Innovative financing models
From donorship to ownership
Creating sustainable change
We believe the only way impact can be sustainable, is for programs to move from a model of donor funding to being owned and run by local health governments. To get there, innovative financing models can help.
the challenge
Moving from short-term, project-based funding
Many health interventions in low-resource settings are initially driven by external funding from international donors. While these projects often lead to immediate improvements, they often face sustainability issues once donor funding ceases.
Many programs fail in the crucial scale-up. Through the Innovation-to-scale program the goal was to find mechanisms for proven innovations to scale up with sustainable impact.
The opportunity
Sustainable scale-up of proven solutions
In 2020, we partnered with the World Bank's Global Financing Facility (GFF), NORAD and UNICEF on an Innovation-to-Scale award to scale up proven innovations to reduce maternal and newborn mortality. In collaboration with national governments, the aim was to show how these innovations could be delivered quickly and sustainable over time to help achieve their maternal and newborn mortality reduction targets.
Out of 320 proposals from 26 countries, five projects were awarded financing based on research evidence, field pilots, and a proven implementation model in low-resource settings.
The impact
Working towards global impact
Safer Births Bundle of Care in Tanzania and Saving Little Lives in Ethiopia were two of programs that received funding of 4.5M USD each. Based on the results from the Safer Births Bundle of Care, the program was provided with an additional 8 M USD to scale up from 30 to 150 hospitals in Tanzania.
If these programs deliver the expected impact and cost-efficiency predicted, they will provide a strong case for national scale-up not only in Tanzania and Ethiopia, but also in the 36 other Global Financing Facility countries.
