The Hunter Foundation (“THF”) is a venture philanthropy that invests in enterprise and educational initiatives aimed largely at children.
Our overarching aim is to help support the development of a more enterprising and ultimately entrepreneurial society in Scotland by funding projects of national importance in this arena. THF also focuses investment towards sustainable, holistic development programmes in Africa partnered with Comic Relief.
As in private equity, THF takes a proactive role in all of the investments it makes in order to ensure maximum impact from the funding provided.
In general THF only funds projects capable of national implementation and that will, or are likely to make a major contribution to the national economic and social well-being of Scotland. In Africa our aim is to help support and develop self-sustaining communities utilising education as a major component of our interventions.
Since its formation in 1998 The Hunter Foundation has invested, or committed to invest, in excess of £35m into major enterprise and educational programmes including the Schools Enterprise Programme, The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, The Campbell Hunter Educational Wing at Kelvingrove Gallery and ‘Determined to Succeed’ where THF is investing £2m on a matched basis (£4m total) with the Scottish Executive to fund a number of new programmes across Scotland.
In addition to these financial commitments THF has at its disposal a further £120m available for investment. Unlike most philanthropies THF retains its funds within the private equity business, West Coast Capital drawing down funds as and when required.
Our philosophy in Scotland is to invest in a number of coherent, integrated programmes to provide continuity in enterprise education and also to inform policy change and adoption. In Scotland virtually all of our investments are co-investments with government whereby we provide ‘risk capital’ on a 50/50 basis and once we prove, through independent research and impact evaluation, an initiative is making a marked difference the government then wholly funds these programmes thereafter.
THF sources its investments through a process of proactive global research, adapting workable programmes to the local circumstance of Scotland, and on occasion designing and developing our own programmes of intervention…Equally we have sourced programmes of a local nature and scaled them up to become national programmes.
In Africa we are working in partnership with Comic Relief, the Band Aid Trust and a number of locally based charities.
Over and above direct investment THF is supporting one major lobbying exercise by providing £1m support to the Make Poverty History (http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/) campaign and is also supporting Live8 (http://www.live8live.com/) and The Long Walk to Justice.
