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The Start Fund has an established practice of providing management response to its external, independent evaluations. Developed through a participatory process, the management response helps to ensure that the evaluations are used, contributing to the Start Funds’ effectiveness, learning, and accountability.   Start Fund constituted an Evaluation Management Response Drafting Committee, comprising of: Three representatives from the Start Fund Strategic Committee: John Birchenough from Catholic international development charity, CAFOD; Jonathan Brooker from Solidarites International UK; and Saba Mahmood from Islamic Relief Worldwide and Start Funds, Head of Funds, Lucile Brethes Start Fund Manager, Lucretia Puentes Start Funds MEAL Manager, Chaitali Chattopadhyay     The drafting committee members carried out a wide-range consultation with the broader Start Fund committee members, Start Network Leadership Team and the Board members to develop a comprehensive management response to the evaluation. The document can be accessed here.  The progress against the management response will be presented to the Start Fund Strategic Committee on a regular basis to ensure compliance and accountability towards the committed actions.

This external evaluation was commissioned to ‘assess the preparedness of Start Fund to scale-up its operations and suggest future growth rate scenarios’. The overarching purpose of the evaluation is stated as two-fold:  Assess the preparedness of the Start Fund to scale up its operation;  Inform the Start Fund of the appropriate scale-up considerations (including the size and growth rate scenarios).

The Start Fund is a collective mechanism, allowing Start Network members to access rapid financing for crisis anticipation and response. Its focus is on underfunded small to medium scale crises, spikes in chronic humanitarian emergencies, and forecasts and early action / anticipation for impending crises (Start Network, 2019b). Between its inception in 2014 and mid-March 2019, the Start Fund was alerted 311 times. Out of these, 209 alerts were successfully activated, resulting in a total of US$ 65.6 million awarded for anticipation and response in 60 countries. Building on a global mapping of humanitarian and disaster-related financial flows, this paper analyses past Start Fund alerts and allocations considering the predictability, severity and timing of the Start Fund caseload.

This report from Catholic Relief Services funded through the Start Fund learning grant, identifies best practices and highlights the lessons learnt following the completion of projects within Alert 195 Vietnam (Typhoon Damrey). 

This 'value for money' report from Solidarites International identifies several lessons learnt from the completion of ‘Alert 194 DRC (Cholera)’ and highlights the fundamental value about the impact of the Start Fund for the response.

Localisation is a foundational and non-negotiable principle within the Start Network. This report presents a ‘baseline assessment’ of where the Start Fund and three DEPP projects currently sits with the‘localisation agenda’.