Our Focus Areas
We focus our grantmaking on areas where we have unique expertise, where few others are willing to work and where we see an opportunity to catalyze transformational change. Our primary focus areas are food security, conflict mitigation, combatting human trafficking and public safety.
Food Security
Our support for global food security is directed toward agricultural resource development and management for smallholder farmers in the developing world. We support a range of investments including research, conservation-based production practices, water resource management and education to promote the ideas that will have the broadest impact on the most vulnerable and under-resourced farmers. We strive to combat global hunger in some of the world’s toughest environments, targeting regions prone to conflict and areas with highly vulnerable populations and limited functioning governments.
Over the past decade, the Foundation has witnessed first-hand the relationship between food insecurity and conflict. At the most basic level, food insecurity is both a cause and consequence of conflict.
Individuals in conflict-affected areas are twice as likely to be malnourished as compared to individuals in other developing countries.
Addressing food insecurity that is linked to conflict requires a more comprehensive purview that extends beyond just supporting smallholder farmer development. We often view our food security investments as investments in citizen security and vice versa, as we work to strengthen communities, reduce conflict and ultimately support an environment where development can begin to take hold.
The Foundation invests in food security in a handful of countries in Latin America and Africa primarily through support for smallholder agricultural development and water-use management. In the U.S., our focus is on raising awareness of the problem of hunger, particularly rural hunger, and promoting adoption of conservation-based agricultural systems by U.S. farmers.
Conflict Mitigation
Conflict and instability are key barriers to achieving global food security and economic prosperity, affecting a quarter of the world’s population, according to the United Nations. We seek out investments to mitigate conflict in two ways: by working to end or improve the conditions that fuel violence and conflict; and by supporting communities that have been affected by violence or conflict.
The World Bank estimates that nearly 100 million individuals globally–nearly half of them children–are forced from their homes annually due to conflict, violence and persecution.
The Foundation works to address the underlying causes of conflict through projects that promote economic development, good governance, strong institutions and ultimately citizen security.
We invest in conflict mitigation strategies because we believe that progress in development is impossible without lasting peace. We also see development as a strategy in itself for promoting peace.
Combatting Human Trafficking
Our initiative to combat human trafficking in the United States builds capacity and amplifies the efforts of law enforcement, prosecutors and victim service providers in targeted communities to disrupt human traffickers, dismantle their networks and bring justice to victims of human trafficking.
Public Safety
Public safety is the necessary underpinning for any community’s prosperous development. We have come to understand how public safety concerns contribute to the success or failures of our investments in development outside the U.S. These same lessons have strengthened our appreciation for the importance of supporting public safety here in the U.S.
Public safety is the primary focus of our community-based grantmaking in locations where we have operations and employees. We partner with local sheriffs’ offices to identify and address key community public safety concerns; invest in initiatives to improve policing and police training; and we support volunteer fire departments in rural communities where resources are scarce.
