We emphasize active participation and engagement of member foundations guided by six shared operational values that define how we will work together as an alliance and with other partners and allies:
- Be principles-based and attend to the whole: We believe in the urgency of transforming global food systems, and in the power of working together and with others to effect positive change. Our work is guided by a set of seven shared principles: renewability, resilience, equity, diversity, healthfulness, inclusion, and interconnectedness. These principles shape our vision of the future of food, express our values, and encompass the change we want to make.
- Collaborate with all stakeholders: We nurture deep and trusting relationships as the basis for long-term, creative, and productive collaborations, within the Global Alliance and with a broad range of diverse system actors across sectors and scales to advance collective aspirations for systems change.
- Respect and value difference: We respect diverse institutional and individual perspectives, opinions, outlooks, and lived experiences, acknowledging issues of power and approaching relationships with humility, openness, honesty, and a spirit of possibility.
- Focus on the best and highest role: We aim to be a strategic alliance by being needs-based, focused, responsive, and solutions-oriented in order to influence landscape-level shifts through achievable goals across timescales suited to our specific role and strengths as an alliance of philanthropic foundations.
- Remain relevant: Working at the global level, we value understanding the context in which we operate, being relevant across the different geographies and scales where our member foundations work, and connecting the significance of our work with other related initiatives.
- Learn and adapt: We infuse our efforts with reflective monitoring and evaluation as we work within complex systems in order to inform structure and strategies, and enhance effectiveness, if and as our strategic intent requires.
We are not in the business of institution building; we are creating an alliance that is collaborative, needs-based, focused, and responsive to the contexts in which we are working.
Ruth Richardson, Executive Director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food (2012-2022).
