The Innovation Fund was established in 2005 as an internal funding mechanism established by IPPF to promote ground-breaking initiatives around our five strategic priorities (the Five As):
• Abortion
• Access
• Adolescents
• Advocacy
• AIDS and HIV
The Innovation Fund encourages and supports our Member Associations to try new approaches and ideas that push the boundaries of their usual programme.
What is innovation and why do we need it?
Innovation means introducing something new and hopefully something better.
It might be a new idea, a new way of doing something, or targeting a new group.
It might be something new in the sexual and reproductive health sector globally, new in the context of your country or just new for your organization.
At whatever level, innovation is vital to organizational learning. Without it, developing and improving the quality of our work is impossible.
What does the Innovation Fund do?
We facilitate innovation. The fund fosters critical thinking, experimentation, and a willingness to take risks by providing grants to Member Associations to try out new things.
Projects recently funded include:
Because they are risky, some of these projects will ‘fail’ when they are judged against their original plans and objectives.
But the role of the Innovation Fund is to promote organizational learning from both positive and negative experiences, inspiring all of our Member Associations to take up good practice and guiding them to avoid pitfalls.
How do we work?
IPPF Member Associations from around the world submit brief concept papers outlining the idea they want to test.
There is an Innovation Fund Technical Committee made up of the Programme Directors from each regional office, as well as programmatic experts from the IPPF London office.
The Committee reviews and agrees on which initiatives will be funded.
IPPF then provides the necessary technical support to turn interesting ideas into strong project proposals.
Once fully approved, the projects work with IPPF through a Project Support Team. This team is made up of members with the right expertise for the project covering, where appropriate, abortion, access, adolescents, advocacy, AIDS and HIV, gender and rights, finance and monitoring and evaluation.
Recent news
In 2008 the Innovation Fund held two online meetings of the Technical Committee to discuss and agree on new concept papers to be funded.
Funds were allocated for a further 11 initiatives which will now be developed into full proposals. This brings the total current portfolio of projects to 35.
July 2008 also saw the final approval of the project ‘Securing Reproductive Rights for women in Northern Ireland’.
innovation@ippf.org