The DIV Fund is an R&D engine for development supporting innovative, cost-effective solutions with the potential to improve millions of lives.  Combining risk-tolerant capital with evidence-driven decision-making, the portfolio balances experimentation with evidence using a tiered funding model to right-size risk.

Funding Details

The fund is structured across three stages:
Stage 1 (Pilot): Up to $200,000 to test user demand, feasibility, impact potential, and financial viability.
Stage 2 (Test & Position for Scale): Up to $500,000 (and up to $750,000 in exceptional cases) to evaluate impact, market validation, and scale readiness.
Stage 3 (Scale): Up to $1,500,000 to accelerate the scale-up of validated innovations for sustained impact.

Focus Areas

The fund supports bold, innovative solutions across development sectors with the potential to cost-effectively improve millions of lives.

What we might fund:

Some examples of development innovations that the DIV Fund may support include the following:

• New technologies
• Policy innovations
• Social or behavioral innovations
• New business models, or new ways of delivering or financing goods or services
• Cost-effective adaptations to existing solutions
• Data collection and rigorous evaluation to measure the social impacts of promising innovations
• New ways of increasing uptake of highly effective solutions, including replication and scaling to new places
• Replication studies to confirm the results of prior impact evaluations and establish whether they generalize to other settings

Eligibility Criteria

Applicants must meet the following core requirements:
Present a credible theory of change grounded in evidence of impact.
Demonstrate cost-effectiveness by delivering greater impact per dollar than existing alternatives.
Show potential for durable scale to reach over 1 million people with a path to lasting financial sustainability. Appplications are open until September 30