The Fund is currently calling for expressions of interest for projects on due diligence and climate led by ISEAL Community Members to be submitted by 17 November 2023. Find out more about these opportunities in the in the grant round overview available on the right-hand side of this page.

The ISEAL Innovations Fund is ISEAL’s grant-making facility which has provided support for collaborative projects to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of sustainability systems since 2016. 

The Fund enables the exploration and testing of innovative approaches which help sustainability systems deliver more value to their stakeholders and effectively drive improvement over time, and at scale – we do this as these tools are an important vehicle for driving the collective action and innovation required to achieve positive impact in the rapidly changing sustainability landscape.

ISEAL’s Innovations Accelerator provides a peer exchange space for the ISEAL community to explore learnings from Fund projects. It maximises the learning potential of grants, supporting broader uptake of innovations tested. The Accelerator is currently focused on innovation for system integrity, data management, and data sharing.

The Fund's Guiding Principles are:

• Innovation: Each project tests new ideas, tools or approaches, and generates learning.
• Relevance: Each project contributes to the Innovations Programme's overall objectives.
• Replicability and applicability: There is high potential for replicability of project outputs and outcomes across different sustainability systems, sectors and regions.
• Engaging beneficiaries: Where applicable, there is strong buy-in and engagement from target beneficiaries in both the design and implementation phases.
• Monitoring and learning: Each project commits to capturing and sharing lessons and outcomes, including measuring and reporting on key indicators.
• Collaboration: Each project takes a partnership approach, engaging with other sustainability systems, or integrating with other tools or frameworks.
• Value for investment: The expected impact of each project, including its learning value, is high relative to its investment.

Through multiple funding rounds from 2023-2026, the Fund will encourage ambitious projects which will support the advancement of four outcomes:

1. Enhance the value proposition of sustainability systems for governments, supply chain companies, and producing enterprises.
2. Improve effectiveness and integrity in assessing and responding to sustainability risk.
3. Strengthen collaborative solutions between sustainability systems to specific sustainability challenges, leading to harmonised approaches to tackling these issues.
4. Advance performance monitoring and reporting of progress on critical sustainability issues, strengthening the potential for consolidated reporting.

During phase one of the Fund from 2016-2022, we supported 49 projects which produced a wealth of learning on the ongoing effectiveness of sustainability systems. Explore information and outputs from our phase one portfolio below.