Flexible Voluntary Contribution (FVC)
The Flexible Voluntary Contribution

What is the FVC?

The Flexible Voluntary Contribution (FVC), previously known as Flexible Multi-Partner Mechanism (FMM), is a pooled funding tool that allows resource partners to respond to development challenges in a timely and cost-effective manner. It is the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) main flexible multi-partner instrument for the achievement of results under FAO’s Strategic Framework and the realization of catalytic impacts.

Since its inception in 2010, the FVC has supported lifesaving programmes at global, regional, and country levels through four phases: 2010–2013, 2014–2017, and 2018-2021. Starting from the new phase 2022-2025, the FVC aligns its structure with the Four Betters of FAO: Better Production, Better Nutrition, Better Environment and Better Life.

Flexible funding mechanisms, like the FVC, provide a more effective approach to delivering on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through flexible funding, the FVC allows greater responsiveness to the most pressing crises, better coordination in leveraging resources and the expertise of partners, and ultimately, a more holistic approach to addressing the most pressing challenges the world faces today.

The FVC takes a programmatic approach, as opposed to a project-based one, to address complex, interconnected challenges. This allows collective support from multi-partner resources to have an even greater impact on the lives and livelihoods of those most in need.

Enambling rapid response and investment in priority areas

Having supported over 65 initiatives in more than 80 countries, the power of flexible funding has been made evident through results achieved over the years. Between the cross-cutting nature of the SDGs and the increasing number and magnitude of crises afflicting the world, the FVC is even more vital today for enabling a rapid response to fast-changing threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Flexible funds and UN Reform for achieving the SDGs

FVC resource partners are committed to achieving the SDGs and prioritizing the most pressing needs of the rural poor through flexible funding. There is growing consensus that current funding mechanisms dominated by hard earmarking, often made available by single donors for individual projects, are inadequate to deliver on the SDGs. This type of funding leads to fragmented, project-oriented solutions as it limits FAO and other development actors’ fexibility in the management of resources

The most recent UN Reform, and specifcally the UN Funding Compact, calls for more unearmarked resources and promotes the importance of flexible funding as a way of ensuring better coordination and impact. The FVC, by contrast, allows resource partners to have a greater impact that is aligned with the UN Reform, supporting the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and contributing to FAO’s Strategic Objectives.

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