UNICEF Innovation Fund FAQ - Announcement and Second Call for Applications

What is the UNICEF Innovation Fund? The Innovation Fund allows UNICEF to quickly assess, fund and scale open-source solutions that have been developed by companies in new and emerging markets. The core motivation of the Innovation Fund is to identify "clusters" or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology - so that UNICEF can both shape markets and also learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. By investing in multiple concurrent teams working on similar problems and technology stacks the Fund can accelerate both the production of products, as well as the building, iteration, and exit of the teams around the technologies. The Fund also invests in early-stage "knowledge products" - operations research that is published in the public domain and supports investment strategies and decisions. What does the UNICEF Innovation Fund invest in? We invest in solutions that can impact the lives of the most vulnerable children. We find these solutions clustered around $100billion industries like emergency and epidemic response, transport & delivery, identity, finance, learning, personal data, and related fields. Projects that can receive funding need to be early-stage, with a prototype or pilot completed and a small amount of money is needed to get it to the stage where you can prove it works to other people and tap into other funding sources. The project can involve: ● Developing new technology ● Expanding/ improving existing technology/ platform (i.e. it will be in a place where the technology is being used...but will involve new tech being built) ● Piloting a new use case for existing technology (i.e little or no new tech will be built and it will be used in the same place) ● Scaling existing, initial pilot to new areas (i.e. no significant new tech, but also this will be in a new country) Go to www.unicefinnovationfund.org to find more information about the companies and solutions the Fund has invested in to date and about the eligibility criteria. Why is UNICEF adopting a new model to support the start-up of new innovations? UNICEF’s Office of Innovation has been working in the complex space of helping to foster and scale innovations for children for more than eight years. During this time, the Office has carefully assessed major inhibitors to country-led and needs-driven innovations – and the Innovation Fund has been designed to reduce these friction points. Specifically, this new model will address the issues related to both risk management (for country offices and investors) and funding.

More importantly, it will allow for a ‘portfolio-style’ view of emerging child-focused innovations globally and an opportunity to shape them with input from technical experts bringing experiences from countries and regions around the globe. As opposed to having sector- or country-focused technical support and collaboration, the Fund will allow UNICEF to balance resources and time based on the topology of problems and solutions. The Innovation Fund will invest in the underlying technology areas that have the strongest potential to bring results for children. Finally, the Innovation Fund frees country-level innovators from the need to individually look for funding sources – reducing the high costs associated with fragmentation and projectization of available funding – and it will provide investors with quality assurance through rigorous selection and technical support. By investing in multiple concurrent teams working on similar problems and technology stacks the Fund can accelerate both the production of products, as well as the building, iteration, and exit of the teams around the technologies. UNICEF has adopted some of the successful features of venture capital approaches to shape the Innovation Fund. These include the focus on early-stage investments, a portfolio approach and the selection criteria for investment. Disagreement within the internal board enables more innovative and new approaches to be selected. You say it’s a Venture Fund. What’s the return? The Innovation Fund supports the generation of open source public goods that address the most pressing challenges children in developing countries face. For internal projects, with matched financing from the country office, funding provided by the Fund is essentially doubled in size and potential. Investors get three specific types of returns: 1) Growth. Investors get to see projects and technologies become big, in a global ecosystem, and deliver results that help humanity – and children in particular. UNICEF innovations directly affect children’s lives and improve their well-being by increasing the scale, reach, impact and efficiency of policies, service and information for children, ultimately generating financial and efficiency savings. This can be measured by real time growth (or lack of growth) of user bases, interactions, etc. on an individual project or within a product family. 2) IP stack: The Fund invests exclusively in open source – but that doesn’t mean that the IP is without value. For instance, UNICEF has produced (in U-Report) an enterprise-level, cloud-hosted, multi-tenancy solution for youth engagement. How much that system is worth to a partner in the fund depends on that partner – but it is not without value. The Innovation Fund will ask our partners, at annual review meetings, to assess the value of the technology created for their core business lines. Investors gain access to this open-source intellectual property – their

