$20 Million Gifts Launch Crisis Group Capital Fundraising Campaign

New York The International Crisis Group launches today in New York its new 50-million-dollar Securing the Future capital fundraising campaign.

The campaign is off to a flying start with the announcement today - at a lunch honouring Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Finnish diplomat and former President Martti Ahtisaari - of four initial grants of $5 million each from:

• The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just and peaceful world (www.macfound.org), and through its President Jonathan Fanton encouraged Crisis Group to launch this campaign;
   
• George Soros, foundation Trustee and long-time core supporter of Crisis Group, Chairman of the Open Society Institute, writer and philosopher, and one of the world’s top philanthropists;
   
• Frank Giustra, Canadian global business leader, leading international philanthropist and Crisis Group Trustee; and
   
• The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, the large private philanthropic foundation founded by the Ukrainian investor and Crisis Group Trustee Victor Pinchuk.

Gareth Evans, Crisis Group’s President and CEO, said,

“We are enormously grateful to our four cornerstone donors for the example they have set. They understand the major role Crisis Group is playing in securing the future of all those at risk from the horror and misery of deadly conflict. And they are helping us secure the organisation’s long-term future while greatly increasing our capacity to respond quickly and flexibly to emergencies.”

Founded in 1995, the International Crisis Group rings alarm bells, supports peace negotiations, and gives detailed advice to governments, the UN and major regional and international organisations on how to prevent war and make sustainable peace. With some 140 staff working throughout the world in over 60 areas of actual or potential conflict and mass atrocity crimes, Crisis Group is recognised as the world-leader in its field.

The $50 million target is around three times the organisation’s present annual operating budget, and funds raised will be divided between an endowment fund, designed to stabilise the base, generate a significant income flow, and reduce annual dependence on government and other major individual donors, and a more liquid reserve fund which will enable not only year-to-year continuity to be maintained but add a new flexibility to our capacity to respond strongly to new security crises as they arise.

In an extraordinary further commitment, George Soros has agreed to manage through his hedge fund Crisis Group’s new endowment fund, and to personally guarantee against any loss of principal up to an aggregate $50 million.

“Contribution to Crisis Group’s Securing the Future Fund will help bring the immeasurable dividends of peace and security, to innumerable men, women and children across the globe”, said Evans.