For over 20 years, Palladium has committed 1.5% of our profit before tax to our global giving platform, Let’s Make it Possible. Through this platform and in partnership with the Kyeema Foundation, Palladium funds humanitarian relief efforts, supports community projects nominated by employees, and runs an annual Challenge Fund to tackle a major global problem.

In 2026, Palladium is proud to launch its Challenge Fund under a new and urgent theme: Water for Prosperity: Safeguarding and Maximising the Value of Water Resources.

Water is humanity’s most vital natural resource. It underpins health, food production, industry, energy, ecosystems, and economic development. Yet across the globe, water systems are under unprecedented strain. Climate change, population growth, rapid urbanisation, and unsustainable extraction are intensifying water scarcity, flooding, and pollution—placing communities, economies, and ecosystems at growing risk.

Despite its central role in development, water is still widely undervalued and poorly managed. Agriculture accounts for around 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, while cities and industries compete for increasingly fragile supplies. Degraded watersheds, over allocated river basins, and polluted aquifers are reducing nature’s ability to store, purify, and regulate water—undermining long term resilience and prosperity.

“We rely on water for almost everything that enables people and economies to thrive, yet too often it’s treated as an afterthought,” says Sinéad Magill, CEO of Palladium and Chair of the Kyeema Foundation. “When water systems fail, it’s not just an environmental issue—it’s a direct threat to livelihoods, health, and stability. This Challenge Fund is about changing how water is valued and managed, so it can continue to support prosperity for generations to come.”

Reframing Water as a Strategic Asset

At the heart of the 2026 Challenge Fund is a simple but powerful shift: water is not just a service to be delivered—it is a foundational asset. It connects human development, economic growth, climate resilience, and natural capital. Yet current systems often treat water as free, infinite, or someone else’s responsibility, creating a vicious cycle where degraded water resources constrain growth, and limited growth reduces the capacity to manage water sustainably.

The Challenge Fund is seeking innovations that break this cycle. These might be solutions that increase the productivity of water, align incentives so that protection and restoration make economic sense, and improve accountability through better data, governance, and transparency.

“We’re looking for ideas that show water stewardship and economic development are not competing goals,” Magill adds. “The strongest proposals will demonstrate that protecting water systems can unlock value—creating social, environmental, and economic returns at the same time.”

A Call for Bold, Practical Innovation

Through Water for Prosperity, Palladium is inviting bold, practical, and scalable ideas that can be piloted or scaled in real world settings. The fund is particularly interested in solutions that work across sectors—such as agriculture, cities, industry, energy, extractives, digital infrastructure, ecosystems, and finance—and that address systemic failures rather than isolated symptoms.

All proposals must focus on high stress water regions. Priority areas include improving agricultural water productivity, reducing urban water loss and enabling reuse, strengthening industrial water stewardship, supporting water smart digital infrastructure, and deploying nature based solutions such as wetlands, floodplains, and aquifer recharge.

Many promising water innovations struggle to move beyond the pilot stage, often due to fragmented governance, weak data, misaligned incentives, or limited access to early stage capital. The Challenge Fund aims to help overcome these barriers by pairing grant funding with tailored technical support and access to Palladium’s global network of advisors, governments, investors, and delivery partners.

Backing Solutions that Last

Selected organisations will be supported to demonstrate measurable impact—from water savings and quality improvements to ecosystem restoration, economic value, and equity outcomes. Above all, Palladium is looking for solutions that can endure, scale, and strengthen resilience in the places that need it most.

“Water challenges are already shaping the future of development,” notes Magill. “With this Challenge Fund, we want to back the innovators who are proving that smarter water management isn’t just possible, it’s essential to shared prosperity.”

Have a solution that could solve the problem? Learn more and apply here.