Resilience to face the future’s challenges

Annual Review 2021 UBS Optimus Foundation

Adapting for impact

2021 was the year UBS defined our purpose—reimagining the power of investing while connecting people for a better world.

This purpose statement, encompassing everything UBS stands for and aims to achieve in the future, builds on the central ethos of Optimus over the past 20 years.  Faced with the challenges of an ongoing global pandemic, you helped us prove that those connections are what promote resiliency and create the most tangible impact.

Our core health partners demonstrated exceptional resilience in the face of the ongoing pandemic, ensuring continued access to healthcare for pregnant women and children in particular.

How did our partners respond and adjust during the pandemic? The details of our health portfolio are included in this report.

Adapting to meet the changing needs brought on by a pandemic did not mean that the remainder of our work went to the wayside. 2021 also saw significant impact from our climate portfolio. We launched the Climate Collective—UBS philanthropists joining to act on carbon sequestration in SE Asia. Connecting experts and philanthropists in order to maximize impact is what drives our work in the three Collectives: Accelerate, Climate, and Transform, each of which are detailed in this report.

Other key launches include a smallholder agricultural program with Nuru International in Northern Nigeria, and the Restoring the Med program in partnership with Blue Marine Foundation, which focuses on sustainable fisheries, community ecotourism and environmental education in the Greek Islands. Further highlights of our climate portfolio are featured in this report.

Ending 2020, I could not have imagined what you and the UBS Optimus Foundation would achieve in 2021. There still remains a great deal of work to be done, as, at the time of writing this message, the world is yet again faced with a humanitarian crisis of outsized proportion. 

I’m reassured to know that together with your ongoing support, our experts, programs, and partners are prepared to adapt in the face of any challenge and continue delivering outstanding results.

Please accept our sincere gratitude on behalf of all who benefit from your generosity.

– Suni Harford, President Asset Management, Group Executive Board Lead for Sustainability and Impact at UBS and Phyllis Kurlander Costanza, CEO Optimus Foundation


Suni Harford

Suni Harford

Phyllis Costanza

Phyllis Costanza

Resiliency in the face of unforeseen challenges:

Thanks to the generous support of our donors, 2021 saw The Optimus Foundation able to greatly increase the impact of our programs. Faced with unprecedented needs, our donors helped us exceed our fundraising goals, reaching USD 161.45m.

At a glance

4.6m 

people reached (of which 2.7m children)

329

programs managed

161.45

million USD raised

61

countries in which grants were deployed

120 000

professionals reached

108

million USD in grants approved*

12

offices globally

90 

philanthropy experts globally

20

years of experience


Collective Philanthropy

UBS believes that philanthropists are most impactful when working together as drivers of change. We are committed to harnessing the power of collective partnerships with philanthropists, organizations and governments. With this in mind, we have formed UBS Collectives, bringing these powerful cohorts together.

Accelerate Collective (Social finance)

The Accelerate collective harnesses the tools of social finance to deliver greater health and education outcomes for vulnerable communities in West Africa and South East Asia. Along with fellow philanthropists, best-in-class non-profit organizations and experts, members drive collective impact by using innovative financing models to unlock new and much needed sources of funding to improve health and education outcomes for disadvantaged children.

Climate Collective

We’re the first generation to experience the impact of climate change, and the last with an opportunity to do something about it. The Climate Collective supports communities in South East Asia and beyond in developing climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, contributing to emissions reductions and improving biodiversity.

Transform Collective (Child Protection)

The best place for children to grow up is in a family; all research points to this. Rather than maintaining a broken institutional system, the Transform Collective drives efforts towards systemic change, to keep children in families. It aims to support family-based care as an alternative to institutional care (orphanages etc.) and reform policy and practices to protect vulnerable children and strengthen families.


UBS Optimus Foundation Portfolios

The UBS Optimus Foundation pioneers innovative ways to tackle some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems. A leader in social finance, we test and prove new tools in support of education, health, the environment, and child protection, like outcomes-based finance and blended finance. We apply an investment-based philosophy and specialize in scalable, evidence-based approaches.


