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

EFJ’s Grant Making  Since 1993, 931 grants approved for a total of J$1,702,020,000B (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

Evaluating Our Grant Making Lessons 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 EFJ’s 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

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 EFJ’s 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

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 years A staff member monitors the investments weekly even though all instruments are held by external bodies

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.

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

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

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.

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

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