Strengthening Sustainable Development Together: Welcoming ISD Foundation to the SCBF Network
SCBF is pleased to welcome Integrated Sustainable Development Foundation (ISD Foundation) as its newest member. With a unique approach that combines project development, sustainable finance, and knowledge sharing, ISD works to create place-based solutions that strengthen community resilience, climate adaptation, and inclusive development. In this interview, Benjamin Mansfield, Co-Founder and Director of ISD Foundation, shares what distinguishes the organization’s work, why it joined the SCBF network, and where it sees the greatest opportunities to create impact in the years ahead.
1. What makes ISD Foundation unique in its approach to international development cooperation as a Swiss NGO?
What differentiates ISD from other NGOs is our positioning as a platform that brings together multiple actors to deliver high-impact projects, primarily in under-resourced contexts. ISD facilitates, coordinates, and delivers these initiatives across three core pillars. First, Project Development, ranging from strategic visioning, feasibility assessment, stakeholder engagement, assembly of local, regional and strategic use of international team members and design and planning to post-construction impact monitoring. Second, Sustainable Finance, including fundraising and sourcing impact investment, financial planning, and financial management. Third, Knowledge Sharing, including research and dissemination through events, talks, and publications alongside developing the international consortium of partners and facilitating mission aligned collaborations between partners.
To deliver this broad range of services, we operate as a lean core team based in Switzerland together with a growing consortium of partner organizations, companies and researchers that we strategically convene for each initiative. What drives our work is a strong interest in the individual place and its specific needs and conditions. We are united by an integrated approach that seeks place-based solutions balancing nature, climate, community needs and sustainable economic models through meaningful engagement with local stakeholders and ecosystems to develop viable long-term solutions.
2. What motivated ISD Foundation to join SCBF, and how do you see this collaboration contributing to your long-term vision around community resilience, climate adaptation, and inclusive development?
We joined SCBF because we see many benefits in collaborative ecosystems that bring together diverse expertise and perspectives with shared values. Many of the challenges communities face today - from climate vulnerability to inequality and access to opportunity - are interconnected and require collective responses.
ISD Foundation values SCBF as a platform where knowledge, partnerships, and shared ambition can come together to create meaningful and scalable impact. We believe that resilience is not only about responding to shocks, but about strengthening systems and capacities so communities can thrive over the long term. Through this collaboration, we hope to learn from others, contribute our own experience, and help strengthen a network of mission-aligned organizations that can collectively develop new approaches for more inclusive, climate-resilient economically viable development pathways.
3. As ISD Foundation becomes part of the SCBF network, which forms of collaboration - technical expertise, co-creation, knowledge exchange, or market access - do you see as most valuable, and why?
All these dimensions are highly relevant to our work, but co-creation stands out as particularly valuable. We believe some of the most effective and sustainable solutions emerge when organizations with different expertise and perspectives come together around shared challenges. Through SCBF, we hope not only to learn from others but also to help strengthen the impact of mission-aligned organizations through collaboration and shared opportunities.
Market access is also increasingly important as we focus more on solutions with strong potential for replicability and commercial application. At the same time, technical expertise and knowledge sharing are central to ISD’s work and represent areas where we believe we can currently most effectively both contribute and learn. We see SCBF as an opportunity to build meaningful partnerships that can amplify collective impact and create value beyond what individual organizations can achieve alone.
4. Looking ahead, what are ISD Foundation’s key priorities and initiatives over the next year, and where do you see the greatest opportunities for impact?
One area where we see significant potential over the coming year is nature-based solutions to support climate adaptation. We are currently working on a multi-year initiative in the cities of Chennai and Mumbai that aims to strengthen local capacity within municipal governments to implement green-blue infrastructure that can reduce flood risks, protect real estate assets, strengthen urban resilience, and generate multiple benefits for both people and the environment. In both cities, our work will help mobilize existing public funding to realize a series of pilot projects alongside technology solutions for improved maintenance and monitoring.
We also see strong opportunities to expand this work beyond urban contexts and across different geographies and ecosystems, from coastal to mountain regions, and across themes such as affordable housing, environmental risk mitigation, sustainable farming, and ecosystem restoration. These areas are central to our broader mission of creating climate resilient neighborhoods and strengthening local communities in a fast-changing world.
In parallel in order to create bankable solutions, we will be developing the project finance platform establishing partnerships with land developers, impact investors, economists, values-aligned companies and government initiatives.
Pictures courtesy - ISD Foundation
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