In this Partner Spotlight, E4E Relief CEO Matt Pierce sits down with Jessie Krafft, newly appointed CEO of CAF America, to discuss international grant-making, the evolving landscape of philanthropy and the CAF America and E4E Relief decade-long partnership. As both leaders navigate new roles in a challenging philanthropic environment, they share insights on building trust, enabling local impact and the future of global giving.
Matt Pierce: Congratulations on your recent appointment. What are you focusing on at CAF for the rest of 2025?
Jessie Krafft: Thank you, and congratulations to you too. It's been an interesting, exciting, but also challenging year to step into a CEO role given everything happening in our space.
CAF is a charitable organization operating in the UK and North America as CAF in the UK, CAF America and CAF Canada. We partner with corporate foundations and individual donors to enable them to give with greater impact worldwide. We like to say that we sit at the heart of the giving world and hold an enabling position within philanthropy’s infrastructure.
This year, we’ve seen that social purpose organizations and charities everywhere are facing significant challenges and a huge funding shock, including with the cancellation of USAID contracts, that has created a gap that won't be filled anytime soon. At CAF, we're digging deep to understand the impacts on our partners around the world and how we can continue enabling them to do their work.
Given our position focusing on global philanthropy specifically, our mandate is even more critical than ever before. We’re lucky that we don't rely on public funding, so we're positioned to enable private philanthropy to continue and hopefully grow over the next few years to help narrow that gap.
Matt Pierce: We've seen significant growth in global grant-making since COVID along with an important need to focus on hyper-local impact. What questions are you hearing from clients about balancing these needs?
Jessie Krafft: It's a significant challenge for grant makers with a global footprint, like multinational corporations that want to focus on hyper-local responses.
One big question we hear often is: "How can we find trusted partners in other countries?" That word "trust" is crucial because when you're choosing between funding many small local organizations or one big organization that you're trusting to have local impact, the inputs for building trust are quite different.
Another question is how to balance a large funding strategy and telling that story of strategic philanthropy goals with how all those local entities contribute to achieving impact goals. It really comes down to building trust, finding partners and orienting strategy to local contexts.
Matt Pierce: How do you think the definition of "trust" is evolving in the philanthropic space?
Jessie Krafft: We take a risk-based approach to giving. When working with hyper-local organizations, you have to step outside a formulaic approach of checking boxes on governance questionnaires or financial statements.
You need to be more flexible to understand the entirety of that organization while recognizing you're taking risks wherever you give. It's about balancing that risk and being creative about building relationships. And there's not going to be an approach that completely removes risk.
A formulaic approach isn't really the way to build trust because your grantees aren’t going to gain trust in you either through that conversation. Just like philanthropy is a process, a grant isn’t something that you can do on your own, and your beneficiaries are also evaluating you as you vet them.
Another important trend is talking more about unrestricted funding approaches, which is especially important right now.
Matt Pierce: How would you describe CAF America's core services today?
Jessie Krafft: Across the UK, US, and Canada, we provide a wide range of services that enable donors to give more impactfully and enable organizations to have more impact. In the US, we're primarily a platform for cross-border giving.
We work as a trusted partner with organizations and donors throughout the US—corporations, foundations, individuals—to help them give more, and to give more impactfully across borders. In many cases, we advise them on their strategy for selecting grantees and then enable that grantmaking to happen, backed by our vetting and risk management protocols.
Matt Pierce: Our partnership is a bit different. How would you describe what makes our partnership unique?
Jessie Krafft: The work between CAF America and E4E Relief is a great example of how two mostly different organizations can leverage each other's strengths to build something stronger and better. That's powerful in looking at partnerships and how they can enable more giving and philanthropy.
E4E Relief has for many years been a leader in employee relief, enabling corporations and employees to give to colleagues in need. We were looking to enter that space but instead found E4E Relief and realized we could enable this to happen globally. It's been almost 10 years—we signed our first MOU in 2016—so we have a 10-year celebration coming up.
