Between November and December 2007, the Ford Foundation and Edge Finance presented a paper entitled, “C4 — the Capital Project,” to various governments in the region (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) to explore the possibility of including the concepts it discussed in current public policies for social protection, especially conditional cash transfers (CCTs). Great interest was expressed, so the Institute of Peruvian Studies (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, IEP), which has a rural finance research program and had participated in the monitoring and evaluation of Peruvian pilot projects involving matched savings (the Corridor Project, for example), joined forces with Edge Finance and the Ford Foundation.

In February 2008, the IEP requested and received a grant from the Ford Foundation to carry out three activities with Edge Finance: 

1. Holding a high-level expert workshop with government officials from five countries and experts on savings and grassroots finance. 
2. Continuing to raise awareness and promote the concept paper prepared by Edge Finance.
3. Launching models of collaboration to develop a medium-range project (the Capital Project). 

These activities were designed and implemented jointly with Edge Finance. This led to the signing of a framework agreement for medium-range collaboration between the IEP and the Capital Foundation to carry out the Capital Project.