Climate portfolio highlights

Atlantic Agroforestry

In Sao Paulo state, Brazil, Preta Terra launched their innovative Atlantic Agroforestry program, working with 35 smallholder farmer families to help the transition to climate smart regenerative agroforestry. The team produced tailored development plans for each farm- using GIS data and drone imagery they established a baseline and identified the most effective land use strategies across 90 hectares of previously degraded farmland. Planting began in the rains of 2021 when thousands of tree seedlings were bought and distributed, and each farm started its transformation to an ecologically positive agroforestry system providing economic benefits alongside carbon storage to mitigate the climate crisis.

AfriScout

This is an innovative app delivering up to date satellite imagery to pastoralists living in remote rangelands across East Africa. Through 2021 with UBS Optimus support Afriscout mapped 9 new regions in Ethiopia, bringing 50,210km2 of grazing grounds online and covering a population of 554,740. With a total of 6,825 new downloads in 2021, bringing the total to 21,920, the app brought essential information to an estimated 47,775 new pastoralist households, helping them find good quality grazing for their livestock. Well managed grazing provides not only food security and income support for these communities but also enhances climate mitigation through improved rangeland management which allows degraded land to regenerate, supporting biomass regrowth and resulting carbon sequestration.

Ascension Island

Following the creation of the Ascension Island Marine Protected Area (MPA), in 2021 UBS Optimus was able to support Blue Marine Foundation in purchase of an environmental DNA sequencer, a tool for managing and monitoring the MPA. eDNA is emerging as the preeminent tool for the early detection of invasive non-native species, identified as one of the main threats to the Ascension MPA and shallow-water ecosystems more widely. The technique uses the free DNA molecules in the water to detect the presence of a species long before they become obvious in visual surveys. Finding invasive species as soon as they arrive is vital to successful eradication, as there is usually only a narrow window before they become established. Knowing what species are present in the MPA is also important for monitoring how well the area is being managed to protect biodiversity.

(c) Roshni Lodhia

The Africa Forest Carbon Catalyst

Implemented by The Nature Conservancy, this has provided tailored incubation, technical assistance, grant funding and operational support to projects and enterprises across Africa. It includes project design for the Kafue-Zambezi REDD+ project in Zambia, which now has a target of 2.5 million hectares generating carbon credits for local communities by 2025. The team completed prefeasibility assessments for three new partnerships, identifying potential for a further 10 million hectares of protected forests and mangroves across Angola, Zambia, and Mozambique.

Investing in Knowledge

IUCN's Blue Natural Capital Financing Facility has identified and funded seven best practice sustainable coastal enterprises and with the support of UBS Optimus Investing in Knowledge program has produced blueprints to enable replication and scaling of these successful business models, which allow for community development alongside coastal conservation and restoration. The knowledge and innovation from these ground-breaking businesses has formed the basis for a successful podcast series 'Investing For Ocean Impact' which had had around 1500 listens and led to over 1214 downloads of the blueprints.

Pack 4 Good

In partnership with Canopy Planet, this is a supply chain intervention to protect forests through large-scale, high-profile advocacy and product certification campaign. Canopy continued to build Pack4Good's momentum with brands and producers in key sectors and regions around the world with 160 new brands developing Pack4Good policies, including the world's largest luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH, and other major global packaging consumers in the fashion/retail, beauty and personal care, beverage, and e-commerce sectors. All Pack 4 Good brand partners have identified, or are in the process of identifying, their packaging supply chain and starting to engage key producers. Specifically, four brands have engaged one of their suppliers on their forest sourcing after Canopy learned that this supplier was sourcing from A&E Forests.


Health Portfolio Highlights

External evaluation

We refined our health portfolio strategy to focus on using flexible grant and investment capital to help scale quality primary healthcare that improves the health of the world’s most vulnerable children. An external evaluation of the health portfolio found evidence of impact in terms of availability and quality of care and scaling progress. It also recommended a narrowed focus and more emphasis on social finance going forward, which is UBS-OF’s comparative advantage.

Scaling success

Several frontline health partners demonstrated strong scaling progress—Healthy Learners and Integrate Health expanded operations to new areas of Zambia and Togo respectively, and Muso launched operations in a new country, Cote D’Ivoire. Integrate Health also supported the government of Togo to design a package of free maternal and new-born healthcare modelled on Integrate Health’s approach.

