UNICEF Equity-free funding for blockchain solutions

The UNICEF Venture Fund invests in open-source frontier technology solutions from emerging markets. For this call for applications, we are seeking ready-to-deploy, blockchain-based solutions with the potential to drive social impact for children and their communities.

Early-stage startups in emerging economies leveraging blockchain through an existing, functional product with real-world use cases are invited to apply. Companies must be registered in one of UNICEF’s programme countries and have impressive proof points and a commitment to open-source licensing and practices. Woman-led startups and young founders are especially encouraged to apply.

Startups selected for the Blockchain Ventures cohort will receive equity-free funding of up to US$100,000 in ETH, BTC or USDC, along with tailored technical mentorship to support piloting, implementation and measuring of impact during the 12-18-month investment period.

With only five years remaining to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Venture Fund is doubling down on frontier tech solutions with the potential to accelerate global social impact for children.

Application deadline: 10 March 2026

The context:

The Venture Fund is at the forefront of identifying, testing and investing in cutting-edge innovations.

Trends observed in the blockchain and web3 ecosystem indicate a lowering of barriers towards real-world utility. These include lower transaction costs, abstracting gas fees for ease of onboarding, cross-chain interoperability, mobile-friendly scalability and favourable regulatory tailwinds which together are making decentralized solutions more accessible and inclusive.

At their core, blockchains comprise a suite of open-source technologies largely characterized by open code, open data and publicly accessible yet immutable ledgers. These attributes make blockchain particularly well-suited for humanitarian and development sectors to improve effectiveness and efficiency in foundational workflows such as global financial operations, transparency and accountability, impact tracking, multi-stakeholder coordination, governance and online trust and security.

What we’re looking for:

The Venture Fund is looking to invest in early-stage startups leveraging blockchain-based solutions that are deployment-ready to test their effectiveness in the following three areas:

Area 1: Improving accountability and transparency of existing services and payments

Solutions to increase efficiency by reducing operational costs of traditional business processes (e.g. supply chain, vendor evaluations, verifying deliverables, etc.) with automation, disintermediation and automated reconciliation and reporting, cutting transaction times from days or months to minutes.
Platforms that provide verifiable proofs of impact, both digital (e.g. measuring educational outcomes of AI-based tutors) and analogue (e.g. volume of water delivered through a new borehole, or consumption of life-saving nutritional supplements).
Platforms to expand inclusion by reaching unbanked populations and providing secure, accessible digital aid assistance, even to those without smartphones or internet access.
Tools for enhancing accountability using public blockchains and privacy preserving approaches such as zero-knowledge proofs or multi-party computation; tamper-proof records, such as dashboards for on-chain audit trails and end-to-end visibility; real-time reconciliation and robust anti-diversion measures to counter third parties diverting aid interventions.
Applications that enable automated payments through blockchain oracle services, frameworks and APIs to measure real world data (e.g. climate, social outcomes, indicators which can help predict emergencies, etc.) for enhanced efficiency in humanitarian response.
Solutions that enable or facilitate due diligence processes (e.g. automated KYC, crypto-forensics screening, etc.) for web3 donors and organizations.

Area 2: New financing and fundraising models and local governance

Using web3 mechanisms such as staking and crowdfunding to improve the lives of children and their communities and create self-sustaining local economies.
Marketplaces which connect lenders, financiers or philanthropists to real-world SDG impact, where the business model serves both social and financial returns.
Enable reporting, validation and tokenization of real-world impact delivery, followed by monetization (e.g. impact credits).
Innovative fundraising and fund disbursement mechanisms focused on maximising cryptocurrency or stablecoin donations to support future impact objectives.
Engage communities in new ways, to incentivize them to collect and share data for decision-making and resource allocation.

Area 3: Incentivizing and encouraging the creation of digital public goods (DPGs) and innovative sustainable business models to support them

Aggregation platforms for bringing together communities for soliciting and fundraising for DPGs.
Modern, decentralized bounty platforms for encouraging contributions to open-source software projects.
Solutions for matchmaking between DPGs and their potential clients to enable adoption and scale.
Platforms to generate impact valuations of open-source DPGs with a history of social impact and communicating this value to web3 funding ecosystems.
New ways of making decisions and participating in different ecosystems, such as DAOs, decentralized storage and distributing resources to communities.
Engagement of online communities to contribute to easing public backlogs of open-source projects, including methods to incentivize non-coding people to contribute to the development of a DPG (e.g. business model innovation, community use-case discovery, etc.).

Additionally, the Venture Fund is interested in startups that use distributed ledger technology in new and groundbreaking ways that are scalable and globally applicable. If you are aligned with our general criteria, we want to hear from you!