.
We want to reverse this,” said OSI founder George Soros.
In addition to providing support for needy New Yorkers, Soros and OSI recently announced a one-time gift of $100 million to help communities in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, regions deeply affected by the global downturn. The funds will be used over the next two years in the Balkans, the Baltic states, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Ukraine. A committee made up of locals and foundation staff will evaluate the severity of the crisis in each country to determine need and assess each proposal.
For more information on the Open Society Institute, please go to: www.soros.org
