UNHCR 2024 Refugee-led Innovation Fund For Registered and Unregistered Organizations
Published: 19 Apr 2024
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The Refugee-led Innovation Fund is currently open to applications from refugee-led organizations in all countrieS.
The Refugee-led Innovation Fund champions the creativity of all displaced and stateless people. It aims to reshape their participation in the delivery of humanitarian work by ensuring they take centre stage in the decisions affecting their lives, leading the identification of needs and the design of innovative solutions.
The Fund provides holistic support – combining financial resources, mentoring, and other expertise – directly to refugee-led organizations, to enable them to design and deliver new interventions that have a lasting positive impact on their communities.
Organizations led by displaced and stateless people make remarkable contributions to their communities but face considerable challenges accessing direct and flexible funding. Too often, they are excluded from existing networks of entrepreneurs and innovators, resulting in poor access to knowledge, information, and resources that could help them amplify their impact.
The Refugee-led Innovation Fund proposes a fundamental shift in programme architecture. It takes a grassroot approach whereby people who have experienced forced displacement are directly provided with meaningful financial resources and support to implement innovative approaches.
UNHCR Refugee-led Innovation Fund
Benefits of UNHCR Refugee-led Innovation Fund
Selected organizations can expect the following:
- Financial support: Organizations can apply for up to 45,000 USD in funding to test and implement ideas with strong community-approaches that generate value for community members, not specifically linked to any thematic area or technology.
- Programme and project management support: Grantees will receive assistance from UNHCR and experts to help build their capacity to design and implement programmes effectively.
- Technical support, expertise, and coaching: Needs-based specialist advice will be offered, on topics ranging from technology to legal support and innovation methodologies.
- Peer-to-peer networking: Supported organizations will be encouraged to engage with each other, share experiences, learn from each other, and explore partnerships.
Other support, based on project needs: This could include organizational support, help with project sustainability and scale, training on specific topics, business model advice, and media and communications support.
- An emphasis on learning: Support will be provided to enable grantees to measure outcomes, assess their impact, and gather information to support growth. They will be encouraged to document, share, and make use of relevant learnings. Discussion and reflection with their communities will enable them to incorporate and respond to feedback.
Requirements for UNHCR Refugee-led Innovation Fund
- The Fund supports innovation by all organizations led by people with lived experience of forced displacement, including refugees, asylum-seekers, the internally displaced, returnees, and stateless people that are recognized within their communities due to their past significant contributions.
- Applicants are asked to apply as a team, usually as part of an existing organization.
- The Fund accepts applications from both registered and unregistered organizations that are well known in their communities due to their past significant contributions and initiatives.
- Additional attention will be given to ensuring organizations led by LGBTIQ+ persons, women, people with disabilities, Indigenous populations and other underrepresented groups receive support and encouragement to apply to the Fund.
Application Deadline
May 31, 2024How to Apply
Interested and qualified? Go to
United Nations Human Rights on enketo.unhcr.org to apply
Applications go through a two-stage selection process.
- In the first stage, organizations are invited to submit a brief expression of interest by 31 May 2024 at 23:59 EST (Panama time; UTC-5) in the language of their preference. This expression of interest (EOI) will provide a short overview of the identified challenge and proposed solution. The Innovation Service will review these applications and identify a shortlist of applications.
- In the second stage, shortlisted organizations will have a further three weeks to submit a full application. They will receive support from the Innovation Service and UNHCR country offices to develop and submit these detailed applications.
To know more about how proposals are assessed, please check the FAQs at the bottom of this page.
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