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Payment information

  • Bank: UBS Switzerland AG, Zürich
  • IBAN: CH92 0023 0230 8199 2501 U
  • SWIFT/BIC: UBSWCHZH80A
  • Clearing No: 230

Work With Us

ISD is registered as an operational foundation. As an independent, Switzerland-based organization, we devote our resources to actively conducting programs that benefit the public, both in Switzerland and abroad. We offer a platform for tax-exempt donations used to run our organization and facilitate and realize projects globally, primarily in under-resourced areas across the Global South. Through our work, we build deep partnerships, including

  • the planning and implementation of projects
  • research and knowledge sharing
  • for fundraising.

Implementation

While ISD operates with a small in-house team, we collaborate for each project with regional partners familiar with the cultural and geographic context and with international experts from leading design and planning practices that provide the knowledge and experiences working on complex issues globally.

Get in touch if you are interested in becoming part of our projects, if you are aiming to contribute meaningfully to issues related to global inequalities, infrastructural, and environmental threats, if you seek to partner with planners, designers, and builders across geographic boundaries, or if you aim to explore a new scope of work, potentially opening future business opportunities for your company.

Research & Knowledge Sharing

ISD’s mission is to systematically learn through our projects. We aim to build a body of knowledge by researching the different geographic, cultural, and socio-political contexts in which we work. We document, record, and measure specific conditions, both before and after our interventions, to understand and catalog their impact, describing challenges, failures, and successes. To generate this knowledge, we partner with regional and international academic and applied research institutions, engage with local communities, and broaden our understanding of the complex challenges we aim to tackle. In addition to systematically cataloging our work through reports and multimedia documents, we organize events, symposia, and presentations to share and disseminate the knowledge we gather over time and the valuable lessons learned.

Contact us if you are looking for an experienced team of researchers who can scientifically generate the critical knowledge to better understand and meaningfully intervene in complex and contested environments. Get in touch if you want to collaborate on a research project, seek an opportunity to generate knowledge, or test a research approach in the context of an under-resourced community. And reach out if you are interested in co-hosting an event, offering a platform to share knowledge, discuss, evaluate, and learn from our work.

Fundraising

We rely on committed funding partners to achieve our mission. We seek donations to sustain and expand our operations in Switzerland to conduct critical research and facilitate and realize ambitious projects in under-resourced places worldwide. We hope to establish long-term relationships with our funding partners to increase the quality and scope of our impact. We aim to turn our projects into meaningful built work that we can document and evaluate according to Sustainable Development Goals. We like to share this outcome with our funders, offering data and a platform to experience and engage with the places and communities we work with. In addition to financial support, our multidimensional projects also provide an opportunity for employees of a corporate funder to engage in an exciting and challenging context.

Contact us if you believe in our work and want to support our mission or if you can help us connect with funders, investors, charities, and philanthropists. Let us know if you are interested in a specific region or type of project or if you want to contribute and become part of a project beyond providing funding.