Our approach
Addressing the disadvantage gap in UK education requires a holistic approach to dismantle barriers to education, both within and outside of school.
Collectively, the organizations we are partnering with support and deliver interventions working across all stages of a child’s education journey, from cradle to career.
Our UK Education Collective Portfolio has three core areas of focus:
- Early Childhood Development
- Foundational Skills (literacy and numeracy)
- Transitions between educational stages and beyond into employment
We also look to address a number of cross-cutting themes: mental health and well-being, developing ‘essential’ skills and building a fairer and more inclusive education system.
And we know that place matters. Sustainable change requires social impact organizations to contextualize their work, working in partnership with and learning from the communities they are looking to support. Place also matters to philanthropists who often have deep connections to the communities of which they are a part.
How we ensure impact
ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Optimus Foundation partners are carefully identified and assessed against a global framework for evaluation and impact. Our UK Program Directors work closely with partner organizations on a long-term basis to help scale their impact. Funding is transferred periodically under structured grant agreements to minimize administrative burdens for our partners and ensure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for all donations are clearly agreed. Partnerships are actively managed against the agreed KPIs, with on-going monitoring and evaluation, and periodic reporting. Wherever appropriate we look to provide outcomes-based, unrestricted funding to trusted partners at an organizational level. We leverage the full spectrum of ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ resource in support of our partners, providing skills-based volunteering support, access to ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ premises for events, and connections to our networks.