How it began
As the Ebola crisis escalated in 2014, Geneva Global recognized the urgent need to support a community-based response, particularly in hard-to-reach rural areas.
While much of the attention—and therefore funding—was going to large, multi-lateral organizations and international NGOs, we knew that effective development needed to include localized expertise and knowledge.
Seeing that gap in the humanitarian response, we created the Ebola Crisis Fund in partnership with Capital for Good, our nonprofit partner and registered public charity.
Our work
We began by doing a rapid situation assessment and a needs identification analysis.
Applying what we learned, we created a holistic fund strategy that included three pillars: immediate relief, initial rehabilitation, and stabilization. With time of the essence, we completed this phase in less than two weeks.
We publicly launched the fund in August 2014, just as international community was recognizing the potential scope of the crisis.
As the fund began receiving contributions from donors, Geneva Global hired three in-country program managers to develop and manage the country-level strategy in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
The program team identified community-based organizations in each country and invited selected organizations to submit brief applications. We modified our robust due diligence process for the crisis context while still evaluating potential partners for their financial, strategic, resource, and management capacity.
After receiving a first wave of contributions from donors, the fund placed its first grant less than a month after being established.
The fund simultaneously received funding and awarded grants in a continuous process until all funding had been allocated. Between September 2014 and June 2015, the program team reviewed proposals from over 70 organizations and funded 34 organizations for specific projects.
As partners completed their projects, they summarized their efforts in final reports, which discussed project successes and challenges, provided a final financial summary, and provided a summary of progress against set benchmarks.
After all projects were completed, a review of final reports from each partner showed that 91% of all projects had achieved or overachieved their benchmarks. The fund granted $671,498, impacting the lives of 5,721,963 people in three countries.
For more details on the fund and its impact, download the Ebola Crisis Fund donor report.
