Geneva Global, Inc.

Geneva Global helps donors make the most of their international giving and understand the measurable difference their giving makes in peoples’ lives. We work with all kinds of donors – individuals, foundations, corporations, even government agencies – interested in maximizing the results of their philanthropy. We seek to take the complexity and concerns out of international giving, through our services making it easy and effective.  We also work with social development investors to assess the social impacts and, where appropriate, the environmental impacts of their initiatives and investments. Through our Funds, we assist donors who give from $5,000 to millions of dollars annually. We provide independent assessment and evaluation of high-impact granting opportunities. And we provide world-class research and consulting services to assist both donors and social development investors.

We’ve been helping our clients make the most of their international giving since 1999. In the past decade, we’ve helped more than 70 clients place more than $81 million in grants to more than 1,650 projects in more than 100 countries. With our assistance, grants placed by our clients have impacted more than 6 million lives.

Our focus is on helping clients make the most of their international giving and social development investments. Our clients’ interests drive our business. Therefore, we assist clients in countries across the developing world, as our track record indicates. Over the past decade, we’ve assisted clients in placing grants in more than 100 countries. We’ve invested time and resources in creating a network of more than 450 community leaders, development experts and consultants, and qualified more than 1,000 indigenous organizations for funding. As a result, we are uniquely qualified to help those interested in international philanthropy and social development, whatever the location.

Geneva Global employs nine full-time staff and is headquartered in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In addition, we regularly work with more than 30 field consultants around the world. We also maintain a network of over 450 community leaders, development experts and consultants and over 1,000 previously qualified local charitable organizations in the developing world. On behalf of our clients, we actively manage more than $12 million dollars at work in 18 countries. Our Funds cover a variety of international development sectors, including economic empowerment, health, education, human liberty and disaster recovery.

We offer a unique combination of excellent client service, high-impact granting opportunities and high-quality, independent analysis and evaluation. Rather than viewing your philanthropy as a donation, we see it as an investment that transforms lives and communities in the world’s hardest places. If you want your giving to make the greatest possible difference, to know the measurable difference it makes and to see more of every dollar you invest go to those in need, then we provide your best option for international giving.

We are not a fundraising organization. In fact, one of the things that differentiates Geneva Global from other options you have for international granting is that we provide independent, objective analysis of potential giving opportunities. Think of us as the philanthropic equivalent of an investment banking service – we identify and recommend to our clients only the best-in-class international charitable organizations. Because we are independent, and because our services are paid for by our clients, we are not beholden to the local charitable organizations we bring to our clients’ attention. Therefore, we are able to recommend organizations according to merit alone, and report on the progress of programs as an independent evaluator.

We’d love to talk with you about your international philanthropic giving or social development goals and how we can work with you to make those goals a reality. You can contact us at 610-254-0000, or by e-mail at  . We look forward to hearing from you.

Currently, we cannot accept online donations. However, you can contact us at 1-610-254-0000, or you can complete the contact form on our website and one of our advisors will contact you.

Yes, it can. While Geneva Global isn’t a charitable organization, contributions to our Funds are processed through a 501 (c)(3) partner organization, Givers Trust, and can qualify as charitable contributions.

We believe that clients should know how their contributions are used, and the difference their giving makes. And while reporting is important, we believe our clients deserve so much more. Therefore, all GGI Fund contributors can benefit from the following:

• Distinctive, investment-quality research and analysis that enables each Fund to be comprised of the carefully selected, best-in-class programs
• Ongoing project monitoring and active portfolio management to ensure that each contribution to a Fund achieves maximum impact
• Regular reporting on Fund progress
• Direct connection to the people whose lives are being impacted through life-change stories, photographs and updates of the Fund’s achievements
• Our Annual Fund Report, which details the Fund’s progress for the year, including contributions, grants placed and updates on programs that make up the Fund
• A gift receipt for your tax-deductible charitable donation

Note that the services you receive vary depending upon the amount of your investment, the Fund you choose and the reporting options you select.

Geneva Global is not a nonprofit.

We believe the disciplines of the for-profit marketplace should be applied to charitable giving in order to channel more philanthropic capital to the most effective organizations and their projects. Donors should be made aware of the best local charitable organizations and be given opportunities to expand these organizations’ services through funding. Rigid requirements and high standards encourage local charitable organizations to improve their efficiency and effectiveness in order to gain support from donors. Meanwhile, ineffective or fraudulent organizations are not linked with donors. As a consequence, the best local charitable organizations receive more funding, less effective organizations work to become more efficient and effective, and the worst organizations are less likely to receive funding. Geneva Global believes that, in this way, a true meritocracy is possible in the world of international development and every international philanthropic donation is put to better use and provides greater impact. We design our processes and services with these principles in mind with the goal of seeing the best local charitable organizations receive funding and each donor’s contributions realize its maximum result.

