The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

Hosted by UNCDF, the Financial Health(FH) and Innovation Portfolio host a platform towards convening a global coalition and thought leadership on the subject of financial health and making this global shift towards an outcome focus agenda. The platform is proposed to work as a convener, to bring together global, regional and local actors committed to using financial and digital solutions to improve the financial lives of low-income families—helping them climb - and stay - out of poverty. The portfolio creates space for thought leadership where best financial health practices and models are exchanged and lead to concrete action with governments and the private sector.

The portfolio is organized in three inter-linked pillars that is focus on driving coalition building through advocacy and evidence generation; implementation that creates demonstartion effect for markets to learn from and create lessons that can be scaled globally; financing that can catalyse the shift towards outcomes and also create incentives for players to mainstream the agenda. The aim of the current programmes portfolio is to improve the financial health of five million people over the next four years.

One of the key objectives for the portfolio is to drive thought leadership in the space of financial health. This thought leadership is shaped through a variety of engagements, that will include partnerships with other global institutions including research universities/think tanks, evidence generated through the experiments set-up in the Living Labs or specific partnerships drawn to undertake a research activity.

This RFA is drawn to invite a global partner who could support in building the advocacy efforts for the portfolio, overall agenda and assist to amplify the various projects (interventions). Assist with messaging and managing of exclusive properties created for driving the agenda on FH globally. The eligible entities who could participate in this RFA need to have experience in building integrated advocacy and communication engagements including building brand narratives and management that can work across the key stakeholder groups that are part of FH agenda. Ability to shape narrative through messages and ideas that can hold attention with different group of actors from Government, Policy Makers, Private Sector, etc. and ability to combine design in the approach of driving advocacy efforts with stories and experiences, driven in both digital and non-digital forms.

Selected applicants will be signing a Performance-Based Agreement (PBA) with UNCDF.

UNCDF’s contributions can range from USD 200,000 - 250,000. UNCDF will award 1 application depending on the investment readiness level and outreach potential of the proposed proposal.

Applicants may apply independently or in a consortium, provided that the consortium has a pre-established partnership prior to when this request for applications was issued.

Inquiries to this request for applications may be submitted by email to financial.health@uncdf.org cc uncdf.rfa@uncdf.org by 27^th Aug 2022.

All applications must be submitted by 23.59 hours (IST - Indian Standard Time) on 4^th Sept 2022.