The ISEAL Innovations Fund continues its critical work to accelerate innovation within and beyond the ISEAL Community, with support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO and UK International Development from the UK government.

Amidst growing interest and attention on sustainability in global value chains, sustainability systems need to take bold action to adapt their systems and the value they provide to remain effective and relevant in this rapidly evolving context.

In this grant round, the ISEAL Innovations Fund seeks to support ISEAL Community Members and their partners to future proof their schemes, by improving their effectiveness to respond to shifting market and regulatory expectations.

The Fund is pleased to invite expressions of interest for projects that respond to the theme:

Future proofing sustainability systems

This is an opportunity to build on learning to date and develop or scale collaborative ideas that aim to build core competencies that enable system innovation.

Projects should advance one of the following objectives:

1. Strengthening data foundations
2. Enabling data-driven assurance
3. Improving performance data and measurement
4. Enabling information flow

• Eligibility: ISEAL Community Members can name a non-member organisation as project lead, however, applications must be submitted by an ISEAL Community Member.
• Grants available (with 1:1 match funding)
  • Thematic grants. GBP 40,000 – 150,000 for projects up to 2 years.
  • Replication grants. CHF 40,000 - 80,000 for projects up to 1 year, to build on and/or scale up past Fund-supported initiatives.
• Guiding principles: Values that should be embodied in all Fund supported projects.
• Applications close on Monday 14 April 2025.

Expressions of interest (EOIs) must be completed in the relevant EOI template – available on the closed online platform for the ISEAL community – and submitted by an ISEAL Community Member by 14 April 2025.

The brief EOI template includes questions on:

• The motivation for the project, what it hopes to achieve, and how.
• The learning value for the project lead, partners, the ISEAL community, and beyond.
• How it will contribute to the funding criteria specific to the relevant thematic call.

Submitted EOIs are presented to a grant decision-making committee comprising ISEAL staff, external experts, and donors.

The committee selects a sub-set of EOIs for further development, and ISEAL will work with selected applicants to develop detailed proposals.

Projects are to start from July 2025.