Working Principles

The Lindt Cocoa Foundation’s operations are based on a set of working principles and values with regards to activities, partners, governance, accountability and transparency.

Activities:

• We always seek broad support of other organizations, be it for approval of an activity, additional knowledge to be  considered, or financial match funding.
• Our activities are in line with national or - where a national strategy is not available - international strategies for  agricultural development, and we collaborate with local governments and authorities.
• We either scale up approaches where a proof of concept already exists, or invent new methods. We do not unnecessarily  duplicate efforts that have already been made by others.
• Exit strategies are planned from the beginning, and local ownership fostered in order to lower dependency and enhance  sustainable agricultural development in the long run.
• We invest as direct as possible. Administration/management costs are as high as necessary, and as low as possible.  We avoid intermediaries without additional value creation.
• We don’t assume what our target groups need, but base our activities on needs and resources / local knowledge  assessments.

Partners:

• Partners are carefully selected according to their core competencies, presence on the ground and future potential.  We also build our evaluation of potential partners on previous experience.
• Where possible and available, we work with grass-root organizations that were developed by the target groups themselves.

Governance:
As a non-profit organization, the Lindt Cocoa Foundation is tax-exempt. It therefore endeavors to use its funds as efficient and effective as possible to serve the public interest. The foundations’ expenditures are externally audited on a yearly basis. The foundation is supervised by the Swiss authorities.

Accountability and Transparency:

• Since we mainly shift responsibility for implementation to partners, we hold them accountable and require transparent  processes (e.g. regarding the use of funds, documentation of activities and responsibilities).
• Each project we support needs to measure progress along a set of key performance indicators.