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Start Bangladesh Hub

Programme

Start Fund Bangladesh

Rapid response funding, decided collectively by local members within 72 hours of an alert being raised.

Rapid responsePooled fundMember-led decisionsFirst nationally managed programme, 2017

What Start Fund Bangladesh is

A pot of money that already exists when the crisis starts.

Most humanitarian funding is raised after a crisis becomes visible. That gap — between a crisis happening and money existing to respond to it — is where the damage compounds. Start Fund Bangladesh closes it by holding donor money in a pooled “pot” before anything happens.

Members raise alerts. A committee of members reviews the evidence and decides collectively how much goes where. The Secretariat moves the money and holds the compliance regime. No single organisation, and no donor, decides which crisis gets funded.

Why the pooled model is fast

  • The money is already raised, so no appeal is needed.
  • The decision-makers are already in the country, and already know the districts.
  • The due diligence on members is already done, so disbursement is not gated on vetting.
  • The alert format is standardised, so evidence arrives in a reviewable shape.

Start Fund Bangladesh funds response after a crisis. For funding released before a hazard arrives, see Disaster Risk Financing.

At a glance

Mechanism
Pooled fund, pre-positioned
Decision window
72 hours
Who decides
Member allocation committee
Alerts on record
6
Nationally managed since
2017

How the mechanism works

From crisis to community, step by step

The 72-hour commitment covers the decision. What happens either side of it matters just as much.

  1. Step 01

    A member raises an alert

    Hours after onset

    Any member can raise an alert against a standard format, setting out what has happened, where, who is affected and what the immediate needs are.

  2. Step 02

    Members review collectively

    Within 72 hours

    The allocation committee — member representatives, rotating, with conflict-of-interest rules applied — reviews the evidence and decides whether and how to allocate.

  3. Step 03

    Funds are disbursed

    Days, not weeks

    Because due diligence on members is already complete, money moves to the responding organisations as soon as the decision is made.

  4. Step 04

    Aid reaches the community

    Measured, and published

    The days between the crisis occurring and support arriving is recorded on the alert and published. It is the measure the whole model is judged on.

Headline metrics

Timeliness, in medians

Medians rather than averages: one alert where a landslide blocked road access for a fortnight should not distort the typical case in either direction.

How this is measured
Crisis to community reach
6.5days (median)From the crisis occurring to aid reaching the community.
Alert to allocation decision
2days (median)Members decide collectively. The commitment is 72 hours.
Crisis to alert raised
0.5days (median)How fast local members identify and escalate a crisis.

Placeholder figures. Methodology published in the resource library.

Delivery

What the fund has done

Alerts
6
People reached
162.16K
Funds disbursed
£1,377,000
Districts
16

Year on year

Is the network getting faster?

The same three medians plotted across years. A downward line is the outcome the model exists to produce.

Median days by year of alert. Placeholder data; low alert counts in early years make single-year medians volatile.

Recent alerts

Latest activations

Full alert index & map

Local members raise the alert. Local members decide.

— The pooled fund model, in one line

Learning & resources

Guidance, evidence and reporting

All Start Fund resources

What's coming up

Upcoming Start Fund events

All events