Investment Opportunities for
Proven models that unlock co-investment, accelerate adoption, and embed change within national systems—driving compounding, system-level impact.
1. Education and Opportunity
CARE’s connected model for lifelong returns.
Education is one of the highest-return investments in development, with returns of up to $13 for every dollar invested. Yet these returns are almost never fully realized. Not because the solutions don’t work, but because the gains made at one stage are not being carried to the next.
Investment Focus
CARE addresses this gap by building a continuous system that links early childhood development, formal education, adolescent support, and economic opportunity into a single pathway designed to sustain and compound returns.
CARE’s differentiation is our ability to connect proven solutions into a continuous pathway, embedded within public systems, at a scale that few organizations can match. Operating in more than 100 countries with deep local partnerships, CARE builds the infrastructure through which gains compound and sustain over time.
Key Opportunities
Early childhood is where inequality first takes hold — and where returns are highest when addressed early. CARE integrates preschool access, nutrition, and caregiver engagement, so children enter school ready to learn and stay on track.
In Zambia, 100% of children in CARE-supported preschools transitioned into primary school, with over 80% meeting school-readiness benchmarks. Delivered through community-based systems, these models are both low-cost and scalable across fragile contexts.
For girls who have fallen out of school, CARE’s accelerated learning model provides a second entry point — compressing years of missed education into a pathway back to formal schooling or training.
The SOAR model achieves 88% transition rates into education, training, or employment and is delivered at approximately $300–500 per participant, making it a cost-effective mechanism for re-engaging adolescents at scale.
Adolescence is the highest-risk transition point, where girls are most likely to drop out permanently. CARE combines life skills, leadership, and education support to ensure girls remain engaged and able to progress.
In Somalia, CARE reached over 90,000 adolescents, and participation in the program delayed marriage by an average of 1.4 years, with girls marrying at 18.3 compared to 16.9 among non-participants.
CARE ensures that education translates into tangible economic outcomes by linking skills training to labor market demand, employer partnerships, and entrepreneurship pathways.
In Egypt, partnerships with government and private sector actors have trained thousands of youth, developed digital learning platforms, and connected employers directly to program graduates — strengthening the transition from education to employment at scale.
Reaching learners beyond the classroom: Mobile, radio, and blended learning programs have sustained education for 150,000+ learners in crisis and out-of-school settings — ensuring that learning continues even when schools are closed. In Egypt, CARE’s partnership with Microsoft has scaled this approach to reach 1.95 million youth through digital learning platforms.
Tracking whether learning is actually happening: Digital platforms allow teachers, schools, and ministries to see in real time whether students are learning — and adjust teaching and support immediately when they are not.
Connecting training directly to employment: In Egypt, CARE trained 30,000 youth in digital and job-relevant skills, developed 35 local-language courses, and connected 200 companies to graduates — resulting in 2,648 youth securing jobs within six months.
Lowering cost while improving outcomes: Pilot models suggest digital blended learning can reduce delivery costs by 30% while generating real-time learning data for ministries.
2. Women’s Economic Power
Growing women’s economic power from savings to entrepreneurship.
Fund one of the world’s largest women-led financial networks and empower women to earn, save, and invest.
Investment Focus
CARE expands and modernizes women-led financial systems—unlocking capital, digitizing access, and shifting markets to serve women at scale.
Key Opportunities
CARE’s Village Savings and Loan Associations reach more than 21 million women. With dedicated investment, this network can expand to 62 million women over five years.
Digitizing VSLAs will connect 10 million women to formal banking, reduce transaction costs by approximately 70%, and build credit histories that unlock loans and insurance.
The Rise Fund blends philanthropy and private capital to unlock $1 billion in commercial capital and $750 million in co-investment. Philanthropic investment reduces platform risk and attracts multiples of capital.
Seed funding unlocks loans for women-led businesses and pilots voice-enabled AI tools on basic phones, providing real-time enterprise and financial guidance.
3. Entrepreneurship and Resilience
Transforming food and water systems for families and farmers.
Strengthen water supply systems and help small-scale farmers—most of them women—feed their communities, earn income, and protect scarce resources.
