Driving Innovative Finance for Impact
Innovative finance for humanitarian and development impact is about new types of partnerships across sectors, new ways of working, and new ways of mobilizing additional resources for humanitarian and development outcomes.
This requires a new set of skills for the many different actors involved. These can be humanitarian or development actors, businesses, and investors. Skills include humanitarian and development problem definition and framing, awareness on some financial instruments, building organizational readiness and working collaboratively.
The Driving Innovative Finance for Humanitarian Impact program builds your ability to lead an innovative financing project in the humanitarian and development space. You will identify an advanced high-impact humanitarian and/or development challenge and gain all the necessary tools and skills to further your project successfully and co-create an innovative finance solution to serve those most in need.
You will leave the program fully equipped to set up and manage your project, combined with a rich network of practitioners in the field.
Executive in Residence, IMD Business School, Former Director General, International Committee of the Red Cross, Switzerland
Innovative finance can provide solutions to enable collaboration and partnerships across sectors, widen the resource base, and generate sustainable humanitarian impact at scale – all for the benefit of people affected by conflict and fragility.
Global Head of Philanthropy, Banque Lombard Odier & Cie SA, Switzerland
An investment mindset and organizational capacity are the critical ingredients for international organizations to unlock the power of innovative finance in fragile settings and beyond. We are excited to help incubate this new IMD program, which will mainstream innovative finance by providing the necessary training so that senior executives can translate potential into deals and results.
Take advantage of this hands-on learning experience with a strong focus on case studies
IMD’s Driving Innovative Finance for Impact program is the only results-oriented training program available for leaders with global or local responsibility in the humanitarian or development field. It combines liVe virtual sessions, self-paced learning, mentoring, and face-to-face learning on IMD’s Lausanne campus.
Together with a network of partners including the ICRC, Lombard Odier and the World Economic Forum, you will benefit from cutting-edge content and learning materials. The program offers practical, hands-on learning with a strong focus on case studies and unique insights from guest speakers. Each module provides practical takeaways and you will finish the program with a clear roadmap for your project to be supported by an innovative financing approach.
LiVe virtual – 11 & 25 November 2024
Develop a shared understanding of what innovative financing is, what the trends are, and what motivates actors to achieve humanitarian impact.
Videos and readings
2 liVe virtual sessions
Mentoring call
LiVe virtual – 2 & 9 December 2024
Contribute to your organizational change and readiness to embrace innovative finance solutions by identifying, executing and delivering a pipeline of innovative solutions at scale.
Videos and readings
2 liVe virtual sessions
Mentoring call
LiVe virtual – 13 & 27 January 2025
Learn about different financing solutions through examples and develop your intuition for choosing the right approach.
Understand the criteria that matter most to private investors and the legal and structural challenges that must be overcome to make humanitarian finance work.
Videos and readings
2 liVe virtual sessions
Mentoring call
Opening at WEF and 2 days on campus – 5 & 6 February 2025
Diverse IMD faculty and guest speakers will share their perspectives ensuring you are equipped to strengthen your project, more specifically on the following topics:
- Solving big challenges future back
- Driving impact through stakeholder management
- The role of culture
- Impact of culture on organizational readiness
- The art of successfully pitching your humanitarian project
Benefit from faculty expertise and research
Vanina Farber is an economist and political scientist specializing in social innovation, corporate social responsibility and sustainable finance with more than 20 years of consultancy, research and teaching experience, working with academic institutions, multinational corporations and international organizations. She is Dean of our Executive MBA and elea Professor for Social Innovation.
Farber’s research is focused on studying and fostering the application of innovative, practical, sustainable, and inclusive market-oriented approaches that aspire to change the world by eliminating the root causes of social ills. Her research focuses on social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, and impact investing, and ESG Integration/sustainable finance. She seeks to understand the social innovation environment through a holistic approach that examines both the supply (entrepreneurs and corporates) and demand side (social but also investors) of social innovation.
Innovative finance is an emerging field that holds great promise for improving humanitarian and development outcomes in fragile settings and beyond. We are committed to ensuring the program’s continued focus on solving pressing societal problems. The program’s dedicated steering committee meets regularly to identify innovations, new case applications, and relevant emerging practices and research.
IMD’s network of partners
IMD network of partners includes ICRC, Lombard Odier and the World Economic Forum. This program has been incubated and co-funded by Fondation Lombard Odier and is offered at a special reduced fee.
Length: 8 weeks LiVe virtual, 2 days on campus, opening at WEF