The CFP is responsible, inter alia, for the Bank's Global Partnership and Trust Fund operations. The Bank manages over 1000 trust funds (on behalf of third party contributors such as the Danish government) which provide grants to NGOs and private entities as well as governments. Dr Stephens:
1)
worked with multiple stakeholders across the World Bank to develop organisational procedures applicable across the Bank (procurement, financial management, social and environmental safeguards, results, monitoring and evaluation, etc) for accelerating and simplifying the processing of "small" trust fund grants (less than US$5 million) and "micro" grants (less than US$0.5 million) including the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and other environment trust funds resulting in faster, safer throughput of grants;
2)
benchmarked World Bank trust fund management processes and structures against eight other multilateral organisations (UNDP, WHO, IFAD, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, OECD and IMF); the work was requested by the then President of the World Bank and was used to encourage a more standardised approach;
3)
developed a results framework for trust funds managed by the World Bank enabling the Bank to adopt a more strategic approach to trust fund management.