Emerging Fundraising
The Innovative Finance Hub aims to transform fundraising to better connect with donors and impact children's lives globally by using new technologies and business models
How can innovative approaches and new technologies help people to engage with UNICEF? What new business models for fundraising are yet to be discovered? And how can technology improve transparency of donations? These questions lie at the heart of Emerging Fundraising.
Since 1946, UNICEF has worked to improve the lives of children worldwide with support from governments, individuals, corporates, and other partners. Over the years, the organization has offered diverse ways for people to get involved, demonstrate solidarity, and channel their desire to create meaningful change, adapting to the needs, technologies, and circumstances of each era. By doing this, UNICEF has been a frontrunner innovating how all parts of society can support the fulfillment of child rights and how people can engage with UNICEF and its invaluable mission.
UNICEF’s work and people’s commitment to supporting children’s well-being continues – as does the search for new ways to engage and contribute. This pursuit defines emerging fundraising.
From UNICEF’s perspective, new business models hold the promise of new resources, while also bringing financial and other value to UNICEF’s partners, with whom solutions are co-created. Technologies such as blockchain and AI can offer innovative solutions for the benefit of children. With their help, we can enhance transparency and efficiency of supply chains – and ultimately, development cooperation. By creating immersive experiences that highlight the impact of donations on children’s lives, technologies also have the potential of transforming the donor engagement, fostering greater solidarity, and cooperation.
Giant Leaps Start with Small Steps
The Emerging Fundraising team adopts a human-centric, iterative design approach to create meaningful impact. The team engages in collaborative ideation, designing, building, testing, and scaling of innovative solutions.
Our work is twofold. On one hand, we help bridge the gap between the needs of the donors and the communities UNICEF serves by exploring challenging issues and co-creating solutions with users and experts.
On the other hand, we compile best practices and toolkits to build organizational capacity, enabling the scale-up of new fundraising modalities, and enhancing UNICEF's fundraising strategy.
“It Takes a Village to Grow an Innovation”
Innovation thrives through collaboration. The emerging fundraising team partners with leading experts ranging from startups and corporations to academia, international organizations, and civil society. Examples of our partners include the finance sector, artists and art market, logistics experts, digital innovators, and the music industry.
With UNICEF’s presence in over 190 countries, we bring together an extensive network of experts committed to innovation. Our commitment to deeply understanding challenges lays the foundation for transforming them into effective, practical, and sustainable solutions—ultimately delivering significant, lasting benefits for children.
