Sustaining the planet’s biodiversity

The Hempel Foundation strives to make a difference by sustaining biodiversity and empowering children to learn. We do so within the ambitions and principles of the Sustainable Development Goals and in partnership with leading development organisations and technical experts.

We aspire to be a capable and leading development partner that explores innovative partnerships and alliances. It is our ambition to be a preferred foundation partner for collaboration within our thematic focus areas of education and biodiversity.

All our partnerships are guided by our Biodiversity Strategy or Education Strategy.

The Hempel Foundation identifies new partners based on sector analyses in target geographies defined by our Education and Biodiversity Strategies. We do not accept unsolicited proposals. The organisations we work with range from global INGOs to large or medium size NGOs based in our priority regions and countries. We work with organisations that have high ethical standards and have the potential and capacity for delivering at a larger scale. 

We work in partnerships based on mutual trust, flexibility and a common commitment towards delivering high quality projects. We proactively identify partners and engage ourselves in project design as well as monitoring of implementation and evaluation to ensure high quality in all parts of the project cycle.

The Hempel Foundation Board is the decision-making body responsible for approval of new partnership projects. The Hempel Foundation secretariat ensures partnership projects’ alignment with the Foundation’s strategic frameworks and adequate technical expertise and operational capacity of partners.

Approval of new partnership projects is based on submission of a concept note, which meets the Foundation’s criteria.

In parallel with the preparation of the concept note, we carry out a comprehensive due diligence and screening to make sure partner organisations meet the Hempel Foundation standards. Depending on the type of partner, the due diligence procedure will include: Review of registration documents and annual reports; Review of accounts to screen for financial or operational misconduct; Review of references to existing partners submitted by prospect partner; and Vetting against the UN Sanctions List. And in some cases a full partner review by international recognized consultant with in-country presence.

The contractual foundation of the partnership project is the Partnership Agreement.

The Partnership Agreement defines the purpose and background of the partnership and sets out conditions including approval of the donation, criteria for payment of the donation, and general obligations of the Partner and the Hempel Foundation. Contractual obligations related to the Situation Analysis, the Start-up Workshop and the Project Description is found here, as well as criteria for project governance including the establishment of a Project Steering Committee.

The Partnership Agreement outlines criteria for financial management of the donation and includes the annex “Hempel Foundation Budgeting and Eligibility of Cost Standard”. It includes key requirements for budgeting including the Hempel Foundation maximum indirect cost rate of 15%. 

It also sets principles for partnership communication and outlines the criteria for the Communications Plan.

Per December 2021, the Partnership Agreement includes two mandatory annexes

• The Hempel Foundation Safeguarding Standard
• The Hempel Foundation Budgeting and Eligibility of Cost Standard

We believe in communicating to contribute to the positive impact that the Hempel Foundation works for. We use communication to spark interest, engagement and ultimately attract additional resources to our common cause. And therefore we invite and expect our partners to partake in this aspect of our partnerships rooted in our joint communications plan.

In 2021, the Hempel Foundation introduced a new Safeguarding Standard. It builds on international standards and best practice and on the Hempel Foundations respect for the safety, wellbeing and rights of the communities we seek to serve. The Safeguarding Standard applies to all Hempel Foundation staff and partners. It applies consistently across all our partnerships, including partners’ staff, consultants and volunteers, as well as sub-implementing partners.

The standard requires partners to proactively identify and prevent all risks of harm, exploitation and abuse and having mature, accountable and transparent systems for response and reporting when risks materialise.

In 2021, the Hempel Foundation introduced a new Whistleblower arrangement. The purpose of the Arrangement is to ensure that persons with knowledge or reasonable suspicion of a beneficiary and/or other participants in the project having misused a grant from the Hempel Foundation are able to swiftly, confidentially and outside the ordinary communication channels report it to an independent and autonomous unit.

After the approval of the Project Description, the Partner and the Hempel Foundation will form a Project Steering Committee to provide overall guidance, strategic oversight and monitoring of the Project. Members of the Steering Committee will be representatives from the Partner, the Hempel Foundation, and key stakeholders such as government representatives and implementing partners.

The Steering Committee will convene twice a year during the implementation phase. 

We place strong emphasis on monitoring and evaluation of all Hempel Foundation funded activities. Partnership collaboration should be based on a mutual recognition of the importance of monitoring and evaluation and on capturing lessons learned. Through the Annual Progress Reports and bi-annual Steering Committee Meetings, partners provide routine monitoring data in line with the monitoring, evaluation and learning plan throughout the duration of the project. This may include baseline, midterm and endline data, and at times involve external consultant support for conducting data collection and quality assessment. In addition, we require final project evaluation by external evaluator. The core aim is to ensure ongoing improvement of the project for maximum impact and to facilitate learning beyond the project.