A new partnership with the Education Outcomes Fund
30th June 2021
Apax The Apax Foundation’s large grants programme supports social mobility and social entrepreneurship organisations that have attracted personal commitments and actThe Apax Foundation’s large grants programme supports social mobility and social entrepreneurship organisations that have attracted personal commitments and active involvement from the Apax team.
The Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) is a joint initiative of the Education Commission and the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, who created EOF to improve learning outcomes for more than 10 million children and youth around the world and drive sustained system change.
EOF aims to pool $1 billion in aid and philanthropic funds, to support governments to pay for results in education and youth employment over the next decade. It partners with governments to strengthen education systems, harness the capacity and capability of non-state actors, improve the effectiveness of expenditure and help deliver on the promise of quality education for all.
The fund supports improvements in quality in three focus areas: early childhood education; basic education; and skills for work. It seeks to ensure that no child is left behind, with a special focus on under-served populations, including the hardest to reach rural populations, girls, children with disabilities, and refugees.
EOF is hosted as an independent trust fund at UNICEF but it retains full operational and programmatic independence, with UNICEF providing procurement, legal, fund management and administrative support. This partnership helps to establish outcomes financing as one of the routes to address the global learning crisis, by aligning incentives around outcomes, fostering innovation and flexibility in service delivery, and attracting new sources of capital to promote better learning outcomes for young people.
Apax Foundation Chairman, Sir Ronald Cohen, is a member of the Executive Committee and the High-Level Steering Group, and Thomas Crewe is Senior Advisor to the Executive Committee.
EOF plans to raise c $170m of total outcomes and programme funding and achieve financial sustainability for its core programme delivery work by the end of 2023 through funding commitments from partners including host governments, multilateral development institutions, bilateral partnerships, foundations, and philanthropists.
EOF’s focus on quality education and workforce skills aligns closely with the Apax Foundation’s focus on social mobility, and the Apax Foundation has joined the core sponsors group in providing a multi-year grant towards EOF’s operational expenses to fund the organisation until it reaches critical mass for financial sustainability.
Apax Foundation
The Apax Foundation is the channel for Apax’s charitable giving worldwide. It focuses on social mobility in under-served communities and has developed active partnerships with charities in countries where our team are based. The Apax Foundation aims to make a meaningful difference in the communities where we work and live, and supports firm-wide volunteering initiatives as well as the personal philanthropic activities of the Apax team globally.