Delivering it is another.
Here at Sustenra we provide independent advisory from concept to completion, sustained long-term. From oversight, through partnerships to performance.
Most social investments are carefully designed. Few have independent scrutiny of whether delivery conditions will actually hold.
Funders commit capital to social outcomes and then lose visibility over whether that capital is working. The gap is rarely about intent. It is about structure.
Our Founding Story
Isabel and Antonia first worked together as volunteers in Tanzania at the age of 16. Where they saw what strong programmes could achieve.
Later, working across funded research, institutional philanthropy, and large-scale delivery environments, they saw the same pattern repeating. Funders lacked reliable ways to assess commitments viability, partner performance, or what lay beneath the reporting.
The team that built Sustenra has held the accountability its clients now carry.
Sustenra works in the space between strategy and delivery: the accountability relationship between the funder and the programme.
- Experience inside funding institutions and across demanding delivery environments
- We understand how institutional commitments perform under real constraints
- Every engagement is senior led
- Work is designed for decision makers who need clarity, discretion, and a narrative they can stand behind
Our primary expertise is in low and middle income country contexts, across global health, research, and social investment programmes. We also bring experience across Europe, Eastern Europe, Canada, and the United States. That range matters when your capital originates in one context and your delivery operates in another.
Isabel Litwin-Davies
Governed and assessed large-scale impact funding, including a £132M UK government research programme, across the United Nations and commercial research environments.
Antonia Morzenti
Managed and assessed funded programmes under direct operational pressure across Gates Foundation, UNICEF, and Johns Hopkins University.
Agnes Nanyonjo
Brings clinical research rigour to programme assessment, with a PhD from Karolinska Institutet and experience across complex multi-partner delivery environments.
Independent oversight for investments that cannot afford to fail.
We provide independent scrutiny and structured oversight for commitments that carry reputational exposure and long term responsibility. Work typically begins at a decision point and is scoped to what the situation requires.
Partner and governance due diligence
Independent assessment of whether the delivery partner, programme design, and governance architecture are credible before capital is committed.
Implementation oversight
Independent advisory presence during delivery, assessing whether the programme is on track, where risks are emerging, and what decisions need to be made.
Programme governance and sustainability
Designing or strengthening the governance architecture around a programme: the reporting the funder should require, how performance is tracked, and what triggers intervention.
Organisations typically engage Sustenra at one of these points.
When the funding landscape has shifted under a programme
A funder's delivery partners are operating in a contracted environment and the original delivery assumptions no longer hold.
- Which programmes retain the governance and delivery capacity to remain viable
- Which require restructuring
- Which partners can credibly absorb or replace those that cannot perform at scale
Before approving or renewing a significant commitment
A foundation or corporate ESG team needs an independent view before capital is committed or a funding cycle is renewed.
- Whether the delivery partner is credible under real conditions
- Whether the programme design will hold under pressure
- Whether the oversight structure is fit for purpose
When risks are being managed out of the reporting
Performance reporting looks acceptable but leadership has questions it cannot resolve internally.
- Whether the programme is genuinely on track
- Where risks are emerging that are not visible in reporting
- What an independent assessment would change about the picture
When a board or trustee body requires assurance
Trustees or senior leadership need a defensible, independently produced view before a renewal decision, public commitment, or period of scrutiny.
- Governance and delivery performance against original commitments
- Where risks sit and how they are being managed
- What the board can credibly stand behind
When the programme operates in a low or middle income country context
Programmes operating in LMIC contexts face governance and oversight conditions that do not translate directly from funder-side assumptions. Delivery environments are more variable, partner capacity is harder to assess remotely, and reporting often reflects what is manageable rather than what is accurate.
- Whether delivery partners have genuine on-the-ground capacity at the required scale
- Whether the governance structure accounts for the actual operating environment
- Whether the funder has an accurate picture of performance and risk
We work directly with the people who have to stand behind the decisions when things get difficult.
Work with us when the stakes are high and internal visibility is not enough.
We offer a sustained independent advisory engagement, not a one-off report. If you are approving, renewing, restructuring, or overseeing a significant social investment commitment and need senior independent presence, contact us.