The WHO Foundation: Applying a “Start-up Mentality” to the Challenges of Global Health

WHO Foundation CEO Anil Soni

The World Health Organization (WHO) became part of the collective consciousness for funders seeking trusted partners during the pandemic. Its singular role as the U.N.’s directing and coordinating health authority made it an essential part of the global response for those who shared its vision of “health for all” and belief that healthcare is a basic human right.

Within the first six weeks after WHO declared a pandemic, philanthropists, companies and ordinary citizens poured more than $200 million into its COVID Solidarity Response Fund. Work was led by a collaboration between the U.N. Foundation, global partners, and the then-recently launched WHO Foundation.  

 Four years later, the WHO Foundation is finding its footing and has some ambitious medium-term responses, as well as “big bets” in the works. To learn more, IP connected with Anil Soni, the foundation’s CEO and first employee, to discuss how it got off the ground, its current pressures and priorities, and the start-up mentality that’s helping to drive its ambitious goals forward.

Creating an open tent

Years before COVID’s global onslaught, WHO recognized that two factors were hindering its ability to fully execute on supporting an increasingly complex global health ecosystem.

First, flexible funding was in short supply. Nearly 80% of its budget was earmarked for efforts constrained by funder preconditions or onerous reporting requirements. Second, it wasn’t connected to the potentially enormous universe of untapped philanthropic support. Despite WHO’s 75-year leadership role in global health, it had never had an affiliate that focused solely on garnering public and private support, like the relationship between UNICEF and UNICEF USA. (The WHO typically gets its funding from a combination of assessed contributions, which are countries’ membership dues, and voluntary contributions, which include money from philanthropy and the private sector.)

Soni said that Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general, had long wanted to create an “open tent” for like-minded constituencies and to improve institutional financing.

“When an institution as important as the WHO doesn’t have secure and long-term finance,” Soni said, “the organization doesn’t function. Colleagues, for example, were on six-month contracts, which kept WHO from recruiting the talent it needed and achieving “a long-term orientation.”

Soni said that while most of WHO’s support comes from governments, the philanthropic support it received during the pandemic helped it see “that health is a concern for everyone, and increasingly, philanthropists and companies — and not just healthcare companies — have a vision for what they want to achieve in health.” Moving forward, “WHO had to be part of that theory of change.”

Soni said the fundraising situation had become “a bit of a vicious cycle” on the government side, as donors sought reform before making more — and more flexible — commitments. He credits Tedros with realizing that the work had to be conducted “hand in hand,” and his team for improving the situation. 

At the same time, Tedros understood the need to “supercharge” the WHO’s engagement with philanthropies and companies. It could no longer keep them at arm’s length, and had to meet partners where interests aligned.

A start-up mentality

Soni, the WHO Foundation’s first employee, is no stranger to being first on the scene. He was also one of the first five people hired at the Global Fund, and among the first 50 employees of the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Soni considers it “special to be in on the ground floor. Though it takes some resilience, it gives you a chance to dream and to be adaptable.” He said he’s using a start-up mentality at the foundation to deliver on day-to-day challenges in the short term, while “dreaming for the middle term” — a process he calls “building the ship as we’ve been sailing it.”

When Soni first reported to his new job in 2021, the world was still reeling from the onset of the pandemic, and the foundation “had to raise money quickly.” Life in the hot seat continued when, just a year later, a health emergency arose in Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“We had to be nimble,” Soni explained. “Many people worked from home and our office was (and still is) in a co-working space.” 

Soni sought to build on the momentum and name recognition gained during COVID to drive goals, reacting to immediate, high-profile events while carving out a longer-term strategy to solve equally urgent but lower-profile, health challenges.

Within the first two years, the foundation had launched a vaccine campaign that played to WHO’s unique strengths, an impact investing partnership, and a commission on racism and structural discrimination in global health.

