A Story About the END Fund by Meghan Kappus, Senior Director of Investment Relations
Neglected tropical diseases affect 1.7 billion of the world’s most impoverished people, including 1 billion children. The END Fund mobilizes philanthropic investments to support the delivery of over 100 million drug treatments per year. Even so, we know that we could do better.
As is the case with many nonprofits, donors often look for a program-services ratio of 90%, where only 10% of funds mobilized are used for operations and fundraising. For years these restrictions prevented us from living up to our mandate to be the world’s leading mobilizer and deployer of private capital for neglected tropical diseases — so many opportunities to improve lives were lost!
Very fortunately, in 2018, a generous and forward-thinking foundation saw our potential and enabled us to hire fundraising, communications, and advocacy staff. Additional staffing directly impacted our capital mobilization from 57M between 2015-2017 to $108M in revenue from 2018 to the present day. In 2019, the END Fund directly leveraged an additional $2M in flexible funding from the foundation to secure $9.2M in co-investments for in-country programs across 12 countries. These examples highlight just how catalytic flexible and Human Resources funding can be used to increase impact!
The END Fund’s vision is to ensure people at risk of neglected tropical diseases can live healthy and prosperous lives. Learn More.