Emergency Response

• Rapid-onset emergencies. The largest portion of our emergency funding is disbursed as flexible funding to address high-impact disasters, including disease outbreaks. Within 24 to 72 hours, we approve funding to pre-vetted partners who have the local and national capacity to respond effectively. For example, immediately after catastrophic earthquakes hit Myanmar in 2025, killing more than 3,000 people, we made grants to Oxfam, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center to help provide families with immediate shelter, food, water, sanitation, and financial support options.
• Complex emergencies. Many emergencies in this category include an element of violent conflict and involve political and military forces and disruption of national systems, while others have roots in natural phenomena. Our grants in this category often go toward basic relief support—including food, water, sanitation and hygiene, health care, and shelter—in the acute phases of complex emergencies, such as during peaks in violence or displacement. In 2023 and 2024, for example, we made grants to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where civil conflict led to population displacement and civilian deaths.
• Slow-onset emergencies. Drought and famine are among the slow-onset emergencies that we work with our partners to address. For example, we have supported relief efforts in response to severe food insecurity in Haiti and drought in East Africa. These efforts include programs to build stability in communities through approaches such as improved agricultural practices that can help people remain productive in the face of future droughts.

The relief agencies we support deliver food and clean water, improve sanitation, provide medical attention and shelter, prevent or minimize disease outbreaks, administer cash-for-work programs, and provide other services in response to urgent needs.

To ensure that communities are better prepared for disasters and public health emergencies, we work with local institutions that are on the front lines before, during, and after crises and support regional networks that can scale up effective practices. We also work with global actors that can contribute resources, innovative tools, and policy influence—including through initiatives such as the Global Health Emergency Corps, a regionally and globally coordinated approach to health emergency response based on country-level prevention, preparedness, response. Together, these pieces form the backbone of a more resilient and effective humanitarian system.

Through this partnership model, we invest in preparedness by supporting locally led planning, building public health response capacity, and creating opportunities for peer learning across geographies. We also work to ensure sustainable funding, foster innovation, and cultivate leadership that enables rapid, coordinated action when emergencies occur.

By helping to build stronger systems at every level, we can shift the humanitarian sector from primarily reactive responses toward proactive preparedness and resilience. We evaluate our efforts by learning from what works, using evidence to inform future investments and amplify our impact.

For example, we have worked with the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene team to support development and testing of approaches to improve water and sanitation in emergencies. With that team as well as the Agricultural Development team and Global Delivery Program team, we have supported development of new toilet prototypes, improved sanitation methods for use in refugee situations, and solutions to address climate effects on agriculture.