Pooled funds allow governments and private donors to pool their contributions into common, unearmarked funds to deliver life-saving assistance to people who need it most.  

In addition, they enable humanitarian organizations to:  

CBPFs and CERF 

As mentioned, there are two main types of pooled funding mechanisms, both managed by OCHA: CBPFs, which cover crises in specific countries, and CERF, which can cover emergencies anywhere in the world. These pooled fund allocations represent a relatively small portion of global humanitarian funding, but they are critical to the delivery of life-saving assistance. Through their allocation processes, they strengthen the collective humanitarian response, empower country leadership and improve coordination. The funds provide a diversity of ways in which funding can be accessed, enabling humanitarian actors to respond to a multitude of needs on the ground as they arise. See details in 8.4.2 and 8.4.3.  

Other Types of Pooled Funding 

In addition to the traditional CBPFs and CERF, other types of pooled funding operate at the global level:   

Regionally-Hosted Pooled Funds: In 2021, the Regionally-hosted Pooled Fund for Central and West Africa was launched in response to the challenging situation in the Central Sahel region (Burkina Faso, northern Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger, and north-east Nigeria). It is the first ever regional pooled fund managed by OCHA and builds on the success of the CBPF approach (it mirrors many of CBPFs’ practices). It seeks to enhance responses to regional and cross-border emergencies and support the humanitarian response by prioritizing urgent needs whilst promoting regional coordination (including cross-border initiatives when relevant) and synergies to face the interrelated challenges of the Sahel.  

Multi-Partner Trust Funds: Some humanitarian contexts make use of the UNDP administered Multi-Partner Trust Funds (MPTFs), which are relatively small and focused on specific thematic goals. Like other pooled funds, they provide short-term grants and project based funding allocated against a specific programmatic framework. Unlike the humanitarian funds (CERF and CBPFs), the MPTFs can range from being quite small and narrow in thematic focus to having large number of donors and broad objectives. MPTFs are considerably smaller than the CBPFs and are not present in most major crisis countries. See more on MPTFs and development pooled funds in 8.7. 

Agency-Specific Pooled Funding Instruments:  

Contingency Funds: UN agencies such as WFP, UNICEF and UNHCR maintain contingency funds for preparedness purposes. Some of the larger INGOs also maintain contingency funds for rapid response purposes or unforeseen exigencies.

Start Fund: More than 50 INGOs are now part of the global Start Network which collectively manages a global grant-making mechanism, the Start Fund. This serves a similar function as the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) does for IFRC and should approve funding withing 72 hours of an alert (making it one of the fastest, collectively owned, early response mechanism in the world). It focuses on three types of humanitarian needs: 1) underfunded small to medium scale crises; 2) spikes in chronic humanitarian emergencies; and 3) forecast and early action for impending crises.