Vitol Foundation
Vitol made its first charitable grants in 2002 and established the Vitol Foundation in 2006.
The Foundation seeks to fund organisations and ideas that support children and families living in deprivation to escape the cycle of poverty and reach their potential in life.
Our focus is on supporting solutions that improve quality of performance, promote greater inclusion, foster appropriate innovation and catalyse access to finance, all within the broader context of poverty. This means that the work we support is invariably in low, and low to middle income countries, where the challenging effects of chronic under-development, conflict and natural disasters are commonplace. We work with the private sector, national governments, public institutions and international partners to reinforce and improve existing in-country systems. Where these systems are not working or do not exist, we seek to address the status quo by promoting innovation – or successful solutions from similar settings – to bring about lasting and sustainable change.
Our approach
We consider our grants to be investments and look for initiatives with the potential to generate social returns in a sustainable way. From the outset, we have supported initiatives globally and independently of business activities. In 2020, we supported 112 projects in 48 countries.
Our sectors
We invest in equitable, replicable and scalable solutions across the following sectors:
• Education
• Enterprise & Livelihoods
• Health
• Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
• Humanitarian relief
Across our programme areas our objectives are fully aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals.
Please contact us for further information about our work, although please note that we do not accept unsolicited applications for funding.
We only look to support organisations which have won the confidence of like-minded funders, align with our funding philosophy and which deserve wide support for the potential they demonstrate in bringing real impact to scale.
We place great emphasis on the working partnership between donors and implementers and encourage partnerships between both the public and private sectors.
Our partners
We are able to provide financial support to NGOs, social businesses and private companies (provided any profit generated during the lifetime of our grant funding is reinvested in the business), but not usually to public authorities.
Partners and projects are expected to have the potential to be transformational and impactful, effective and efficient, sustainable, scalable and replicable. In return, the Vitol Foundation aspires to be both responsive and flexible and to understand the evolving needs of difficult circumstances.
Big Bang Philanthropy
We are a member of the Big Bang Philanthropy group; a consortium of like-minded funders working together to find and finance high impact, scalable organisations tackling global poverty.
