UNHCR Refugee-led Innovation Fund 2025 (up to $45,000) – YOA

Deadline: August 22, 2025

Applications are open for the UNHCR Refugee-led Innovation Fund 2025. The Refugee-led Innovation Fund champions the creativity of all displaced and stateless folks. It goals to reshape their participation within the supply of humanitarian work by guaranteeing they take centre stage within the choices affecting their lives, main the identification of wants and the design of modern options.

The Fund supplies holistic help – combining monetary sources, mentoring, and different experience – immediately to organizations led by forcibly displaced and stateless folks, to allow them to design and ship new interventions which have an enduring constructive influence on their communities.

Benefits

Selected organizations can anticipate the next:

• Financial help: Organizations can apply for up to $45,000 USD (equal in native foreign money) in funding to check and implement concepts with sturdy group-based mostly approaches that generate worth for group members, not particularly linked to any thematic space or expertise.
• Programme and challenge administration help: Supported organizations will obtain help from UNHCR and specialists to assist construct their capability to design and implement programmes successfully.
• Technical help and experience: Needs-based specialist recommendation will probably be supplied, on matters starting from expertise to authorized help and innovation methodologies.
• Peer-to-peer networking: Supported organizations will probably be inspired to have interaction with one another, share experiences, study from one another, and discover partnerships.
• An emphasis on studying: Support will probably be offered to allow supported organizations to measure outcomes, assess their progress, and collect data to help progress. They will probably be inspired to doc, share, and make use of related learnings. Discussion and reflection with their communities will allow them to incorporate and reply to suggestions.

Other help, based mostly on challenge wants, might embrace organizational help, assist with challenge sustainability and scale, coaching on particular matters, enterprise mannequin recommendation, and media and communications help.

Eligibility

• The Fund helps innovation by all organizations led by folks with lived expertise of compelled displacement or statelessness – together with refugees, asylum-seekers, the internally displaced, returnees, and stateless folks – which can be acknowledged inside their communities due to their previous important contributions.
• Applicants are required to apply as a group, representing an current group made up of a number of group members. Organizations should reveal a collective construction to qualify. Individual candidates will not be eligible.
• The Fund accepts purposes from each registered and unregistered organizations which can be well-known of their communities due to their previous important contributions and initiatives.
• Additional consideration will probably be given to guaranteeing organizations led by LGBTIQ+ individuals, girls, folks with disabilities, internally displaced and stateless people, Indigenous populations, and different underrepresented teams obtain help and encouragement to apply to the Fund.

Application

Each yr, they launch a brand new name for purposes inviting organizations to submit a proposal by means of the net application type. In their proposal, organizations ought to define the problem they intention to deal with, their proposed resolution, a funds, and the modifications they anticipate to see of their communities because of their challenge. In 2025, purposes are open till August 22.

These proposals undergo a 4-section choice course of: 

• Proposal longlisting: The Innovation Service evaluations all submissions and identifies a longlist of promising purposes. 
• Vetting and due diligence: Longlisted organizations bear a radical vetting and due diligence course of to affirm their eligibility. Part of this course of includes verifying that every group’s management contains a minimum of 50% people with lived expertise of compelled displacement or statelessness. Supporting documentation should be offered to confirm this. Failure to meet this requirement or to present the mandatory documentation will lead to disqualification from the application course of. 
• Pitch your concept: Organizations that go the vetting and due diligence course of will probably be invited to pitch their concepts to a range committee composed of members of the UNHCR Innovation Service, in addition to representatives from the related UNHCR Country Operations and Regional Bureaus. This is an OPPORTUNITY for organizations to develop on their submitted proposal and have interaction in a dialog about their concept. Organizations that efficiently defend their concept will probably be shortlisted and transfer to the ultimate section of the choice course of. 
• Final choice: Shortlisted proposals are reviewed by the Fund’s Steering Committee, which consists of forcibly displaced and stateless people, representatives of related UNHCR items on the world stage, and, the place possible, donor representatives. The Steering Committee will choose essentially the most promising concepts to be endorsed by the Fund.

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to UNHCR Refugee-led Innovation Fund.