Rabobank Foundation

Investment Partners will only invest in participants of the BiD Challenge. So join the BiD Challenge 2007!

The Rabobank has a long heritage in the small and medium-sized business community, particularly in the agricultural sector. Working together on a cooperative basis has created an institution that empowers customers to fulfill their financial ambitions. The Rabobank Group is guided by the precept of enabling individuals and businesses to participate fully and independently in economic activity.

The Rabobank is partner of the BiD-challenge because the business approach to development is the only solution. In this business approach we are convinced that the co-operative - an institution where the peoples collective strength is transformed into concrete means of helping themselves- can be of great help for the masses in the development process.

"4 billion people who have no access to finance; it is a challenge to serve mankind in this"

Support of the Rabobank Foundation to BiD Challenge entrepreneurs

Our assistance is based on a wide knowledge of agricultural savings and credit cooperatives. We like to support projects which can be sustainable after an initial period. The main aspects on which our selection of projects concentrates are the degree of co-operation within the local community (collaboration, involvement, commitment, empowerment, influence on policy making), sustainable development envisaged through institution building, and the sustainability of the project in terms of finance, technical know-how, organisation and management. There must be clear financial, organisational and social targets. The establishment of sustainable economic activities through member-organisations (cooperatives) have our special attention and we are particularly interested in supporting savings and credit cooperatives, in line with the history of our own organisation as a farmers cooperative bank.

Rabobank Foundation can offer:
• grants for small projects with a local or sub-regional outreach
• concessional loans in local currencies, in case of loan funds and productive investments of cooperatives
• in exceptional cases: technical assistance and advice for co-operative savings and credit programmes (limited to short term)

Any funds from our Foundation will be transferred directly to the project without the intervention of third parties.


Criteria for Funding

The initiative must be taken by the group itself. Relevant aspects are:
1. a well-defined description of the project and its objectives;
2. an administrative infrastructure and distribution of responsibilities (board, management, coordination);
3. the availability of technical and administrative resources for production purposes, inputs, transport, training, etc.;
4. an acceptable balance concerning the costs/profits ratio, in other words: is it possible to reserve from the returns by means of a fee, for example, so that a revolving fund system could be brought about for replacement purposes and/or expansion of the activities in the future;
5. realistic prospects from the marketing point of view;
6. the presence of an intermediary who is well known to us and who is acquainted with the objectives and procedures of our Foundation
7. a digital application is a must.
8. Recently we have restricted our area of operation to the countries mentioned below: Albania, Bangladesh, Brasil, Cambodia, Equador, Ethiopië, Philippines, Ghana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Cameroon, Kenia, Laos, Mexico, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia.

It is of eminent importance that the participants (and beneficiaries) have confidence in the plan and that a responsible coordinator is present. There should not be any interference of the government in the policies of the project.

Excluded from our funding are requests which have any of the following characteristics:
- state interference or political involvement;
- feasibility studies, orientation visits, etc.;
- relief and emergency aid;
- medical and health care projects (investments in buildings and medical equipment or (academic) research in this field);
- education and other social sectors, like drinkwater
- recurrent costs;
- purchase of buildings / construction of immovable assets
- means of transport

We believe that these are the main items with regard to the objectives of our Foundation. We hope that they will provide sufficient guidelines for you to draw up a project proposal within the terms mentioned above.