Fondation Botnar is a Basel, Switzerland-based private philanthropic foundation that funds research and implementation work at the intersection of child and adolescent health, artificial intelligence and digital technology, and urban living. It is a smaller and much more targeted funder than the large biomedical foundations research administrators often encounter, and its grantmaking model — largely invitation-only, organized around a defined set of focus countries, and structured around multi-year programmatic initiatives rather than open investigator-initiated calls — differs enough from NIH- or Wellcome-style funding that it is worth understanding before an institution invests time pursuing it. This guide covers the Foundation’s structure and current strategic focus, how its funding actually works, and what a researcher or institution should realistically expect.
What Fondation Botnar Is and How It Is Structured
Fondation Botnar was established in 2003 by Marcela Botnar to continue and formalize philanthropic work associated with her late husband, Octav Botnar, and in memory of their daughter, Camelia. It operates as an independent Swiss philanthropic foundation headquartered in Basel. Public reporting on the Foundation’s endowment puts its assets in the billions of Swiss francs, and it describes its own annual grantmaking at roughly CHF 60 million, allocated across its priority countries and thematic initiatives — figures worth re-confirming against the Foundation’s own annual reporting at the time of application, since philanthropic foundations revise disclosed figures periodically.
Unlike a government research council, Fondation Botnar does not organize itself around disciplinary panels or standing open competitions. It designs and runs its own strategic initiatives, often in partnership with implementing organizations, multilateral bodies, and co-funders, and it commissions research and pilot programs to serve those initiatives rather than funding an open, discipline-driven portfolio.
Focus Areas: Child and Adolescent Health, AI, and Urban Settings
Fondation Botnar’s current strategy, “Pathways to Young People’s Wellbeing,” launched in mid-2024 and runs through 2030. It concentrates the Foundation’s grantmaking on the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents — broadly the 10–24 age range — growing up in intermediary and rapidly urbanizing cities, with digital technology and artificial intelligence treated as tools the Foundation actively invests in developing and testing for that population, not as a separate technology-funding stream. The strategy is implemented through eight focus countries: Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Romania, Senegal, Tanzania, and Vietnam.
The Foundation’s flagship programmatic vehicle for this work is Healthy Cities for Adolescents (HCA), a multi-year initiative that supports city-level partners in intermediary cities across the Global South to design and implement adolescent-centered health and wellbeing interventions, often incorporating digital tools, data systems, and AI-assisted approaches for planning and service delivery. Related current and past initiatives referenced on the Foundation’s own site include OurCity (youth-centered urban strategy work), The Being Initiative (youth mental health), and RIGHTS Click (digital rights education for young people) — the roster of active named initiatives changes as multi-year programs conclude and new ones launch, so researchers should treat the Foundation’s own “What We Do” pages as the current record rather than any single description, including this one.
Fondation Botnar has also entered a multi-year strategic partnership with the World Health Organization, committing CHF 8 million over 2025–2027 to advance young people’s health and wellbeing globally — an example of the Foundation increasingly working through co-funded, multilateral-adjacent partnerships rather than funding standalone projects in isolation.
How Fondation Botnar’s Grantmaking Process Works
The single most important practical fact for a prospective applicant: Fondation Botnar does not generally accept unsolicited proposals. Funding is issued through periodic, published calls for proposals tied to specific initiatives and focus countries, and otherwise through direct, invitation-only engagement with organizations the Foundation identifies as strategic partners. Institutions interested in Botnar funding should monitor the Foundation’s Funding Opportunities page and subscribe to its newsletter for call announcements, rather than preparing an unsolicited concept note in the way one might for a foundation that runs standing open competitions.
When calls are open, the Foundation has used several distinct funding instruments, and the specific mix in use at any given time should be verified against the current call documentation rather than assumed from past cycles:
- Implementation and research grants — longer-term funding for projects generating scalable impact, including research that supports innovation, validation, and implementation of an intervention.
- Basic grants — smaller, shorter, one-off support for innovative pilot projects.
- Co-funding — collaborative funding alongside other foundations, donors, or multilateral partners.
- Strategic partnerships — larger, co-created initiatives developed jointly with key implementing partners rather than awarded through a competitive call.
- Venture philanthropy — equity or equity-like investment in early-stage, purpose-led start-ups (roughly pre-seed through Series A) working on relevant health, digital, or urban solutions.
