We've supported a variety of projects with different objectives since we began in 2004, but we have now set a clearer strategy to help us achieve our vision. To help NGOs understand the sorts of projects we will be investing in up to 2010, we have narrowed our overarching theme to support people dependent on subsistence agriculture to build sustainable futures.
Our strategy has three key elements:
Focus our investment
Although we'd love to help absolutely everyone, we have set some criteria to ensure we achieve our ultimate vision and stay within our agreed funding parameters.
These are some of the ways in which we select and prioritise what projects the foundation will work on:
- Maintain an agricultural focus to ensure volunteers from innocent drinks can bring their expertise and skills to help projects, alongside the funding.
- Use the UN Human Development Index (HDI) to understand which countries are the world's poorest.
- Focus on those countries where there is the greatest need, and where innocent drinks sources its fruit from.
- Invest in projects with long term, sustainable aims (rather than emergency relief aid).
- Work with UK based NGOs so that we can maintain a constant dialogue with our partners, and ensure that they have the systems for monitoring and distributing investment on the ground.
Work in partnership
We think it's really important to work in partnership, the benefits being manifold. We have a clear structure for how this will work:
- Right from the start we set clear, mutually agreed, goals.
- Whilst we maintain a constant dialogue with our partners, we also ask for six monthly reports so that we understand how things are going.
- Until we receive this, money is witheld for the next stage.
- We aim to work on projects with timeframes of up to three years where possible.
- We try to offer more than simply financial input into our relationships. For example, Helen, went out to visit a project in India to help them work on their marketing and website. And Andrew D went off to Malawi this year to help a fledgling juice company get off the ground.
Be wise with our money
Like any investment, we have to ensure that our money is being looked after. We have a few rules to make sure this happens:
- We never commit to any project if we do not have the funds to see it through to its completion - usually three years worth of cash.
- The funds are kept in high interest accounts until they are needed.
- The foundation is slowly building a capital base for the future.