support makes the development of new solutions possible, while UNICEF provides the infrastructure, expertise and environment for identification, piloting and scaling. Investors are able to apply innovations – developed in developing countries and adapted for use in their contexts – for their own use, translating them into improvements in efficiency, reach, impact and scale of their own programmes and policies for children. Investors, therefore, receive a financial return on their investment through free access to new tools. 3) Communities: UNICEF Innovation is creating communities around the products we invest in. U-Report has more than 2.7M users in 34 countries. It also has more than 1,953 commits to GitHub and 302 stars. Having access to robust communities of developers and entrepreneurs is also of value to our partners – as it will allow them to either extend work that’s been done through the fund for their own purposes and also access a global change engine that can be used to build other solutions in the future. So the Fund doesn’t provide money back? No. It provides value. Value that can be measured and counted in real time In 2017 it’s much less important (especially with a fund capped at around $11million) to see direct (and individual) cash flow – and much more important to see communities of problem solvers creating products that can be repurposed, adapted, and scaled across a wide range of partners’ needs. How does the Innovation Fund work? Applications from UNICEF Country Offices: The Innovation Fund accepts applications from UNICEF Country Offices for co-funding from the Innovation Fund. Applications can be submitted on an ongoing basis and funding decisions are made within two weeks. Applications from start-ups: The Innovation Fund is receiving requests from small businesses and start-ups in UNICEF’s programme countries (see list here). The Fund does not help large companies to create new business lines. We support companies registered in these markets - UNICEF’s programme countries - with a small amount of money to get your solutions to the stage where you can prove it works. How does the application process for external companies work? Details of the application process are available on www.unicefinnovationfund.org/submit. UNICEF Innovation will review the information submitted and if the company meets all the criteria, they will receive a request for a proposal (RFP). Only selected applicants will be contacted. Final decisions will be based on full technical and financial proposals. How long does UNICEF invest in projects for? What happens after companies receive an investment from the Innovation Fund? Investments by the Innovation Fund support projects for a 12-month period. The Fund’s investment gets the project to the stage where the company can prove it works to other people. The next stage after that proof would be going for more funding (this could be private sector investment (yep! they do invest in open source

products)) or grant-funding, or other...depending on what type of technology and solution the company is working with. Through UNICEF’s networks, companies who have received investment will have a view on funding opportunities for taking successful solutions to scale. These include various funding opportunities provided by the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA) and UNICEF’s Innovation Procurement Acceleration Fund and Global Innovation Centre. How are projects selected for funding? Projects are assessed by Innovation Fund team and recommended for funding to the internal board. Companies need to fulfill the following mandatory requirements to be considered for funding: - Registered as a private company - Registered in a UNICEF programme country (see list here) - Working on open source technology solutions (or willing to be open source) under the following licenses or their equivalent: (i) for software, a BSD license, (ii) for hardware, a CERN license and (iii) for design or content, a CC-BY license - An existing prototype of the open source solution with promising results from initial pilots - Solution has the potential to positively impact the lives of the most vulnerable children - Generating publicly exposed real-time data that is measurable In the first stage of the application process, submissions will be assessed on the following criteria: - Relevance of solution for children and young people, alignment with UNICEF priorities and potential for application at global scale - Novelty of project and alignment with Innovation Principles and desired stage of development - Suitability of the team and key personnel to implement the project - Project budget and financing Shortlisted companies are then requested to submit in-depth technical and financial proposals. Which start-ups have already received investment from the Innovation Fund? The first portfolio of investments includes the following five start-ups, with an eye to investing in 20-40 additional companies in 2017: ● Saycel (Nicaragua): provides mobile connectivity to communities that are not on the traditional information grid. ● mPower (Bangladesh): is a collaboration between the government of Bangladesh and WHO to use tablets and smartphones for better health data collection. ● 9Needs (South Africa): uses blockchain and advances in identity technology to create better education management systems for teachers and school workers. ● Innovations for Poverty Alleviation Lab (Pakistan): creates small stories that can be played over a simple mobile phone to help fathers (who may be semi-literate) understand the key issues around newborn health.

● Chatterbox (Cambodia): provides a fundamental technology layer to be integrated into UNICEF's RapidPro platform to extend its reach to communities that are low literacy, particularly in Cambodia, but eventually globally. More information on each investment can be found on www.unicefinnovationfund.org How is the Fund managed? The Fund’s day-to-day management team, which is part of the UNICEF’s Office of Innovation, has collective experience in identifying, supporting and scaling innovative technologies and systems. The team manages the application, selection and support systems along the spectrum of Innovation Fund engagements. The management team draws on a network of experts to guide investment decisions and technical assistance specific to each project and technology area. The management team makes recommendations for investment to the decision making Fund board, which consists of senior UNICEF leadership. Where can I see which companies the Fund has invested in? The real-time reporting website on www.unicefinnovationfund.org provides real-time data on the performance of the Fund and information about each company or project that has received investment in. It also presents stories about each project.