It was a huge collaborative effort between our teams to think creatively about how we could support each other and do more of the great work we're already doing. It was actually a really great experience in my career personally to bring this together.
Matt Pierce: What advice would you give to anyone wanting to expand their impact internationally?
Jessie Krafft: I would say come into it understanding that there will be challenges you never anticipated. Think about all the regulations in the US space for international grants, then multiply that by all the local legislation in all the different countries you'd like to work in. It becomes challenging quite quickly.
It’s important to know that there are resources out there. CAF America is one intermediary organization that can help on that journey, including providing educational tools and opportunities for grant-makers wanting to do cross-border work.
And then it’s also critical to think about your work flexibly because you won't be able to work the same way in all different global contexts. If you're going to do this work yourself, think carefully about how you build your due diligence process and how you can flex that to different local contexts. Take a risk-based approach—know your risks going in but be willing to take risks because if you're truly working locally, there are certainly risks and barriers to doing so.
Matt Pierce: Beyond international grant-making, what general trends are you seeing in philanthropy?
Jessie Krafft: It's a tough moment to answer that question because many companies are still in listening mode right now. They're trying to understand what changes might be mandated or how changes in foreign aid impact their work. In some cases, their biggest partners may have just lost 60% of their funding and may not be able to continue.
One trending question is around "Aid 2.0" and what comes next—what's our opportunity to build back better in the social purpose sector? Another important trend is looking at collaboration happening across the philanthropic and charity sectors to address these questions together.
There's just a lot that's unknown at this moment in terms of giving trends, including whether companies will move away from certain types of giving because they're more controversial this year than last year.
Matt Pierce: What changes are you seeing in how individual donors are contributing to the greater good?
Jessie Krafft: That's an interesting question right before our annual World Giving Report release next month. This is an evolution of CAF's World Giving Index into the World Giving Report, which looks at giving from different angles, not just dollars donated but also volunteerism and helping strangers.
What I can say now is that individual giving is increasingly important, and we need to uplift its importance. Many individuals say they can only give so much when they see billionaires and global foundations giving a lot more. But what's most important is helping individual donors understand how important their dollars are—even modest giving makes a huge impact when you think about the global community doing that together.
Matt Pierce: As a new CEO, how have you approached building trust with your external partners?
Jessie Krafft: While I'm new in the CEO role, I've been with CAF America for nearly 14 years. I've been in externally facing roles for most of that time and have supported building many of our partnerships. Many donors know me from past interactions, so that piece was actually the easiest. But at CAF, we have really found clarity in reaffirming our place at the heart of the giving world, connecting donors and charities to do their part. That’s allowed us to build on our very successful history and continue our work that’s based on our partners’ trust in us and our platform.
Matt Pierce: Is there anything about yourself that you hesitate to share but might actually endear people to you?
Jessie Krafft: I don't talk much about the years I spent on the ground in Honduras. Early in my career, I spent two years volunteering at an orphanage, tutoring kids in need, taking care of teenage boys, and running surgical brigades.
Though it sounds different from what I'm doing today, there's an important connection. In international development, it's critical to empower local communities to do the work they feel they need to do to enact change locally. I love CAF America's role because we can empower local organizations instead of having global leaders trying to enact local solutions. While far from my current role, I learned so much about global development work in that small community in Honduras.
Matt Pierce: What is your default setting when you show up professionally and personally?
Jessie Krafft: I think it's the same answer to both: I try to be as authentic a leader as possible. I strive to be vulnerable about mistakes I'm making or where I feel we're doing things right, and I encourage others to be vulnerable as well.
Perfection is the enemy of good. You have to be willing to take risks and be bold in your work. If you're not a vulnerable and authentic leader, you can't enable those around you to do the same, acknowledge mistakes, and grow. That's how I try to live both professionally and personally—being authentic to myself, my goals and broadly to the goals of the organization.