In Liberia, the difficulty was not a shortage of people trying to help. After the civil war, more than forty NGO-led community-health-worker programmes operated in fragments. According to LGT Venture Philanthropy’s CEO, Oliver Karius, the eventual alternative was remarkably prosaic: one curriculum, one supply chain, one data system, one supervisory structure and one approach to paying workers. Last Mile Health worked with government ministries and other NGOs to make that national programme possible.
- Funds locally rooted organisations in health, education and conservation.
- Pairs flexible core grants with management support and professional fellows.
- Usually stays five to ten years; works chiefly in Africa and India.
LGT VP was an early backer of Last Mile Health. Karius reports that care costs fell from $16 to $8 per person between 2014 and 2024. That comparison belongs to the healthcare programme, rather than the foundation’s accounts. Still, it suggests an intriguing proposition: sometimes the useful innovation is getting existing institutions to work together.
The less glamorous investment
Established in 2007, LGT Venture Philanthropy is an independent charitable foundation with a banking-family pedigree. Prince Max von und zu Liechtenstein brought a private-equity background to its development. The original observation was that effective local solutions already existed; the organisations delivering them often lacked the resources, skills and connections to grow.
There is a particular sort of generosity involved in paying for financial management. Nobody cuts a ribbon over a better accounting process. Yet governance, fundraising and strategy determine whether an organisation can absorb its next grant without coming apart. LGT VP makes those functions part of the investment.
A delivery-system comparison described by Oliver Karius. It does not isolate LGT VP’s contribution.
Its operating method combines due diligence, flexible multi-year core funding, business expertise and access to networks. The average engagement lasts five to ten years. Exit arrangements are discussed before the engagement begins. The money buys room to plan; the relationship provides somewhere to take difficult decisions.
Who gets the help?
The direct users are partner organisations, rather than conventional paying customers. The 2025 report lists 33 partners: sixteen in Africa, thirteen in India and four with multi-regional or global work. Their beneficiaries include families needing healthcare, children missing educational opportunities and communities whose livelihoods depend on functioning ecosystems.
The report’s 51.6 million figure measures people gaining improved access to quality services through those partners in 2025. It is a measure of partner reach. Treating every one of those lives as an outcome caused by a Swiss foundation would give the cheque writer rather too much credit.
Its position in the market follows from that distinction. Direct giving, conventional foundations and collaborative funders such as Co-Impact offer other routes into similar problems. LGT VP’s combination is long commitments, local teams and organisational support. Lightrock, the related impact-investing platform, pursues financial returns alongside impact. LGT VP’s current emphasis is principally grants.
Seventeen years, then a goodbye
Consider mothers2mothers. Its Mentor Mothers are women living with HIV, trained and employed to help other women navigate care. LGT VP began supporting the organisation in 2008. During the partnership, mothers2mothers expanded from two countries to thirteen, and fourteen LGT fellows supported functions including strategy, partnerships and operations.
The point of the core funding was to strengthen the organisation behind the service. Eventually, the relationship acquired an ending. The partners agreed on graduation in September 2024, with formal offboarding in December 2025.
Then the funding environment changed. Aid disruption in early 2025 put pressure on mothers2mothers, and LGT VP supplied emergency support while helping leadership review its strategy. A planned exit still required judgment. Across the broader portfolio, the 2025 report describes bridge funding for partners affected by USAID’s withdrawal. Long-term trust made quick conversations possible.
A professional with an expiry date
The fellowship turns management help into a twelve-month, full-time assignment. Fellows work inside host organisations, improving systems, sharing expertise and coaching local teams. The programme explicitly includes succession planning: a visiting professional should leave capabilities behind. Permanent staff must be able to use what was built.
The 2025 report records 225 fellows placed since the programme began; 43 percent remained with their host afterwards. For professionals, it is a practical route into impact work. For organisations, the useful question is precise: which missing capability can this person build, and who will own it next year?
Learning to take its own medicine
LGT VP also asks partners to assess the funder. Independent grantee-perception feedback led it to review and streamline reporting, according to its 2025 report. That is a small administrative change with a substantial implication: accountability should improve a service, rather than consume the time available to deliver it.
Its April 2026 study with Spring Impact and Instiglio examines another awkward constraint. Strong evidence and a successful pilot do not settle government adoption. Public officials must consider budgets, political priorities, delivery capacity and institutional risk. The study draws on twelve cases and more than thirty interviews. An intervention must fit the system expected to carry it.
Give together, plan the handover
The newer collectives make collaboration tangible. SIRA brings funders, implementers and governments together around early childhood development in India, with an ambition to catalyse $20 million. Ahadi, co-founded with Summa Foundation and the Sinding Family Office, supports community-led conservation in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Those ambitions are commitments to pursue, rather than completed results.
Donors can make regular or one-off gifts, join multi-year funder circles or leave a legacy. Organisations should understand the access rule: LGT VP does not consider unsolicited funding proposals. Its partnerships are sourced through its teams and networks.
“If we’re doing this well, we make ourselves redundant - because the problem gets solved.”Oliver Karius, December 2025
What can another funder copy? Finance core functions, agree on the handover and ask partners what creates friction. The approach needs capable local organisations, patient capital and public counterparts able to sustain delivery. Where those conditions are missing, a larger grant cannot supply them by itself. Staying helps when there is something durable to build.