Who can invest in the Fund? UNICEF welcomes investments from governments, the private sector (individuals and organizations), foundations, academic fs, civil society, international financing institutions and multilateral organizations. Founding investors and supporters have brought the overall financial contributions to $11 million to date. How can we track the success of projects and the Fund? The Innovation Fund displays its activities and results through a website (www.unicefinnovationfund.org) that allows for exploration of individual projects and tracking of the overall portfolio in real time. Through dashboards that provide real‑time information aggregated at the project, portfolio and Fund level, contributors, and investors are able to continually monitor progress. A hub of stories showing success, failures, and learning will be shared regularly through the website, not only creating a real-time log of progress across the portfolio, but also facilitating exchange of experiences between investees. The stories featured on the website will also document the social impact of the investments in each of the portfolio areas. How do the investments made by the Fund differ from grants? Investments generate returns for investors. The Fund’s support for companies are considered investments. They are investments because UNICEF expects value to be generated and returned by the investees. Value is generated in three main ways - 1) growth; 2) IP stack and 3) communities. You can view more about this on http://www.unicefinnovationfund.org/.

Unlike grants, investments are managed through institutional corporate contracts with UNICEF: Companies selected by UNICEF to receive an investment from the Innovation Fund enter into a contract with UNICEF. UNICEF will award a contract with the companies that are selected for funding and requires that any intellectual property is open-sourced. The participating institutions need to be legal entities, meaning registered companies. The companies that are selected for funding will need to register as a vendor/supplier with UNICEF. The prototypes are all open source- what does this mean? UNICEF explores projects that adhere to its Principles for Innovation, which include the use of open data, open standards, open source and open innovation. The Innovation Fund invests in open source technology solutions under the following licenses or their equivalent: (i) for software, a BSD license, (ii) for hardware, a CERN license and (iii) for design or content, a CC-BY license Open source software enables the original source code to be made freely available to the public and may be modified and redistributed under a set of open source licenses. This means the original source code is publicly accessible for people to view the code, copy it, learn from it, modify it, or share it. Open-source hardware (OSH) refers to tangible objects such as machinery, mobile technology and other devices whose designs are available and can be modified, changed or distributed. Why should innovators open-source their intellectual property? UNICEF’s Innovation Principles place value on using open data, open standards, open source and open innovation. Developing solutions that are open source allows for source code and design elements to be accessed and improved by a community of developers and designers. Open source ideas can be easily adapted to local contexts and are universally accessible, unrestricted by licenses and associated fees. This facilitates new ideas to go to global scale. Open source business models have been shown to provide value both to makers and investors, while also creating global public goods in the process. What big problems are you trying to solve with the Fund? We need new solutions to accelerate results for children: The Innovation Fund supports the generation of open source, public goods that address the most pressing challenges facing children. We invest in solutions that can impact the lives of the most vulnerable children. We find these solutions clustered around $100billion industries like emergency and epidemic response, transport & delivery, identity, finance, learning, personal data and related fields. However, if the project is based on something else and it’s awesome….don’t worry if it’s not on the list, this can still be considered. We need more support for entrepreneurs in developing countries who are developing open source solutions: The Fund does not help large companies to create new business lines. The purpose of the Innovation Fund is to develop small businesses in markets that many consider risky - but we see as sources of opportunity. We support companies registered in these markets (UNICEF’s programme countries) through a fair, open,

transparent and competitive public procurement process with a small amount of money to get your solutions to the stage where you can prove it works. We need a larger network of global change makers to help us solves the world’s biggest problems: We are creating communities around the products we invest in. U-Report has more than 2.7M users in 34 countries. It also has more than 1,953 commits to GitHub and 302 stars. Having access to robust communities of developers and entrepreneurs is also of value to our partners – as it will allow them to either extend work that’s been done through the fund for their own purposes and also access a global change engine that can be used to build other solutions in the future.