On 22, September 2023, Mercy Corps Ventures’ Climate Lab launched its Climate Tech Facility to source pilot partners innovating in climate.
The objective of the Climate Tech Facility is to deploy innovative technologies for climate resilience in emerging markets through a series of pilots. By partnering with impactful, early-stage ventures working on climate-tech, Mercy Corps Ventures aims to build an evidence base to improve the scalability of innovative technological solutions to combat the climate crisis.
The Climate Tech Facility is a grant facility managed by MCV’s Climate Venture Lab, which will run multiple calls for proposal per year with different focus areas under the Resilient Future Thesis. The Climate Tech Facility will provide equity-free grants up to $100,00 to eligible partners. In addition to capital, MCV Climate Venture Lab will also provide mentorship, impact measurement advisory, access to partnership opportunities, knowledge exchange, and brand exposure.
The objective of the Facility is to pilot and generate insights from up to ten innovative climate technologies in selected geographies, in order to improve resilience for low-income populations. From this, the Facility will generate important evidence and insights to support the scale of these solutions to more users, and/or apply them in other applicable contexts. The Facility seeks to:
- Identify innovative technological solutions localized for emerging markets
- Develop robust impact evidence and pathways to scalability
- Share insights openly to de-risk new capital and crowd in new funders
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible to apply, applicants must meet the following criteria:
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Be a small and growing startup or organization building climate tech
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Have active users and revenue (users and revenue from any products or services offered by the startup or organization) in at least one eligible country.
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Be an entity registered and operating in the country of pilot implementation (whether domestic or internationally-owned or a joint venture). In cases where responsibility for service delivery lies with a downstream partner, rather than the applicant (for example service delivery by a local government), it may be acceptable for the applicant to be registered in a country other than that of pilot implementation.
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Be fully compliant with relevant business licensing, taxation, employee and other regulations in all applicable countries of grant pilot operation.
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Be registered and have a bank account in the country where they will receive the grant money (if not the same as the pilot implementation country).
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Be an eligible entity and demonstrate that a majority of their income is derived from commercial activities. Early-stage companies who have not reached this threshold will need to demonstrate a reliable path to sustainability via commercial activities that generate revenue to be considered.
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Startups must allocate significant resources to demonstrate commitment and signal the strategic importance of the pilot opportunity.
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Only one startup or organization can apply for funding and become a pilot delivery partner. Applicants are encouraged to have downstream partners to support implementation. In the case of government entities being grant pilot partners, they cannot be a sub-recipient of the grant.
Application Process
Go to Mercy Corps Ventures (MCV) on docs.google.com to apply
- We anticipate this form to take 2-4 hours to complete
- This form must be completed in English
- We review applications on a rolling basis, so the earlier you apply, the earlier you will hear back from us
- We recommend that you prepare your responses in a separate document to ensure you do not lose longer answers
- Please check your spam mailbox regularly, as our messages regarding your application status might end up there. After submitting your application, you will automatically receive a copy of your application to the email address below
- The deadline for submitting applications is 23:59 UTC (UK time) on 15 November 2023. Late submissions will not be accepted
