The foundation trying to change how we invest in education

In a shifting global aid landscape, where education is often among the first sectors to see cuts, the Jacobs Foundation is charting a different course. Now at the midway point of its 10-year Strategy 2030, the foundation is taking stock — refining its model, reaffirming its core principles, and making strategic adjustments to deepen impact. Launched in late 2020, the 500 million Swiss francs ($623.7 million) strategy marks a shift away from one-off project grants toward long-term, locally led partnerships designed to influence how national education systems work. In a recent Devex Pro Funding live conversation, co-CEO Fabio Segura explained how the foundation is putting this vision into practice — and what that means for potential partners. Funding strategy: No quick wins Rather than issuing direct grants to individual organizations, the foundation has developed a model centered on pooled funding mechanisms. These multistakeholder partnerships are supported through pooled funding mechanisms that the foundation helps design and coordinate. Each typically brings together the ministry of education in the focus country, alongside private sector players (such as cocoa processing companies in West Africa), other philanthropies, civil society stakeholders, and research institutions. Depending on the context, these groups may contribute funding, implement programming, or co-develop priorities. Segura emphasized that the goal is not to fund short-term outputs, but to enable governments and communities to lead long-term, evidence-driven reforms. The foundation brings capital, research, and strategic guidance, but the local ecosystem drives the process. Ministries often lead implementation, while nonstate players are selected based on their ability to scale interventions, measure results, and adapt based on emerging data. So far, the foundation’s work has been mostly in four flagship countries — Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Colombia, and its home nation of Switzerland. Following a midstrategy review, the foundation restructured its internal teams and created new roles to better connect work across countries and focus more deliberately on long-term change. What is a ‘learning ecosystem’? One of the foundation’s flagship concepts — learning ecosystems — can sound like jargon, but the idea behind it is straightforward: meaningful change in education doesn’t happen in isolation. Improving how children learn requires coordination across multiple groups — from policymakers to educators to researchers — all working together, grounded in data and local realities. To support that collaboration, the foundation has established country-based teams known as Education Evidence Labs, or EdLabs. These teams act as bridges between research and real-world decision-making. They help collect and synthesize evidence relevant to each national context, adapt useful research from other settings, and support governments in applying those insights to policy and broader education reforms. Importantly, these labs don’t work in isolation. A key part of the foundation’s approach is to foster cross-country learning — making sure that experiences in its flagship countries inform one another. While solutions aren’t simply copied from one place to another, the foundation sees common ground in challenges such as how to use evidence effectively or how to improve learning in underserved areas — challenges that transcend geography. The path to partnership For NGOs, education providers, and research institutions looking to partner with the Jacobs Foundation, the process is less about submitting a proposal and more about shared vision and flexibility. The foundation typically supports multiyear initiatives, co-created with local partners. It works through what Segura described as “communities of excellence” or “communities of change” — forums where government agencies, civil society, and other stakeholders come together to identify local priorities and decide which organizations are best placed to address them. These conversations guide how pooled funds are distributed. What the foundation values most in partners is a willingness to adapt, a commitment to learning from evidence, and openness about what is or isn’t working. It’s worth noting that while the foundation’s main investment footprint remains in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Colombia, and Switzerland, it is open to working in other geographies when there’s strong potential for learning or global relevance. For example, it is supporting digital learning for displaced children in Ukraine through a partnership with War Child. New tools for education: finance, data, and scale In the second half of its strategy, the Jacobs Foundation is also exploring new ways to scale impact beyond its four core countries. One major area of growth is education finance. The foundation is working with the International Finance Facility for Education, or IFFEd, to unlock larger amounts of public financing for reforms. This includes using philanthropic guarantees — a relatively new approach that allows donor funds to stretch further by de-risking public education investments. As Segura explained, this partnership enables the foundation to influence education reforms in a much wider range of countries — it “will allow us to be active in any country where multilateral development banks [are active] right now,” Segura said, pointing to new collaborations with the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Another initiative, called Levante, is being developed in partnership with Stanford University to build what Segura described as “the largest data set ever on how children learn” — both across countries and over time within a child’s own life. This open data set is already informing policy in Jacobs Foundation focus countries and is designed to be a global public good: Researchers around the world will be able to contribute to it and benefit from it, provided the data meets quality standards. Segura also previewed a forthcoming artificial intelligence-enabled global evidence platform for education. He compared it to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, in climate science — a trusted hub that can centralize high-quality research and help governments and practitioners translate evidence into better decisions for learning systems. Why co-leadership matters One distinctive feature of the Jacobs Foundation is its co-leadership model. Segura shares the role of CEO with Simon Sommer — an approach that remains rare in philanthropy. “​​When you’re co-leading an organization, you allow yourself to be a lot more human,” Segura said. The model allows them to bring different strengths to the table — Segura on partnerships and finance; Sommer on evidence and research — while also providing continuity and shared accountability. Final message: From competition to coalition Segura closed the conversation with a message of collaboration over competition. In a moment of overlapping crises and tighter budgets, he argued that the sector has a chance — and a responsibility — to rethink what success looks like. That means moving away from siloed programs and toward solutions built through evidence, shared accountability, and mutual trust. Want more briefings like this? Let us know — and stay tuned for upcoming live conversations here.