Most foundations organise around sectors. Sectors describe how institutions are built. They do not describe how problems actually behave — so TGIF organises around initiatives instead, and an initiative crosses whatever lines it has to cross to move the outcome.
The structural difference
The difference is not a naming exercise. It changes who sits on the council, where the money comes from, and what counts as finished. Switch between the two structures below.
The structure is complete, and the outcome still has nowhere to live.
The same five departments — now inputs to a single piece of work rather than five owners of none of it.
The framework
Three phases, and a record that has to be complete by the end of each one. The phases are not a timeline — an initiative can be designing one component while scaling another — but nothing moves forward with a gap in the record behind it.
An outcome is chosen first, and the initiative is drawn around it. The question is never “which department owns this?” — it is “what has to move, and what does moving it touch?”
The initiative gets its own advisory council and its own partners. Not a steering group borrowed from another programme — the practitioners this particular outcome requires.
Funding is assembled from the instruments that actually fit the work, and results are measured against what was agreed at design time. A deployment that leaves when the funding leaves was never an initiative — it was a pilot.
From challenge to measurable work
Six stages. The order matters: a council convened before the outcome is stated will optimise for the institutions in the room rather than the result.
Stated as an outcome rather than as a sector. A child locked out of a clinic is also locked out of a classroom, a job market and a food system — so the starting point is the child, not the clinic.
The outcome is traced across whatever institutional lines it runs through, and the disciplines it needs are named. This is where an initiative stops resembling a department and starts resembling the problem.
Each initiative carries its own advisory council — the practitioners who have to be in the room for that specific outcome, not a general-purpose board.
The organisations that will actually deliver: operators, institutions and networks with reach in the places the work has to happen.
Each initiative carries its own funding, drawn from the instruments that fit it — a climate initiative and a food security initiative do not raise money the same way.
Against the measures fixed at design time, and published as part of the initiative record so the next funder is reading the same terms as the last one.
The initiative record
Every initiative is documented the same way, so a funder comparing two of them is comparing like with like rather than reading two differently shaped brochures. Pick one to read its record.
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Interoperable records, decision support, and diagnostics that work in low-resource settings. The constraint is rarely the model. It is whether the data can move between the clinic, the lab, and the ministry at all.
Who is in the room
An initiative only works if the people who can actually change the outcome are all at the same table. These are the participants the model is built around.
Ministries, municipal governments, transit authorities and regulators. They carry the procurement route, the data rules and, often, the budget line.
Mandate and reachHospital networks, diagnostic labs and health information exchanges — the organisations a record actually has to move between.
Delivery and evidenceGlobal health funders, climate finance, development finance, universal service funds and blended instruments. Each initiative raises against the sources that fit it.
CapitalUniversities, vocational institutes and alumni networks — the pipeline for the people who will run the systems after they are installed.
Method and peopleInfrastructure providers and technology firms, sometimes contributing in kind. Interoperability, hosting and security are decided here.
SystemsDiaspora business leaders, chambers of commerce, regional institutions and returnee entrepreneurs, routed back into regional development they hold a stake in.
Capital and expertiseWork the model with us
The model has three doors. Bring an outcome nobody currently owns, join the council of an initiative already running, or partner on delivery. Each route asks different questions, so the intake asks you which one first.
