Spotlight on
Improving global health and development
Global Health & Development Program Focus
In January, the global health and development (GHD) community was rocked by sudden, severe U.S. foreign aid cuts and the dismantling of USAID.
These cuts echoed around the world, and created an acute crisis for organizations delivering lifesaving services in low- and middle-income countries.
In response, the Founders Pledge community mobilized on two fronts. We launched a temporary Rapid Response Fund to meet time-critical needs, distributing over $13M in six months to keep the world's most effective organizations delivering essential services to those who needed them most. Shortly afterwards, we evolved our existing Global Health and Development Fund into the Catalytic Impact Fund (CIF) to pursue longer-term, sustainable solutions to reduce global poverty and suffering.
▲ Photo by Doug Linstedt on Unsplash
▲ Katrina Sill, Global Health & Development Lead
2025 revealed something powerful about our community: when there’s a risk of increased global suffering, you act. Together, we funded interventions that are projected to protect lifesaving services threatened by aid cuts, strengthen government health systems across ten African countries, accelerate life-saving drug access in low-income nations, improve literacy for over two million children, and more.
Together, we’re investing in highly impactful funding opportunities that help build the systems, policies, and infrastructure that can strengthen global health and development for the long-term. As we carry the Catalytic Impact Fund strategy forward into 2026, every grant is designed to multiply impact beyond our initial funding, creating sustainable impact that reaches far more people than direct aid alone.
To everyone who contributed this year to impactful GHD programs: thank you. Your generosity did more than save lives - it demonstrated the collective power we have to protect global health and development progress.
Katrina Sill
GHD Lead
GHD Program headline figures
$124.9M*
Contributed to the GHD program in 2025
71
Grantees
36%
Year-on-year giving growth
*Includes contributions to the CIF, RRF, and directly to HIFO by members and Philanthropy Partners.
Among other outcomes, grants from the program are estimated to:
Reach 24.5M...
... people with vital nutrition supplementation
Improve 17.2M...
... student-years with better education support
Support 1.5M...
... people with livelihood training and advice
Rapid Response Fund: filling time-sensitive funding gaps in foreign aid
In January 2025, the abrupt suspension of U.S. foreign aid created an unprecedented crisis. More than 80% of USAID's global contracts were frozen, representing roughly 20-25% of total global health aid, and leaving millions at immediate risk of losing access to lifesaving interventions including malaria prevention, HIV treatment, and emergency nutrition programs.
Founders Pledge and The Life You Can Save together launched the Rapid Response Fund (RRF) in February as an emergency measure to provide fast, flexible support to organizations facing acute funding gaps.
The RRF followed a rigorous evaluation process to direct resources effectively:
- Identify the most urgent needs: prioritizing programs facing severe funding shortfalls
- Assess geographic and sector impact: prioritizing areas most impacted by funding freeze
- Select for evidence and cost-effectiveness: supporting programs with measurable impact
- Deploy funds strategically: avoiding duplication and maximizing reach
Through this approach, we mobilized more than $13 million in six months to high-impact programs projected to save the lives of more than 4,000 children.
▲ Member talk and dinner in London with David Miliband, former UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Rapid Response Fund by the numbers:
$13M+
Contributed to RRF
1,300+
Individual donors
13
Programs funded
4,718
Estimated lives saved through our grants
From rapid response to lasting change
What began as a temporary funding freeze in January has become the new reality—and our response evolved to match. Following closing the Rapid Response Fund in August 2025, we opened the next chapter of our Global Health & Development (GHD) work: the Catalytic Impact Fund (CIF).
Even before we launched the CIF, the GHD program at Founders Pledge had been identifying and supporting catalytic opportunities that would multiply the impact of our members’ donations. Rather than just funding programs that help people today, we prioritize opportunities where a small investment can generate sustained outsized returns.
What catalytic impact can look like:
- Trigger systemic improvements: we support investments that create new long-term infrastructure or increase the cost-effectiveness of existing systems
- Remove key bottlenecks: we identify and remove barriers that stand in the way of accelerated impact
- Crowd in capital: we provide early-stage funding that attracts substantial follow-on investment for cost-effective opportunities
Catalytic Impact Fund 2025 by the numbers:
$10.5M
Contributed to the Fund
$1.3M
Granted from the Fund
90+
Total supporters
Impact stories
EIDU: £6M grant
Half of the world's children finish primary school unable to read with comprehension, a crisis that closes off future opportunities and limits earning potential for life.
Our grant to EIDU in 2025 is projected to reach over 725,000 students in Kenya and Nigeria by scaling proven digital learning interventions at just $11 per student. The Nigeria pilot performed so well that four states have already included EIDU in their government budgets for full rollout, creating a sustainable path to reaching millions more children.
▲ Image source: Unsplash
RestoringVision: £3.15M grant
Over 830 million working-age people worldwide suffer from untreated presbyopia: blurred near vision that forces tailors, weavers, mechanics, and farmers out of their livelihoods.
Our grant to RestoringVision is on track to provide 2.5 million people in Nigeria and India with reading glasses at under $2 per person, immediately restoring their ability to work productively and earn income.
▲ Image Source: Restoring Vision
Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI): $2.1M grant
When USAID froze global health funding in early 2025, 10 Sub-Saharan African countries lost an average of 14% of their health budgets overnight. Our grant enabled Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)’s Technical Support Units to co-develop solutions with government officials to protect critical health services—helping stretch scarce resources by identifying cost-saving measures and shifting funds to the programs that save the most lives.
▲ Image Source: CHAI
ARMoR: $136K grant
Each year, over 1M people in low- and middle-income countries die from drug-resistant infections, many of them simply because the right medicine is out of reach.
Our grant helped ARMoR search for and develop promising pathways to accelerate access to advanced antibiotics in these countries, reducing the chance that people die of treatable infections.
▲ Image Source: Unsplash
Global health and development in the media
▲ Source: Catholic Relief Services
Alliance Press: Philanthropists urged to ‘step up’ as emergency funds launch to plug USAID freeze
AP News: Private donors gave more than $125M to keep foreign aid programs going after US cuts
Associated Press: Emergency fundraisers offer a lifeline to groups who’ve lost foreign aid
Devex: Philanthropic initiative launches long-term fund to replace USAID stopgap
Forbes: With FEMA Cuts The Rapid Response Fund Is Stepping Up, But Will It Be Enough?
Devex: Rapid response funds for organizations affected by the US aid freeze
Inside Philanthropy: How donors can maximize impact following USAID cuts: the PRO initiative
Vox: 3 ways you can help the people hurt by Trump’s foreign aid cuts
What our members say
“I haven't found anything that addresses both urgent humanitarian needs and systemic change as effectively as this fund. Even small amounts make a real difference, and Founders Pledge makes it simple to maximize your donation's impact.”
Nina Mannheimer
Co-Founder, Klim
“I rely on Founders Pledge to help me deploy funds where I can have confidence that they will be effective. They have helped me think about the time critical nature of specific donation opportunities and the balance across different areas of need. Recently we’ve made donations to the IRC (International Rescue Committee). In the [post U.S.-Aid] environment we are currently facing, organisations like the IRC are able to provide cover where it’s most critically needed to protect decades of humanitarian work from annihilation.”
Ben Medlock
Co-Founder, Swiftkey
