For NGOs, building products from scratch is incredibly hard and rarely sustainable. Many don’t have the skills or internal funding to maintain complex tools over time.
Yet at the same time, there are almost no off-the-shelf solutions that meet all the unique needs of vulnerable people and the contexts they live in. Privacy, trust, and low-tech usability aren’t standard features in the commercial market. This leaves organisations stuck: they can’t just buy something ready-made, but they also can’t realistically build and sustain it themselves.
The humanitarian sector needs to stop thinking about tech like a washing machine, and more like a baby*.
For NGOs, building products from scratch is incredibly hard and rarely sustainable. Many don’t have the skills or internal funding to maintain complex tools over time.
Yet at the same time, there are almost no off-the-shelf solutions that meet all the unique needs of vulnerable people and the contexts they live in. Privacy, trust, and low-tech usability aren’t standard features in the commercial market. This leaves organisations stuck: they can’t just buy something ready-made, but they also can’t realistically build and sustain it themselves.
What the Private Sector Knows
In the private sector, one of the first lessons is that technology isn’t a product - it’s a service. No company launches a tool and walks away. And no company launches a tool without a business plan and a defined customer base.
That’s why most private sector models are built around subscriptions, long-term contracts, or retainers. Technology is sustained through continuous support, updates, and reinvestment.
Our Journey with Fatima
We learned this firsthand with Fatima.
- Stage 1: We built it as an internal product for CARE.
- Stage 2: We launched it as an external product that anyone could use.
- Stage 3: We realised organisations wanted more than software - they wanted a service. They needed us to find respondents, design surveys, run research, and deliver insights.
That shift, from internal product to external service, is what allowed us to build something sustainable and useful.
Fatima's journey towards a sustainable service
Rethinking the Funding Model
Grant funding is incredibly valuable for initial setup and the first three-year runway. But from day one, tools need to be designed with a commercial model in mind - one with sector-wide applicability that organisations are willing to pay for. That’s what allows you to keep nurturing and growing the “baby,” instead of abandoning it once the initial project ends.
One practical tool is the Business Model Canvas (we Love Paula Gil Baizan’s), which forces you to answer the important questions upfront:
- Who are your customers?
- What value are you offering them?
- How will you reach them?
- What resources and partnerships will you need?
- How will you generate revenue to sustain the tool?
In humanitarian tech, those questions are often asked in year three - when the money has already run out. Private sector actors build them in from day one. That’s why their products survive.
Moving Forward
Right now, too many humanitarian actors still approach technology as a one-off project: short-term funding, built from scratch, then left to fade. To change that, we need to move:
- From short project cycles → to long-term service models that keep tools alive and safe.
- From isolated NGO builds → to shared platforms that can be adapted and reused across the sector.
- From product thinking → to service thinking, where tools are maintained, updated, and nurtured - like the baby, not the washing machine.
Technology in humanitarian contexts isn’t a washing machine you buy once and forget; it’s a baby that needs to be nurtured, protected, and grown over time. And just like raising a child, it takes a village - NGOs, donors, and private sector partners working together continuously - to build and sustain technology that truly serves vulnerable people.
(*The washing machine vs baby analogy isn't something I coined, here is the original article from the excellent Daylight Design)