In order to be the change we seek, Geneva Global has been established as a for-profit organization. As such, we face pressures that nonprofit organizations do not. The international philanthropic marketplace must value our services, or we go out of business. The marketplace requires that we provide an exceptional value proposition, or we go out of business. It’s that simple. Unlike a non-profit, we can’t count on donors to subsidize our costs, or to take whatever portion of funding we receive and label it as program costs to cover our overhead. We have to be lean and effective. We must provide excellent services. So that is what we seek to do.

But let’s be clear here: we are not a for-profit in order to make money off those in need that you desire to help. Far from it. Our goal is to be the foremost organization, of all the options available to you, ensuring that each dollar you give provides the maximum impact possible and informing you of the measurable results of your giving. You won’t find the same commitment to low overhead, independent evaluation, high-impact granting opportunities and measurable results anywhere else.

Geneva Global covers its costs in two ways. First, we charge fees for our consulting services. Time investment and financial costs, as well as the particular type of service you request, determine these fees. Secondly, we receive a fee for administering our Funds in order to provide the necessary due diligence, monitoring, and evaluation services required by law for international philanthropic giving, and for the ongoing reporting services we provide to our clients. This fee varies according to the amount of work required, but it’s always less than 15% of contributions to the Fund, an amount that covers all operating costs – administration and program costs combined. This means that at least 85% of all money contributed to our Funds goes to local charitable organizations and to those you want to help.

Because most international charitable organizations are not transparent about their overall operating costs or the amount that actually goes to beneficiaries, it’s not possible to make a specific, apples-to-apples comparison of Geneva Global’s costs versus others. However, we are confident that our total operating costs are significantly less than those of the average charitable organization. In fact, we estimate that in most cases the percentage of money given to an international charity that ends up helping beneficiaries is between 60% to 75%, which means that as much as 25% more of your money goes to those in need when you choose Geneva Global to facilitate your international giving. Combine that with our commitment to identify and independently evaluate the very best local organizations in order to see your giving realize an exceptional social return on investment, and the overall benefit of choosing Geneva Global is even greater.

We take several steps to ensure that funding provided through Geneva Global’s clients is used as intended. First, we don’t accept unsolicited requests for funding from organizations. Instead, we only consider organizations recommended to us through our network of pre-qualified community leaders, development experts and on-the-ground consultants. The organization must have a strong track record of implementing good programs and making good use of previous funding. By recommending an organization, our network members put their own reputations on the line, so they recommend only organizations in which they have full confidence. Second, we conduct rigorous due diligence as part of our qualification process for any organization considered for funding. We evaluate the organization and its proposed project against seven critical categories to determine whether the organization should be included in a Fund, or recommended to a client for funding. Only the very best organizations – about one in four of those we research – make it through this process. We review the organization’s audited financials, and speak with others – including community leaders, similar organizations or previous donors – to confirm the integrity of the organization and its leadership. If we detect any suspicion of fraudulent behavior, an organization is not considered or recommended for funding. As part of our qualification process, we also require organizations to provide detailed project budgets, and to report on actual costs.

Ongoing monitoring of projects, including project site visits, reduces the likelihood that funds will be misused in any way. Additionally, ongoing reporting requirements, including audited annual financial reports, provide another check against fraud and financial mismanagement. Finally, we provide funding to multiple programs addressing issues in the same region in order to increase the effectiveness of these programs through capacity building and resource sharing, which results in more efficient use of funds.

International granting has inherent risks, one of which is the risk of corruption or financial mismanagement. While it’s impossible to completely eliminate this risk, Geneva Global takes exceptional measures to prevent it. In more than 10 years, funding more than 1,600 projects, we’ve had only a handful of projects – less than 1% - marred by intentional fraud. In each of these cases, we made donors aware of the fraud, and worked with them to bring the responsible organization to the attention of in-country officials and, when possible, recover funds.

Social return on investment, or SROI, is a way of helping a donor understand the measurable impact his or her giving has made. We demonstrate specific, measureable results in two ways. First, we track the number of lives impacted by each grant. This allows us to say, with confidence, how many people benefit from a grant and how their lives have been measurably improved. It also enables us to calculate a unique cost-per-life impacted figure. Second, we’ve developed a proprietary metric for measuring the impact a grant has on a given community, which makes it possible for a donor to understand the quantifiable, social impact of an investment as a financial return to that community. We’re able to use SROI or other metrics as predictive tools or to measure actual results. Additionally, our SROI metric allows donors to evaluate the impact of one project in comparison to another, even if projects are dissimilar.

Metrics are a way of measuring the impact a grant has on individuals and communities. A common goal of development work is to improve communities’ standard of living; metrics allow us to determine whether development efforts have in fact had a measurable, positive impact on communities, and to assess the nature of that impact. As stated above, we rely on two metrics to determine the impact grants have on individuals and communities. First, we track the number of lives impacted by each grant. This allows us to say, with confidence, how many people benefit from a grant and how their lives have been measurably improved. Second, we’ve developed a proprietary metric for measuring the impact a grant has on a given community. We’re able to use SROI or other metrics as predictive tools or to measure actual results.