{"id":73827,"date":"2025-07-02T16:12:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T14:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socfin.nl\/?p=73827"},"modified":"2025-07-02T16:12:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T14:12:25","slug":"event-recap-exploring-innovative-finance-new-opportunities-for-ngos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socfin.nl\/en\/event-recap-exploring-innovative-finance-new-opportunities-for-ngos\/","title":{"rendered":"Event recap: ‘Exploring Innovative Finance – New Opportunities for NGOs’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The political and funding landscape are changing rapidly. (I)NGOs are under increasing financial pressure, while societal challenges are becoming more significant and urgent. In our changing society, it is not only important to seek more resources, but especially to find ways to deploy resources more efficiently. On April 9, Social Finance NL and Partos<\/a> organised an event on innovative financing for NGOs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Social Finance NL colleagues Nina Berculo<\/a>, Stefania Knecht-Turkanik<\/a>, and Bj\u00f6rn Vennema<\/a>, together with Partos, engaged in discussions with over 50 NGO professionals. They talked about innovative financing and explored potential financing opportunities and instruments. Experts in impact investing and private sector collaboration shared their experiences, after which we looked at ways to implement this within the NGO sector.<\/p>\n

Would you like to work together with Social Finance NL to investigate how innovative financing could help your organisation? Please contact our colleague Nina Berculo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Innovative financing for NGOs: what are the possibilities?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Our colleagues opened the session with an introduction into innovative financing. These are all forms of financing for NGOs beyond grants. Grants alone won\u2019t close the funding gap. Therefore, innovative financing instruments are crucial to address global issues.<\/p>\n

We discussed various financing mechanisms, key opportunities and common challenges when implementing innovative finance. Innovative finance instruments offer new ways to enable and scale impact. This process starts with relationship building and investing in long-term partnerships.<\/p>\n

Working with Development Investment Bonds: a practical example from \u2018Educate Girls\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Alison Bukhari, International Director of the \u2018Educate Girls<\/a>\u2019 programme, and Vijaylakshmi Saxena, Chief Finance Officer, shared their experiences and lessons learned from working with the first Development Impact Bond (DIB) in education<\/a>. They emphasised the crucial role of flexible and risk-tolerant financing and explained how funding through a DIB reshaped their organisational approach.<\/p>\n

\u2018Educate Girls\u2019 transitioned from an input- and activity-driven model to a fully outcome-focused organisation. The programme\u2019s success was measured based on tangible results, such as enrolment rates and girls\u2019 learning outcomes. \u2018Educate Girls\u2019 managed to increase their implementation by 2.5 times and achieve 7 times more impact as a result of their changed approach.<\/p>\n

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Putting theory into practice<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The session continued with an in-depth panel discussion and Q&A session, during which we looked further into practical examples of various funding models. The panel included the following speakers:<\/p>\n