Humanitarian Innovation Fund Endline Evaluation, 2023

‍Programme: Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF)
Evaluation period: January 2019–September 2022

About the evaluation

This independent endline evaluation assessed HIF’s grant-making, support to innovators and contribution to the wider humanitarian innovation sector. It explored outcomes, value for money, learning and adaptation, risk management and HIF’s wider contribution to humanitarian innovation. The Community-Led Innovation Partnership was evaluated separately and was therefore outside its scope.

Key findings

The evaluation found important examples of HIF-funded innovations being adopted and scaled, particularly where innovators received longer-term support across several stages of development. It also highlighted the value of HIF’s flexible funding and non-financial support, alongside its contribution to research, innovation management and sector learning.

The evaluation found that longer-term engagement tended to generate greater value than shorter early-stage grants. It also identified opportunities to clarify HIF’s strategic direction, strengthen support for locally led innovation, improve outcome monitoring and invest more strategically in turning evidence and learning into uptake and adoption.

Recommendations

Recommendations included developing a clearer innovation strategy, strengthening end-to-end funding pathways, clarifying the role of early-stage grants, increasing support for locally led innovation, investing further in uptake and adoption, and improving monitoring, evaluation and learning systems.