United Nations Foundation

The United Nations Foundation serves as the institutional host of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, which brings together government, private-sector, civil society, and international institutions to harness new and traditional sources of data to better understand and address development challenges. This grant supplements our ongoing core support for the implementation of the partnership’s strategic plan, which seeks to solve three major problems: (a) how to harness up-to-date data to ensure decisions are informed by current and changing contexts; (b) how to safely include and represent all people in data and the data value chain; and (c) how to govern data fairly and safely. It will also support the partnership’s expansion into related, but newer areas — including artificial intelligence, a more comprehensive approach to capacity building, and a deepening of the country partnership model through its Power of Data initiative. (Strategy: Evidence-Informed Policymaking)

The United Nations Foundation is a charitable organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., that supports the United Nations and its activities. This grant will enable the foundation to support the U.N. in addressing climate change and delivering its ambitious climate agenda, building bridges between the United States — at the federal and state levels — and the U.N. around key international diplomatic events. Through strategic convenings and coordination across different constituencies, the foundation will encourage climate ambition from countries, support the U.N.’s activities to responsibly develop critical minerals, and bolster U.N. efforts to enhance early warnings for climate-related disasters.

The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) is a nonprofit initiative of the United Nations Foundation dedicated to ensuring all people benefit from the potential of digital technologies to improve access to critical public and private services and to fuel innovation economies while mitigating the downside risk of data abuses such as enabling surveillance and repression, exacerbating the exclusion of vulnerable individuals and communities, and undermining competitive markets. When it comes to Africa in particular, DIAL recognizes that there is a clear opportunity for African countries to assert greater agency in shaping their own digital futures. Rather than importing external models that may not fully address local realities, African nations can develop tailored approaches to data production, governance, and use that reflect their unique contexts and aspirations. This grant will support DIAL as it aims to foster this approach by expanding its peer learning framework, building on the success of its Africa Data Leadership Initiative (ADLI) flagship program. Through more dynamic and flexible methods of ecosystem learning, DIAL aims to create a broader platform for peer learning and exchange that will enable countries to leverage collective experiences, tackle complex digital challenges, and accelerate the adoption of impactful digital initiatives at national and regional levels. (Strategy: Evidence-Informed Policymaking)