Overview
Delivering results for people in the United States and around the world was not easy in 2024. Technological disruptions, geopolitical competition and conflict, political change, and more made progress harder to defend and achieve.
The Rockefeller Foundation is now a full year into its five-year, $1 billion strategy with a mission to promote humanity’s well-being at a time when climate change’s effects are intensifying.
Across energy, food, health, finance, and economic opportunity, the Foundation uses its convening power, data, and catalytic capital to link governments, businesses, researchers and frontline communities, showing that collaboration is the fastest route to impact.
We developed this report with a special focus on how the power of partnership elevates our impact. It is about more than demonstrating the impact of our programs. It’s also about reflecting on the human stories that make long-term change possible.
If 2024 taught us anything about progress amid this era’s challenges and opportunities, it is that “unlikely” often means “uniquely capable.” As humanity’s well-being faces increasing headwinds and traditional paths to progress are increasingly blocked, the stories in this report make clear that public-private-philanthropic partnerships can deliver real results, especially when partners build trust, experiment, and share work across the lines that have traditionally divided them. Last year proved those lines can be crossed — and when they are, real progress follows.
A Message From Leadership
Right now, our world is navigating what feels like a never-ending series of real and metaphorical storms. Humanity’s well-being at home and around the world is under pressure from technological advances, geopolitical changes, climate disruptions, distrust and division, and resurgent power politics.
To meet the moment, The Rockefeller Foundation, knows that to remain true to the mission that has guided the Foundation’s work since our founding in 1913 and the 5-year strategy we launched in 2023, we must find new ways to open the door to the future for everyone at a time when too many are trying to close it.
This report, titled Delivering Results: The Power of Unlikely Partnerships, shows how the Foundation and its partners delivered results to 530 million people — and the communities of hundreds of millions more — by the end of last year.
But it also reveals how to make change at a time when that seems harder than ever.
Progress is possible when people, organizations, and governments unite around shared goals. The road ahead requires more collaboration, creativity, and resolve than ever before. But the choice is clear: we must open the door to a future for everyone.
By the Numbers
Thanks to our partners, over the past year The Rockefeller Foundation helped unlock good jobs, good health, good food, reliable
electricity, and a chance to thrive in the face of climate change’s effects, for people around the world.
Here’s a snapshot of our impact in 2024, from a subset of the Foundation’s grantmaking and program-related investment portfolio:
- 4.5Million
people engaged by Foundation grantees or partners to spur downstream impacts for end-users/targeted beneficiaries
- 527.3Million
people from target beneficiary communities accessing or using a product or service
- 1Million
people experiencing a clear, measurable outcome or impact from an intervention
- 83Million
# t/CO2e* avoided, reduced, or sequestered
- 15.6Million
hectares affected by water, land and/or biodiversity conservation, protection and/or restoration
- $2.8Million
directly mobilized $ into Foundation-created or -supported organizations, funds or solutions
- $762Million
indirectly mobilized into a concept or model that the Foundation piloted, demonstrated, and/or helped to scale
This impact report is about more than demonstrating the results of our programs, although you’ll find plenty of that. It’s really about how to make change at a time when that seems harder than ever.
Dr. Rajiv J. ShahPresidentThe Rockefeller Foundation
What We Are Learning
- Learn first, join second, build last. Weigh the benefits of control versus the risks of duplicating existing work or alienating partners.
- Agreement isn’t essential, embracing candor and conflict is. Successful cross-sector partnerships require accepting disagreement and moments when coalition’s interests don’t always align with the Foundation’s.
- Stand behind — don’t stand in for — leaders. In a turbulent world, avoid micromanaging partnerships and instead allow strong leaders to emerge.
- Bridging between data holders and data users is getting harder. Limited data limits partners’ ability or willingness to engage.
- Polarization opens doors too. Honest brokering may be getting harder, but some unlikely partnerships are becoming more likely.
Read the First Chapter
Abundant energy is out of reach for billions of people. Our mission is clear: to ensure everyone on the planet can access the power needed to unlock a brighter future.