Solutions
Through the Solutions work at NEAR, we are co-creating, uplifting, and amplifying local solutions that radically increase local and national leadership and ownership of systems change initiatives.
NEAR’s solutions portfolio is evolving into a hub model in 2025. The Solutions Hub creates an environment for our members, partners to ideate, co-design, co-create, test and scale solutions that address structural and systemic challenges faced by the communities they serve. Through active collaboration with leaders and experts across academia, philanthropy, the aid, private, and public sectors, our members and partners can develop and pilot transformative solutions.
Innovative Financing
We are incubating innovative financing models that are driven by local leadership, that shift the balance of power and decision-making from Northern donors to Global South leaders and the communities they represent.
The Change Fund
Launched in 2022, the Change Fund is NEAR’s flagship financial mechanism. The Change Fund is a scalable and flexible grantmaking process administered by NEAR and governed by an elected Oversight Body consisting of NEAR member representatives. The Change Fund has evolved from its initial emphasis on efficiently and swiftly awarding and disbursing funds amidst some of the most complex crisis and complicated operational and regulatory contexts.
Change Fund grantees often operate at the intersection of humanitarian response strengthening resilience, the climate crisis, and shoring up livelihoods. The Change Fund strategy is continuing to scale and adapt in recognition that local organizations work with their communities to address pressing challenges that don’t align with the aid sector’s traditional siloed approaches.
The Change Fund Windows
Emergency Response: a flexible, rapid-response funding mechanism delivering immediate, direct support to NEAR member organisations responding to humanitarian crises. Grounded in the principles of local leadership and trust-based grant making, this window enables frontline organisations to respond swiftly to emerging disasters without the delays often associated with traditional humanitarian funding mechanisms.
Displacement: a funding modality designed to support refugee-led and locally led organisations addressing the unique challenges faced by displaced communities. As displacement crises continue to grow in scale and complexity—driven by emerging and protracted conflicts, political instability, and the climate crisis —millions of people remain uprooted, often without access to adequate resources, decision-making power, or sustainable solutions. The Displacement Window focuses on partnerships with local organizations and leaders who possess deep contextual knowledge and are best positioned to provide effective and adaptive responses often not feasible within traditional aid structures.
Bridge Funding: launched in 2025 to strengthen and help sustain locally led responses in some of the most difficult places around the world amidst the US Foreign Aid Suspension. The Bridge Funding Window is a rapid-response financing mechanism that delivers direct, flexible, and unrestricted funding to most affected NEAR members through $25,000 grants. This initiative is a critical stopgap to ensure that NEAR members significantly impacted by aid suspensions can continue serving their communities.
To know more about our Solutions work, you can also read our Strategic Plan 2024-2026