Established by the General Assembly in 1966 and with headquarters in New York City, UNCDF is an autonomous UN organization affiliated with UNDP.

[1] The original UNCDF mandate from the UN General Assembly (UNGA) is to “assist developing countries in the development of their economies by supplementing existing sources of capital assistance by means of grants and loans” (General Assembly Resolution 2186, 13 December 1966).

In the mid-1990s, UNCDF began focusing on the role local governments could play in planning, financing, and maintaining capital investments.

Promoting effective infrastructure investment and service delivery via decentralized public financial management has been UNCDF's mainstay ever since.

However, it has developed a considerable track record of going where others do not, and then “leveraging in” larger sources of public and private capital.