Pooled Funds - The New Humanitarian Silver Bullet? - September 2022

Pooled funds are becoming an ever more popular tool in the humanitarian financing toolbox. With growing humanitarian needs, there are attempts to find better and more creative ways to get funds to frontline responders, including by using pooled funds.

Over recent years, pooled funds have grown in number and size. There are now more pooled funds than in the previous decade and the amount of money allocated to pooled funds has been increasing. More donors are contributing to a range of pooled funds for a variety of reasons.

Although pooled funds still represent a relatively small percentage of overall global humanitarian financing, they could potentially re-shape the humanitarian financing landscape.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)'s study looks at how pooled funds have evolved, particularly in the last five years, and identifies how they could become more effective in benefitting various stakeholders. Over the past five years, there have been innovative attempts by pooled funds to advance some humanitarian policy discussions, such as supporting anticipatory action, encouraging localisation commitments, and addressing persistent gaps in response. Despite such improvements, there are a number of additional ways in which pooled funds could become even more effective.

The study also makes recommendations to support the Grand Bargain commitments.