Driving Innovative Finance for Impact
Innovative finance for impact is about new types of partnerships across sectors, updated ways of working, and reimagining ways of mobilizing additional resources for humanitarian and development outcomes. The imperative for innovative finance today is even more pronounced as traditional development partners reduce funding for the sector.
For humanitarian and development actors, businesses, and investors, new skills for leveraging innovative finance are required. These include problem framing, developing a stronger grasp on diverse financial instruments, cognition about organizational readiness and the ability to work collaboratively.
The Driving Innovative Finance for Impact program empowers you to design and lead innovative financing projects that address complex challenges in this space. You will work on a real-world, high-impact challenge and gain the critical tools, frameworks, and skills to shape and implement innovative finance solutions that drive meaningful change for vulnerable communities.
By the end of the program, you’ll be ready to set up and manage your project with confidence—supported by a dynamic network of peers and practitioners working at the forefront of impact-driven finance.
Executive in Residence, IMD Business School, Former Director General, International Committee of the Red Cross, Switzerland
Innovative finance can provide solutions to enable collaboration and partnerships across sectors, widen the resource base, and generate sustainable humanitarian impact at scale – all for the benefit of people affected by conflict and fragility.
Global Head of Philanthropy, Banque Lombard Odier & Cie SA, Switzerland
An investment mindset and organizational capacity are the critical ingredients for international organizations to unlock the power of innovative finance in fragile settings and beyond. We are excited to help incubate this new IMD program, which will mainstream innovative finance by providing the necessary training so that senior executives can translate potential into deals and results.
Director, Innovative Finance, The International Rescue Committee
As a practitioner of innovative finance, it has been an immense honor to serve as a mentor for this course, where professionals can experiment and co-create with new ways of working that are immediately applicable upon return to their organizations. Now more than ever, systems change driven is needed in the humanitarian sector; innovative finance is a key driver of that, with each IMD student bringing the necessary change back to the systems they come from.
Head of Investing in Fragile contexts, Proparco
I realized the potential for collaboration between ‘social investors’/DFI and NGOs/Humanitarian agencies to create innovative impact investments in fragile countries and a global movement in the humanitarian sector to engage with market-based private sector solutions. At DIFI, I understood that realizing this potential takes time because we are two different ‘crowds’ needing alignment on expectations, goals, methodologies, and mutual learning.
Take advantage of this hands-on learning experience with a strong focus on case studies
IMD’s Driving Innovative Finance for Impact program is the only results-oriented training program available for leaders with global or local responsibility in the humanitarian or development field. It combines liVe virtual sessions, self-paced learning, mentoring, and face-to-face learning on IMD’s Lausanne campus.
Together with a network of partners including the ICRC, Lombard Odier and the World Economic Forum, you will benefit from cutting-edge content and learning materials. The program offers practical, hands-on learning with a strong focus on case studies and unique insights from guest speakers. Each module provides practical takeaways and you will finish the program with a clear roadmap for your project to be supported by an innovative financing approach.
LiVe virtual – 10 & 24 November 2025 from 2pm-4pm
Develop a shared understanding of what innovative financing is, what the trends are, and what motivates actors to achieve humanitarian impact.
Videos and readings
2 liVe virtual sessions
Mentoring call
LiVe virtual – 1 December 2025 (time TBC) & 8 December 2025 from 2pm-4pm
Contribute to your organizational change and readiness to embrace innovative finance solutions by identifying, executing and delivering a pipeline of innovative solutions at scale.
Videos and readings
2 liVe virtual sessions
Mentoring call
LiVe virtual – 12 & 26 January 2026 from 2pm-4pm
Contribute to your organization’s future readiness by developing a culture that embraces partnerships and is able to identify, execute on and deliver a strong pipeline of innovative finance solutions at scale.
Videos and readings
2 liVe virtual sessions
Mentoring call
Opening at WEF, 9 February 2026; and 2 days on campus – 10 & 11 February 2026
Diverse IMD faculty and guest speakers will share their perspectives ensuring you are equipped to strengthen your project, more specifically on the following topics:
- Solving big challenges future back
- Driving impact through stakeholder management
- The role of culture
- Impact of culture on organizational readiness
- The art of successfully pitching your humanitarian project
Benefit from faculty expertise and research
Vanina Farber is an economist and political scientist specializing in social innovation, corporate social responsibility and sustainable finance with more than 20 years of consultancy, research and teaching experience, working with academic institutions, multinational corporations and international organizations. She is Dean of our Executive MBA and elea Professor for Social Innovation.
Farber’s research is focused on studying and fostering the application of innovative, practical, sustainable, and inclusive market-oriented approaches that aspire to change the world by eliminating the root causes of social ills. Her research focuses on social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, and impact investing, and ESG Integration/sustainable finance. She seeks to understand the social innovation environment through a holistic approach that examines both the supply (entrepreneurs and corporates) and demand side (social but also investors) of social innovation.
Innovative finance is an emerging field that holds great promise for improving humanitarian and development outcomes in fragile settings and beyond. We are committed to ensuring the program’s continued focus on solving pressing societal problems. The program’s dedicated steering committee meets regularly to identify innovations, new case applications, and relevant emerging practices and research.
IMD’s network of partners
IMD network of partners includes ICRC, Lombard Odier and the World Economic Forum. This program has been incubated and co-funded by Fondation Lombard Odier and is offered at a special reduced fee.
Length: 8 weeks LiVe virtual, 2 days on campus, opening at WEF