We support work that helps people tap into globalization’s benefits and strengthen resilience to risks.
Globalization – the technological, social, and economic processes by which people around the world have grown inextricably interdependent – generates substantial opportunity and progress for many. It also leaves many by the wayside: families and populations that fall further behind as the pace of change quickens.
Smart Globalization
The Rockefeller Foundation envisions a world with Smart Globalization – a world in which globalization’s benefits are more widely shared and social, economic, health, and environmental challenges are more easily weathered. We support work that enables individuals, communities, and institutions to access new tools, practices, resources, services, and products. And we support work that enhances their resilience to acute crises and chronic stresses, whether manmade, ecological, or both. This is our 21st century interpretation of the Foundation’s pioneering – and enduring – philanthropic mission to “promote the well-being” of humanity.
Significant advances toward Smart Globalization are still undermined by insufficient food, water, and shelter; inadequate health systems; worsening environmental degradation and climate change; unplanned urbanization; and declining social and economic security. These dangers interact with and intensify each other. They cannot be effectively resolved in isolation.
Our Portfolio of Interconnected Initiatives
Seeking and shaping innovative solutions at the intersections of these five challenges, the Rockefeller foundation maintains a portfolio of interconnected initiatives. Each initiative addresses two, three, or more of our focus areas – often in overlapping geographic regions. Each commits to specific, measurable goals within projected time frames. Each incorporates rigorous monitoring while grantee-work progresses. These requirements position us to seize unanticipated opportunities, shift tactics when necessary, and recalibrate our approach when an objective demands shorter- or longer-term engagement.
In all our endeavors, the Foundation concentrates on results and impact – the difference we make in lives, communities, and the world. We foster innovation in markets, organizations, products, and processes. We influence and inform public policy with cutting-edge ideas and research. We connect partnerships and networks, bringing people and institutions with diverse perspectives together across disciplines and sectors – and facilitating their learning from and with one another. We find and fund interventions that exploit current or coming tipping points and break bottlenecks clogging prospects for progress. We build capacity, equipping groups and governments with talent, technology, and training. We test pilot projects, spin them off, or join others to help implement successful demonstrations on a wider scale. We strive to create leverage not only with our dollars, but also with our near-century of experience, expertise, and convening power.
