Start Financing Facility

The Start Financing Facility will be the financial infrastructure for the network, able to deploy donor money at scale, in timely, predictable and efficient ways to frontline NGOs around the world. The long-term goal is for the SFF to incorporate existing Start Network funding mechanisms as well as new instruments, to provide a continuum of funding that will enable our members to better protect communities at risk.

The need for the facility arose from the Start Evolves process which outlined a future vision for the Start Network as a disbursed structure of interconnected national and regional hubs. The Start Financing Facility will support the creation of locally appropriate, innovative disaster risk finance instruments by these hubs, whilst connecting these into a wider structure that allows for risk-sharing arrangements and efficiencies through financial strategies (such as risk pooling, risk layering and liquidity mechanisms).

Where are we now

Current Start Network funding portfolio

Migration Emergency Response Fund

The Start Network’s Migration Emergency Response Fund (MERF) allows organisations to provide a rapid response to changes in needs along the migration route.

Start Fund

The Start Fund provides rapid financing to underfunded small to medium scale crises, spikes in chronic humanitarian crises, and to act in anticipation of impending crises, filling a critical gap in humanitarian financing.

Start Fund Bangladesh

The Start Fund Bangladesh is a £10 million rapid emergency response fund created by the Start Network in 2017 with support from UK aid from the British people.

Start Fund Anticipation

Start Fund Anticipation enables NGOs to prepare when they see a crisis coming and respond early to mitigate the predicted impacts. It is the first NGO funding mechanism to be available for anticipatory interventions.

FORECAST BASED FINANCING: MADAGASCAR

Allowing Start Network members to model and predict drought, access funding, and act early in Madagascar.

ARC Replica Programme

African Risk Capacity (ARC) is an organisation mandated by the African Union to help African Union Member States proactively manage natural disaster risk.

DISASTER RISK FINANCING PAKISTAN

We are supporting civil society innovation in Pakistan by enabling frontline humanitarians to access early, predictable funds to protect communities from forecasted heatwaves, flood and drought.

Where are we going

The Start Financing Facility will:

Offer a single process for donors to fund a range of national or thematic Start Network funds/financing
Channel funding as directly as possible to frontline humanitarian responders, in line with our localisation targets
Provide a continuum of funding for different kinds of crises; to respond to risk of different severity and likelihood
Make the best use of efficiencies offered by scale and geographic diversity, for example by pooling risks across different contexts
Enable the emergence of locally appropriate financial instruments by NGOs by providing the facility/framework within which instruments can be piloted and taken to scale
Ensure allocation of funding based on needs, in line with humanitarian principles

Tell us what you think

The Start Financing Facility design will be a bottom-up process, combining perspectives of the users of the facility (including NGOs and donors), with global technical expertise, including from the World Bank. This will not only ensure appropriate deployment of the right technical expertise but also secure buy-in from the key stakeholders of the SFF, helping to increase the chances of success of the design.

As the first stage of this consultation, we would like to invite you/your organisation to be part of this process by filling out the following survey https://startnetwork.typeform.com/to/UasGJw