Short-term responses

In the short term, a foundation born during COVID continues to focus on emergencies. During year one, it created a Go Give One Campaign that offered donors the chance to participate in pandemic recovery by purchasing vaccines for people who needed them at $5 apiece. Soni said the giving “wasn’t about any one institution, but rather an alignment on vaccine equity.”

The campaign raised $19 million to support COVAX and the purchase of vaccines for people in low- and middle-income countries. Funding was amplified by user and employee challenges at Facebook and Salesforce, and by support from major funding partners like the Gates Foundation and ELMA Philanthropies, which matched individual contributions for four months running.

Medium-term aspirations

The foundation’s medium-term work is more experimental and aspirational. Priorities align with WHO’s work through the Health Emergencies Alliance (HEA) it created. HEA convenes a community of businesses and private foundations to establish a predictable and reliable funding stream for rapid response in emergency situations, while preparing for future crises.

WHO’s 1,600 operational partners act as a first-responder network to natural disasters, the fallout from war, disease outbreaks and climate-related crises. Soni said the value of its work has been evident in emergency responses where WHO can complement the work of other organizations like the Red Cross and Save the Children.

Besides its general emergency support, the foundation established discrete funds to get health supplies to the nearly 2 million people who’ve been displaced in Gaza, an emergency humanitarian appeal for nearly 16 million people in war-torn Sudan, a health emergency appeal for Ukraine, and a fund to address the fallout from drought crises in the Sahel and the Greater Horn of Africa. All funds are open to the full spectrum of donors, from individuals to institutions.

HEA’s response time is quick, even in hard-to-reach places like conflict areas. Soni said the foundation can respond within 24 to 48 hours — timing that aligns with donors’ sense of urgency.

In 2022, following the Turkey-Syria earthquake, WHO Foundation swiftly organized a flash appeal to meet the ensuing health emergency. HEA member Spotify amplified awareness by promoting an in-platform appeal across its channels. Within 10 days, the appeal had reached roughly 10 million users,and raised $136,000. All in, the alliance’s combined efforts raised just under $600,000 through corporations, about half of which was donated online.

Addressing emerging infectious disease is another priority. A concrete example is the private philanthropic funding that helped expand an emergency hub in Nairobi that was established by WHO on land donated by the Kenyan government.

The hub is already reducing the time it takes to deliver emergency supplies when outbreaks occur, while significantly lowering costs, Soni said. The response time between request and delivery has gone from up to 67 days to just one to two. Shipping costs have also gone down by double digits. For instance, kits used during the 2023 Malawi cholera outbreak were deployed from the Nairobi hub for just $72,000 — an 84% decrease from prior sourcing.

Two other medium-term initiatives are moving forward. The foundation incubated a commission with the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown and The Lancet that examines racism and structural discrimination in global health. Soni said the goal is to help answer the question of “why we still see such inequitable health outcomes despite years of substantial funding.”

The foundation also partnered with the global venture-investing platform OurCrowd to launch a Global Health Equity Fund that hopes to raise $200 million for breakthrough technologies and health sector innovations around the world. 

Big bets and partnerships

Going forward, the foundation hopes to expand its remit by building sizable, sustainable relationships with philanthropic and business partners whose giving strategies align with its long-term work in the areas of emergency preparedness, mental health, climate and health, and digital health.

One of those partnerships is a recently announced $1.8 million commitment to the WHO Foundation by the beauty brand Maybelline, whose Brave Together program aims to ultimately help 10 million people access mental health services and support.

In addition, Soni said, the WHO Foundation stands ready to support funders that are willing to make even bigger bets needed to solve problems within their lifetimes, and explore innovations and solutions that are beyond the scope of any one organization. These could include partnerships to eliminate a neglected tropical disease, for example, or get ahead of health conditions being exacerbated by climate change. 

Soni expects the foundation to continue to employ resourcefulness, flexibility and an open mind as it “sees what works, and what the market needs.”

“I choose to be an optimist,” he said, one who welcomes the “opportunity to sit down with people with the resources to get things done, and come up with big bold solutions together.”

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify and add detail around the WHO Foundation’s big bets and partnerships.