The Start Fund: Value and Uniqueness in a Shifting Humanitarian Funding Environment
The Start Fund is the first multi-donor pooled humanitarian funding mechanism, managed exclusively by international and national non-governmental organisations (INGOs/NNGOs). As its membership has expanded, the frequency of alerts has risen, tools and systems have improved, governance has been restructured, and evidence and learning pro-cesses have been strengthened. In its sixth year of operation, by August 2020 the Start Fund had awarded over £71m and demand was seen to be at an all-time high. Past independent evaluations of the Start Fund and its performance have concluded that it is a successful and unique funding mechanism that has added significant value to, and has great potential to reform, the humanitarian financing system.
In late 2020, the Start Fund commissioned an evaluation to provide:
- A broad overview of global humanitarian funding mechanisms and landscapes with a focus on six countries; the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), El Salvador, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Sudan, and Yemen.
- Insights into the value and uniqueness of the Start Fund itself in order to assess how these attributes can be further optimised for the future.