Grant durations of around three years are typical for implementation and research grants, though strategic partnerships and multi-phase initiatives (the Foundation’s Fit4Future call, for example, has run in successive phases) can extend considerably longer. Co-funding from the applicant institution or a third-party partner is strongly encouraged, though not stated as an absolute requirement of every instrument.
Eligibility and What the Foundation Does Not Fund
Fondation Botnar funds not-for-profit organizations, public institutions, academic and research entities, international organizations, government authorities, and consortiums, including public-private partnerships, provided the proposed work benefits young people roughly aged 10–24 in low- and middle-income countries, most concretely within the eight focus countries above. Digital and AI-enabled projects are expected to follow the Principles for Digital Development, a shared standard also referenced across the wider digital-development and global-health funding community, and proposed innovations are expected to be affordable, accessible, and equitable rather than dependent on high-cost infrastructure unavailable to the target population.
The Foundation’s own guidance lists categories it does not fund, which a research administrator should screen for before investing proposal-development time: religious or faith-based organizations and activities, political organizations, projects situated in active war zones, pure infrastructure projects, disaster relief, activity intended to substitute for government funding responsibilities, general (non-project-specific) organizational support, and organizations whose activities are inconsistent with health and integrity principles (tobacco and weapons manufacturing are specifically named examples).
Practical Guidance for Researchers and Institutions
- Confirm geographic and thematic fit first. If a proposed project does not sit within child/adolescent health and wellbeing, digital/AI tools serving that population, or urban systems in one of the eight focus countries (or a closely adjacent low- or middle-income urban context the Foundation is actively expanding into), it is very unlikely to be competitive, regardless of scientific merit.
- Do not build a proposal-submission workflow around an open portal. Because funding is invitation-only or tied to specific timed calls, the practical first step is monitoring the Foundation’s funding-opportunities page and newsletter, not preparing a standing concept note for submission whenever convenient.
- Identify and document a co-funding or partnership angle early. Given the Foundation’s strong preference for co-funding, strategic partnerships, and consortium-based delivery, institutions with an existing implementing partner in a focus country, or an existing relationship with a co-funder, are in a materially stronger position than a solo, first-contact applicant.
- Route through your institution’s sponsored programs or grants office as soon as a call is identified. International, foundation-funded awards frequently carry different indirect-cost, sub-award, and reporting conventions than domestic federal awards, and confirming these early avoids downstream compliance friction.
- Track initiative names as living, not fixed. Because Fondation Botnar operates through named, multi-year initiatives (Healthy Cities for Adolescents, Fit4Future, and others) that launch, run in phases, and eventually conclude, verify the current roster and call status directly on the Foundation’s site rather than relying on a prior year’s program name.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can researchers submit an unsolicited proposal to Fondation Botnar?
Generally, no. The Foundation states that it does not accept unsolicited proposals under normal circumstances; funding is awarded through published calls tied to specific initiatives or through direct, invitation-only partner engagement.
Does Fondation Botnar fund research outside its eight focus countries?
Its current strategy concentrates grantmaking on Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Romania, Senegal, Tanzania, and Vietnam. Some partnerships and initiatives (such as its WHO collaboration) operate more broadly, but a project with no connection to these focus countries or their populations is a weak fit for the Foundation’s core grantmaking.
Is Fondation Botnar primarily an AI funder?
No. It is a child- and adolescent-health and wellbeing funder that treats digital technology and AI as tools for achieving that mission — particularly in the context of rapidly urbanizing cities — rather than a general-purpose AI research funder in the way a technology-sector funder might be.
What is the typical size and length of a Fondation Botnar grant?
The Foundation does not publish a single standard grant size; instruments range from smaller basic grants for pilot projects to larger multi-year implementation and research grants (commonly around three years) and larger strategic partnerships or venture-philanthropy investments. Applicants should confirm the funding envelope for a specific open call rather than assume a figure from a past cycle.
Related Funder Profiles
Fondation Botnar is one of a growing number of private and philanthropic funders profiled on CASRAI. For comparable global-health and international funders, see the guides on the Novartis Foundation, the Bloomberg Philanthropies research and public health grantmaking model, the Mastercard Foundation’s research and higher-education funding in Africa, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s science funding programs. For a broader landscape view of how private and nonprofit funders differ from government research councils, see Private and Nonprofit Medical Research Funders: A Landscape Guide. Researchers assembling a first inquiry to an invitation-only funder like Fondation Botnar may also find Letter of Inquiry for Grants: Format and When Funders Require One useful background.