Childhood cancer win

The Ghanaian government announced that the National Health Insurance Scheme would provide coverage for diagnosis and treatment of the top four pediatric cancers in Ghana, a milestone for which UBS-OF partner World Child Cancer and others have advocated for years.

Treatment access

CHAI signed a further cancer access partnership agreement, bringing the total number of pediatric access agreements to four. To date 16 access products have been procured through the agreements, and 27 pediatric oncology drugs are included.

Safer surgery

The Jhpiego Ethiopia program demonstrated strong progress against key project metrics, including doubling the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist completeness and appropriate use of prophylactic antibiotics before/during surgical procedures from baseline, and reducing the surgical site infection rate from 7% to 5%. In 2021, 2021, Jhpiego also substantially supported the design, write up and publication of the national surgical and anesthesia care (SaLTS I) program evaluation report, that helped shape Ethiopia’s new national surgical care strategic plan (2021-25).

Picture of Health

UBS published this report in late 2021, this comprehensive guide to effective health philanthropy brings together the expertise of our global UBS Optimus Foundation team, global health experts, UBS-OF partners, philanthropists, and change-makers.

Find out how you can make a difference. Download your guide


Innovation & Success

USD 100 million investment in outcomes

UBS Optimus Foundation has launched a pioneering initiative with an outcomes specialist to invest USD 100 million in 15–20 SDG-aligned outcomes-based programs. It will work with governments and philanthropic donors to design and invest in projects supporting vulnerable children and adults in developing countries, focusing on areas such as education, health, employment, and the environment.

Investors will receive returns based on verified social and environmental impact, and the initiative will use an innovative blended finance structure with 20% of philanthropic first loss funding to unlock additional socially motivated private capital. This innovative approach enables investors to achieve impact at scale, while improving financial return and lowering risk.
 


Strategic Partnerships

In November 2021, UBS-OF signed the CLEF Partnership Agreement (Child Learning and Education Facility), joining a partnership with the Jacobs Foundation, 15 companies from the cocoa industry and the Government of Côte d’Ivoire. This is likely the broadest education Public Private Partnership (in scope and constituencies) ever to be forged at a single country level. We are convinced that CLEF will not only create real evidence-based opportunities for children to learn; it will also demonstrate a highly inspirational partnership and resourcing model for other industries, stakeholders, and countries to address issues in a systemic way. The partnership aims to mobilize CHF 110m. Jacobs and The Optimus Foundation have jointly pledged CHF 25m, to be equally matched by Industry partners, and the government will contribute with CHF 30m. Additional donors are expected to contribute jointly CHF 30m, amongst them the GPE, the Global Partnership for Education.


COVID-19 Recovery Fund

Our efforts in 2021 built on the success of the 2020 COVID-19 Response Fund. UBS partnered with Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, to raise funds for its COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) facility. UBS Optimus Foundation raised USD 2 million from clients for the Gavi COVAX facility which, with matching funds from UBS and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, supported 800,000 COVID-19 vaccinations for people in low- and middle-income countries.

    The extra 10% which was matched for other programs is supporting a multi-pronged approach to vaccine misinformation and hesitancy. This includes Project ECHO, which uses a tele-mentoring approach to diffuse skills and expertise to frontline healthcare workers in underserved areas, to encourage vaccination, address common questions and myths, and provide tailored vaccine information.


    About us

    Our unique network

    The UBS Optimus Foundation Network consists of the UBS Optimus Foundation in Switzerland, its branch in Hong Kong and the representative office in China, its sister organizations UBS Optimus Foundation Europe Deutschland, UBS Optimus Foundation UK and UBS Optimus Foundation Singapore, as well as a donation platform in the United States.

    We receive funds from UBS, its clients and employees. We give grants to program partners who are helping underprivileged or vulnerable children and youth around the world in the areas of health, education and child protection, as well as funds for emergency response. Additionally, we added environmental and climate philanthropy to our offering.

    Our Network is governed through individual Boards in Switzerland, the UK, Singapore and Germany. The Boards are made up of UBS employees and independent external members (except for the German Board, which comprises only UBS employees). Annually, a strategic meeting of representatives from each of these Boards is held in Zurich, Switzerland.

    To make sure we have the highest standards of transparency in terms of decision making, and in line with good governance practices, the Network has established a Network Management Committee.