Investment Focus
CARE scales climate-resilient agricultural models and sustainable water systems that increase incomes, protect resources, and strengthen local economies.
Key Opportunities
This proven model has reached 5.3 million producers across 41 countries, doubling productivity and incomes for women farmers. Investment will refine the model and pilot AI tools that provide farmers with real-time crop and market advice.
CARE supports safe water, sanitation, and irrigation systems that increase agricultural productivity and fuel long-term economic growth.
CARE connects small-scale producer cooperatives directly to premium buyers and regenerative supply chains. In Bangladesh, farmers doubled their incomes even five years after project completion.
4. Crisis Response
CARE’s integrated model for faster, more efficient delivery.
Crises are no longer discrete events. They last longer, overlap with other emergencies, and are increasingly predictable, driven by conflict, climate change, displacement, and economic instability.
Traditional humanitarian models were built for a different era, designed to respond to acute emergencies and wind down. Today, those systems must operate continuously, across multiple, concurrent crises, often in the same regions or countries. The solutions remain technically sound, but they are constrained at the systems level, where delays and fragmentation result in higher costs and reduced impact.
Investment Focus
CARE integrates rapid deployment, cash-based delivery, locally led response, anticipatory financing, and real-time data into a single model. Humanitarian programs now operate across 65 countries, reaching 21.6 million people through humanitarian programs each year.
CARE’s strength lies in how our capabilities work together. Cash assistance moves through digital infrastructure. Local partners carry delivery into communities CARE could not reach alone. Anticipatory financing puts capital in motion before peak need arrives. Multiple forms of assistance can be delivered simultaneously, through shared channels, informed by shared data.
Key Opportunities
CARE integrates surge capacity, pre-positioned resource supplies, and embedded country teams to initiate response within 72 hours of crisis onset. Because 97% of staff are based in the countries where we work, our response is immediate.
In Mozambique, this rapid response system meant CARE reached 7,700 people within one week of Cyclone Chido’s landfall, demonstrating the impact of rapid deployment systems.
Cash and vouchers are CARE’s primary response tools, deployed through digital and mobile payment systems. Last year, CARE distributed more than $85 million to 2.8 million people. Where needed, CARE uses VoiceID authentication for low-literacy populations, and stablecoin-based vouchers to compress costs and settlement times.
In Afghanistan, CARE partnered with private-sector fintech providers to deliver digital cash assistance in one of the world’s most operationally challenging environments, achieving a 99% success rate by working through existing mobile-money infrastructure rather than building parallel systems.
CARE convenes national networks of civil society, women-led organizations, and community-based groups capable of immediate response. These platforms now operate in 11 countries and the Caribbean.
CARE’s Humanitarian Partnership Platforms enable locally led response at scale, with coverage reaching up to 95–100% of national territory in countries such as the Philippines and Niger, and response timelines as fast as 48 hours after an emergency.
Acting before a shock reaches peak intensity is among the most underused levers in humanitarian response. Evidence suggests every $1 invested in anticipatory action generates $3 to $15 in avoided losses, yet less than 3% of humanitarian financing is currently allocated to early action.
CARE’s Humanitarian Surge Fund operationalizes this approach with rapid, flexible capital that consistently unlocks far larger institutional flows. The Fund has demonstrated a 27:1 leverage ratio: $4.3 million in early-stage funding has unlocked $120 million in follow-on resources globally.
The CARE PACKAGE® for Emergencies consolidates approximately 40 essential items — including shelter, water, cooking, hygiene, and energy — into a single unit to support a household for up to 30 days.
At approximately $250 per household, declining to $200 at scale, the package converts flexible philanthropic capital into immediate, visible support, while reducing fragmentation across multiple distribution channels. Pilot deployments achieved 36–72 hour delivery timelines when pre-positioned and approximately 96% participant satisfaction.
Crises produce interdependent health risks, and CARE designs programs that address these interconnected challenges. Nutrition and water and sanitation programs move through the same shared systems — cash, local partners, coordinated logistics — ensuring they function as a unified response rather than parallel services.