We seek to build and broaden prosperity in the Global South. We believe that government and business are the most powerful forces in determining the quantity and quality of prosperity in a given country. We prioritize the first of these two by working to improve the capacity, competency, and character of government.
In order to ensure shared prosperity, we believe in the importance of building enabling conditions that allow people to climb the social mobility ladder. We do this by promoting equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcomes.
We also help improve the performance of the social investment sector by promoting systems change solutions and more effective social investing.
Specifically, we target four areas of work.
We believe that integrity and the lack of corruption are essential building blocks for prosperous nations. An absence of corruption means public resources aren’t siphoned from areas such as public health and education; it encourages investment and trade, which in turn lowers unemployment; it reduces inequality by ensuring government resources reach the poor and marginalized.
We invest in a variety of approaches to tackle corruption, and while we recognize the importance of bottom-up pressure to prompt government reform, we prioritize efforts like those of Open Government Partnership’s and Open Contracting Partnership, which collaborate with reform-minded governments. We also helped launch a new program called the Chandler Sessions on Integrity and Corruption at Oxford University to promote peer exchange and learning among government anti-corruption leaders.
Government competency and effectiveness is essential for delivering quality services to citizens and for creating a thriving economy where everyone has the opportunity to prosper. Good governance is not only the job of top government leaders. It also requires the efforts of people at all levels in the public service.
This is why we launched the Chandler Institute of Governance to build the capacity of public servants and their institutions to create an enabling environment for people to flourish.
Talent is equally distributed across the world, but opportunity is not. Everyone should have the opportunity to progress as far as their dreams and abilities can take them. We believe that creating equal opportunities for all builds the conditions for upward social mobility to address the challenge of growing inequality.
At this time, our work on social mobility takes place primarily through Co-Impact. We are still in the early stages of learning about this area and are not soliciting requests for funding at this time.
While government and business are the most important accelerators of change, philanthropic capital can also serve as an important catalyst to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Much of philanthropy has been dedicated to addressing the symptoms of society’s challenges. However, its true potential lies in its ability to allocate flexible and innovative capital to unlock larger systems of change that would otherwise be neglected by governments and market forces.
We invest in systems change through organizations like Co-Impact and Catalyst 2030. We also partner with organizations like the African Philanthropy Forum and Asian venture Philanthropy Network to promote effective social investing practices.