For humanitarian professionals seeking innovative solutions

1. Read the details, criteria for entry, and expectations below, as well as our terms and conditions.

2. Fill out the Matchmaker Application.

3. Immediately, you will receive a brief composed of your responses and match criteria for your record.

4. Within a month, our team will evaluate the application and decide if it meets the criteria for entry. The problem will either be accepted into the Matchmaker program or denied.  On approval, a customized resource package (see sample below) will be built for you and we will put you in touch with contacts that may assist in helping solve the problem or build the given innovation.

5. After three weeks, we will send a follow-up feedback survey. We highly value constructive feedback and understand that this is an iterative process. Please take the time to fill this out – it is an expectation of you as you participate in the Matchmaking process.

6. After 3-6 months, we will send another survey to gather feedback on your Matchmaking experience and also expect you to complete this survey as a participant in the Matchmaking process.

What to Expect

TIMING

• The Matchmaker will aim to deliver your resource pack within a month of submission. For more niche challenges, this process may take longer. We will update you after week 1 to provide a more defined timeline.

The role of you or your organization

• The Matchmaker provides options we think are credible but the responsibility for making a match and implementing a solution is yours.

• Users of Matchmaker will be expected to provide feedback through two brief surveys. One survey will follow 3 weeks after completing the application and the second would be after 3-6 months. We value constructive criticism as we try to develop and improve the Matchmaker.

The role of response innovation lab

• The Matchmaker is meant to identify potential solutions to your problem. We will talk you through these solutions in detail but do not currently offer any implementation or deployment support

• We will likely contact you within the month timeline to gather more information and clarify details to find an optimal solution. We may need more information from you and may contact you to clarify details. Where possible, specify how much time you may be able to spend on the process. If you do not want to be contacted – this may lower the quality of outputs we can produce.

• Where possible we will help to connect you to the solution providers we identify but we will not have a relationship with every solution we identify.

Your submission

• Your challenge may not be accepted. If it is not deemed to meet our criteria or if we need more information, we will deny your application and inform you why and what might be done.

• We may publish your results. We want the Matchmaker to help not only its clients, but the humanitarian sector in general. Two months after the process, both your problem definition and elements of your resource pack will be posted on our website but without your name or organizational affiliation so others can learn from this. We will make sure to review any posting with you before it is published to give you the chance to remove any language you feel does too much to identify your organization. You can of course, give us permission to publish organizational details if you would like to.

• You can go through the Matchmaker with more than one challenge but each challenge will be assessed on its own merits

possible solutions

• The Matchmaker is designed to select from and filter opportunities giving you a range of potential solutions to your humanitarian challenge. 

• This is a new process and there may not be an answer to your challenge, or there may be multiple answers that you need to make a decision on

• For some more unique challenge spaces, there may not be an appropriate solution. Where this is the case, the Matchmaker will detail how it came to this conclusion and offer possible next steps.