Learning from the Start Ready humanitarian pooled fund

Learning from the Start Ready humanitarian pooled fund

The world faces increasingly severe and cascading climate risks, putting the humanitarian system under pressure to act earlier, faster and more effectively. Start Ready – a humanitarian pooled fund that pre-arranges funding for anticipatory action – was created to meet that challenge.

Launched in 2022, Start Ready protects communities from climate risks by supporting actions to prevent or reduce the impacts before they fully unfold. It links funding to predefined triggers for forecastable hazards and, when the thresholds are met, funds are automatically released to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which then implement pre-agreed contingency plans.

As the first NGO-managed risk pool of its kind, Start Ready marked a significant shift in how humanitarian financing works. Since its launch, it has disbursed over 28 million US dollars to frontline NGOs, directly benefitting more than 1.5 million people. Over three annual funding cycles – known as Risk Pools – the mechanism has continued to evolve, incorporating lessons from activations across diverse contexts.

Start Network commissioned an independent evaluation to assess Start Ready’s impact over its first three years. The following findings offer important insights into what is needed to localize anticipatory action in practice.

Shifting power and mindsets to enable local leadership

Start Ready stands out among disaster risk financing (DRF) mechanisms for its explicit focus on localization. At the country level, its governance structures ensure that at least 50 per cent of members are local and national NGOs. During the evaluation, these arrangements were generally viewed as inclusive and participatory, with greater transparency, fairness and equality in decision-making compared to other DRF platforms.

A key strength is flexibility. Rather than imposing a single governance model, Start Ready allows NGO members in a country to design and adapt structures to their context. However, efforts to ensure inclusive decision-making have, in some places, affected the timeliness and quality of anticipatory interventions.

Participatory contingency-planning processes also played an important role in integrating local and national NGOs into risk-informed early action systems and building their technical expertise. Many organizations reported that this has shifted how they understand and approach risk, with evidence of members applying anticipatory, risk-informed approaches beyond Start Ready programmes. A strong culture of learning, supported by a learning-by-doing approach, has reinforced these gains over time.

While 31 per cent of funding was allocated directly to local and national NGOs in 2025 (with at least a further 20 per cent reaching them indirectly), barriers to local funding remain. These include restricted access to Start Ready (which is linked to Start Network membership), persistent power imbalances between international and local/national NGOs, and operational constraints (e.g., delays in fund transfers), which have required international NGOs to pre-finance activities.

The introduction of reinsurance – a commercial insurance policy that pays out if funds run low in years with unusually high numbers of activations – in 2024 has provided an additional layer of financial protection. This has also allowed Start Ready to take on greater risk in its allocations, while giving confidence to members and communities that funds will be available when trigger thresholds are met.

At the same time, the evaluation highlighted significant opportunity costs. Reinsurance comes with premium costs and can constrain flexibility in the design of triggers, as risks must be quantifiable and modellable in order to be insurable. There is also a risk that it affects decision-making, for example by influencing which hazards are included in the Risk Pool to minimize the likelihood of fund depletion; if risks are highly correlated (such as those linked to El Niño), then the likelihood of multiple activations in the same Risk Pool increases, as will premium costs.

As an early innovation, reinsurance has delivered clear benefits. But further learning is needed to determine whether it represents the most effective long-term approach. The evaluation proposes alternative approaches such as inter-annual risk pooling – allowing funds to be used more flexibly across years – which may offer greater flexibility without the added cost.

Investing across the risk continuum

The evaluation reinforced the argument that anticipatory action depends not only on the timely release of funds, but on whether organizations are ready to act when trigger thresholds are met. Start Ready addresses this by operating across much of the spectrum of risk-informed early action. For example, National Reserves – funds earmarked for operational readiness – have been critical in bridging the gap between contingency planning and implementation. These funds support activities such as pre-arranging supplier contracts, engaging communities and authorities, and pre-positioning relief items. For many local and national NGOs, this has enabled them to operate in an anticipatory way for the first time.

However, one area for improvement identified by the evaluation is how Start Ready aligns with national disaster risk management (DRM) and DRF systems. Anticipatory action is most effective where it is anchored in strong, government-led DRM systems, as seen in Bangladesh and the Philippines. In many countries where Start Ready operates, national DRM systems remain underdeveloped; therefore, while it fills critical protection gaps, it cannot – and should not – provide a systemic solution. Ultimately, anticipatory action frameworks should align with national systems wherever possible, with clear links between contingency plans and national DRM and DRF strategies, and a clear articulation of how they complement public finance.

Looking ahead: adapting and scaling up

Start Ready continues to evolve. Risk Pool 5, launched on 1 May 2026, represents its most ambitious iteration to date. Covering 10 countries and 17 anticipatory action frameworks, it has pre-arranged funding worth 15.9 million British pounds (21.3 million US dollars/18.4 million euros) in funding. It includes new systems to anticipate floods in Madagascar, Nepal and the Philippines, marking Nepal’s entry as a participating country.

Further expansion is planned, with NGO members in Mozambique, South Sudan and Syria set to begin building anticipatory action frameworks, while Colombia is due to enter for Risk Pool 6. Start Ready has also introduced a weighted allocation methodology which will align funding decisions more closely with priorities including humanitarian needs, speed, hazard severity, inclusion and localization.

After three years, Start Ready has strengthened local leadership, delivered real gains in efficiency and – most importantly – enabled earlier action for communities at risk. The evaluation makes clear that realizing the full potential of anticipatory action will require continued adaptation, particularly in addressing structural barriers to localization, refining financial mechanisms and embedding approaches within national systems.