Start Ready went live in 2022 - creating the first-of-its-kind NGO-managed risk pool. It is an innovative financing mechanism that prepositions funds for civil society organisations to proactively support and protect communities at risk of climate crises.
Over the past three years, we have disbursed £12m to frontline NGOs in anticipation and early response to hazards such as cyclones, floods, droughts, and heatwaves. We have directly reached nearly 1 million people across the 30+ Start Ready activations that took place during the first 3 Risk Pools.
As we launch Risk Pool 4 with a growing portfolio, we look back at some of the key components that make Start Ready a success:
Locally led systems
Start Ready provides the ‘fuel’ to nationally built and managed Disaster Risk Financing systems, which grow organically through our network of NGOs. Informed by Start Network’s Building Blocks framework, members collaborate and coordinate the build of these systems at the national level, empowering a diversity of systems suited to their contexts.
In Pakistan, the Ready Pakistan Hub has led the way in district-level contingency planning and national governance, resulting in more than half of funds disbursed going directly to local and national NGOs, accounting for 63% of projects.
In the Philippines, the district-level consortia’s worked extensively to embed disaster management within the communities, leading to recognition and an award from local government entities. At present, the country is lobbying for a first-of-its-kind bill recognising the role of anticipatory action in national disaster management legislation.
Early and predictable financing
By prepositioning funding ahead of risk seasons and agreeing to forecast thresholds as the conditions for fund release, Start Ready allows members to plan with predictable funding that is immediately released ahead of the crisis onset. This saves valuable time in planning and fund mobilisation, and enables better planning and coordination of activities
A recent study carried out from an activation for a cyclone in Bangladesh demonstrated that this approach resulted in economic savings of $14.88 USD for every dollar invested in anticipatory actions.
In Madagascar, our members noted that despite initially not engaging in anticipatory action, Start Ready enabled them to implement 5 days quicker than they would usually be able to respond to cyclones, meaning they could act 2 days before landfall rather than 3 days after. The approach saves lives as well as helps to protect assets, enabling quicker recovery.
Innovative financing tools
By creating a risk pool, Start Ready is innovative in utilising reinsurance and financial modelling to maximise effective fund management—a unique approach to humanitarian pooled funds. This enables us to stretch or leverage our donor funding to access private capital.
Meaning that for every £1 donated to Start Ready, we can preposition up to £2 for communities who need it.
It also helps us to plan for the financial sustainability of the fund and protect against insolvency risk. With ever-growing uncertainty of resources, this approach helps us to ensure we meet the needs of our communities
With the support of our broker, Aon, we have developed a bespoke reinsurance product that provides additional financing should we deplete the fund before the year's end, ensuring we can still disburse prepositioned funds. This is the first time a pooled fund focused on anticipatory action has been insured.
Furthermore, we have experimented with blending financial mechanisms to provide the best protection for communities.
In Zimbabwe and Madagascar, this has been through securing parametric insurance through ARC Replica.
In Somalia and Senegal, this involves parametric insurance providing an additional layer of funding on top of Start Ready when the event is particularly severe, giving a larger injection of cash.
Key to continued success, in the next year we need to:
Ensure the mechanism is flexible for evolving needs
As the mechanism grows, we need to ensure that it remains flexible to the uncertainties and evolving nature of humanitarian work. With advanced modelling and utilisation of forecasting information, we can deliver preventative assistance. However, forecasts can be wrong or not capture nuanced social and political changes. A key challenge is ensuring the mechanism remains functional while retaining the flexibility to adapt.
This was highlighted in April 2025, when flood forecasts failed to predict the severe flooding in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Thanks to our basis risk funding instrument and rapid analysis and decision-making, we were able to activate funding. This demonstrates the need for instruments to be responsive to humanitarian needs and integrate fail-safes.
Continue to embed learning to improve
Given the diversity of systems and their unique contexts, each operates at a different stage, with varying strengths and areas for improvement. Embedding learning involves ensuring each system, with its specificities, can regularly reflect, stock-take, and improve. As a result, we are developing learning tools and in-country MEAL frameworks to capture insights both from system building and specific activations.
We are also embarking on a comprehensive evaluation of the Start Ready programme to assess impact and learning from these first three years.
Balance risk appetite
Prepositioning and preplanning based on financial modelling strengthen our risk-informed decision-making. It allows us to plan for the year and provide guarantees for funding. However, it also fixes disbursement amounts and conditions for fund release. While modelling informs decision-making, it ultimately represents a likely version of reality. This creates a tension between planning effectively to maximise funding allocations and reduce donor funds sitting idle and maintaining the solvency of the pool to ensure comprehensive protection throughout the risk period. Our risk appetite represents this tension, and getting the right balance remains a focus for decision-makers.
