Business Planning for Stronger Health Systems

For over 40 years, Management Sciences for Health (MSH) has been working in partnership with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) around the world to support the delivery of community-based health services to underserved populations. As NGOs and civil society become more prominent in the delivery of health care and related services, such as advocacy and health education, local organizations have grown significantly in countries from Afghanistan to Zambia.

At the same time, institutional and private donors are requiring more accountability from these organizations. Funding sources such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Millennium Challenge Account require local organizations and governments to demonstrate potential or projected impact when competing for funding, and donor governments, foundations, and private investors are using more stringent results-oriented contracting and grants instruments such as performance-based financing to ensure a social return on investment.

In response to these challenges, MSH created the Business Planning for Health (BPH) program in 2001. The BPH builds the capacity of NGOs worldwide to prepare and present income- generating business opportunities to a variety of public and private funders and investors, enabling them to independently seek out and secure funding for their work. NGO ideas that have received funding as a result of the BPH include an advanced training program for nurses in Bolivia and a revolving development fund that makes small loans to physicians in Kenya.

More recently, the BPH has been offered to staff of national institutions that are funded by donor governments. To date, the BPH has been delivered throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin and North America, and has yielded over $5 million in new funding for promising business plans. The executive director of a Guyana-based HIV and AIDS NGO called the program “invaluable, particularly in this time when international funding [commitments are] changing so much.”

This brochure is available in three languages: