Funding Pathways Innovators Should Know About Right Now
What We Heard in Kampala, Nairobi, and Kigali — and What Just Opened in Washington, DC
Dear Unlock Aid community,
We just returned from roundtables in Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda with a clear message from ministry of health officials: they want to work with a new generation of high-impact, cost-effective partners with solutions ready to scale.
Meanwhile, new funding mechanisms to support those partnerships are starting to materialize.
Below are three funding pathways innovators should be engaging right now:
1. The State Department’s Advancing Global Health APS
On Friday, the U.S. State Department released the Advancing Global Health Annual Program Statement (APS), the first competitive funding opportunity released under its new America First Global Health Strategy.
For innovators, this represents a meaningful shift in how government partnerships can begin. Instead of requiring lengthy proposals and extensive registration requirements upfront, organizations can start with a simple five-page concept note, significantly lowering barriers to entry. Only organizations invited to a second round will then be asked to provide additional due diligence and documentation.
The first opportunities focus on disease outbreak response and child protection, with additional thematic areas expected to follow. Eligibility is broad: U.S. and local organizations, for-profit and nonprofit enterprises, universities, faith-based organizations, and public international organizations can all apply. Up to 100 awards are anticipated, ranging from $500,000 to $250 million, with a total pool of up to $4.5 billion.
To put forward a credible application, organizations need to demonstrate that their approach can deploy quickly, deliver measurable results, and support a sustainable transition to host-country ownership.
Applications are accepted across four rolling windows, the first of which opens now and closes May 31. Subsequent windows run through August, November, and February. We expect addenda specifying additional funding opportunities to be released during these windows.
For now, the State Department has limited this APS to health-related initiatives, but we are cautiously optimistic they’ll use this more flexible spending model for other sectors. The key takeaway for innovators who have been discouraged in the past by the high bar just to apply: this process starts with five pages, not fifty.
2. Countries Are Increasingly Driving Health Partnerships
The second pathway for innovators is engaging with countries directly. The Department of State has signed global health Memoranda of Understanding with 24 countries totaling nearly $20 billion in commitments. These agreements give governments significant say in determining how funds will be spent — and to whom resources will flow.
Last week, Unlock Aid hosted a series of Health Innovation Roundtables in three of those countries – Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda – bringing together nearly 20 high-impact organizations from our Health Solutions Index, host government officials responsible for managing their national health systems, and representatives from U.S. embassies.
Two messages came through clearly across every conversation: 1) Countries will have substantial autonomy in deciding how MOU funds get allocated, and 2) Don’t expect U.S. embassies to be publishing many open RFPs, as was past practice. Instead, engage countries directly.
We want to be clear-eyed here, however: implementation timelines will vary significantly by country, thematic priorities will differ (some disease areas are emphasized more in certain countries than others), and some of these agreements have faced delays over legal concerns and co-financing expectations. But none of that changes the core advice — the organizations that will be best positioned when funding does flow are the ones building relationships now, not later.
This advice to engage countries goes beyond the MOUs, too. Across the board, countries are taking greater ownership of their health expenditures and systems. Innovators should be building relationships with ministries of health and national health agencies regardless of whether a formal MOU is in place.
Ministry of health officials told us they are actively looking for partners who can help them:
Strengthen their national health infrastructure,
Improve supply chains and disease surveillance systems, and
Deliver results in more cost-effective and sustainable ways.
3. The DIV Fund Is Open
Finally, while not a government funding mechanism, high-impact innovators should be aware of the relaunch of the DIV Fund, which builds on the legacy of USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures, one of the highest-returning programs in the agency’s history.
The new independent fund launched with $48 million in philanthropic backing and offers three tiers of grants calibrated to evidence and stage of development: support for early pilots, rigorous testing of ideas that have shown promise at pilot scale, and large-scale expansion of solutions ready to deliver impact at scale.
Importantly, the DIV Fund is not limited to health, making it a valuable opportunity for innovators across sectors who can demonstrate evidence of impact and a credible path to scale.
A Moment for Builders
Taken together, these developments point to something important: new pathways are emerging for innovators to engage with governments and funders. While the most momentum right now is in health, we’re cautiously optimistic that more sectors will follow.
For organizations building proven, scalable, and cost-effective solutions, now is the time to act.
To Progress,
Unlock Aid
P.S. Due to strong interest and multiple requests for extensions, we are extending the deadline for applications to the Food Security and Nutrition Solutions Index until Friday, March 13. If your organization is building solutions across food systems, agriculture, nutrition, or food distribution, we encourage you to apply and share the opportunity with others in your network.