GFAN Brief – Stop the Slide on the Set-Asides

GFAN Brief – Stop the Slide on the Set-Asides

Seven months after the Global Fund’s 8th Replenishment Summit, set-asides continue to grow. More donors have included funding that counts towards their Global Fund pledge but is never transferred to the Fund, leaving it outside the Global Fund’s governance and accountability frameworks. What is this funding called? Set-asides.

As countries plan for Grant Cycle 8, the purpose and governance of new set-asides from France, Canada and Japan remain unclear. Our latest update examines the growing risks to the Global Fund’s multilateral model and renews the call to Cast Aside the Set-Asides!

Stop the Slide on the Set-Asides (English only)

Key Messages

To ensure set-asides reinforce, rather than weaken, the multilateral framework of the Global Fund. Our advocacy efforts should focus on the folloGC8 seems to mark a breaking of the dam, with the final normalization of set-asides among G7 donors. This is a concerning development, eating at a key comparative advantage of the Global Fund – it’s capacity to aggregate and transparently allocate funding at a large scale. Our key messages are:

  1. Complementary – but ultimately still separate – funding like set-asides should not be included in the calculation of a country’s pledge to the Global Fund.
  1. Set-asides are not counted towards “leveraged” pledges. In the past, the United States and others have included in their pledges funding that is available only if sufficient funding is contributed by other donor sources. Set-asides – which do not count towards total available funds – do not count towards the leveraging as much as possible of the US pledge for example.
  1. Multilateralism protects health investments from political shifts.
    The Global Fund’s governance model offers a stable, inclusive, and transparent framework. In contrast, bilateral set-asides are more exposed to short-term political agendas. Reinforcing the multilateral approach is critical for long-term impact.
  1. The Global Fund is the largest community-based funder.
    Financing health commodities without investing in community responses is ineffective. Community-led interventions are central to service uptake, accountability, and impact. Undermining this by diverting funds to uncoordinated set-asides weakens the Fund’s comparative advantage.

By focusing on these key advocacy messages, stakeholders can ensure that set-asides remain a tool for strengthening global health financing efforts rather than undermining them.

Background

Every three years, the Global Fund holds its replenishment cycle, during which donors announce their pledges for the upcoming grant cycle. Some donors choose to include set-asides, which pledge to other initiatives as part of their announcement of support for the Global Fund. In other words, set-asides are funding that counts towards the replenishment total but are never transferred to the Global Fund. If you want to know more, do read our Cast Aside the Set-Asides brief.

What is happening to set-asides for the 8th Replenishment? Despite sustained advocacy from GFAN and mobilization by civil society colleagues in donor countries — including in Germany, where partners have raised concerns directly with their government — the trend towards counting in Global Fund pledges money that does not go to the Global Fund, has not slowed. It has deepened, with one notable exception. In Grant Cycle 8 (GC), more donors have set-asides than during any previous grant cycle, and the newest set-asides are the ones we understand least. At the very moment countries are responding to their allocation letters and planning how to use core Global Fund resources, we still do not know what the parallel set-aside envelopes from France, Canada and Japan will fund, where, or under whose governance. This is a direct risk to the multilateral model of the Global Fund.

In our 2025 position paper Cast Aside the Set-Asides, we set out the core argument: set-asides are funding that counts toward the replenishment total but never transfers to the Global Fund. They often support genuinely valuable work — technical assistance, capacity-building for civil society, community responses — but they sit outside the Fund’s governance, allocation model and accountability frameworks. We believe that this type of complementary funding should be counted separately and should not be included in the calculation of a donor’s pledge unless the funds are transferred to the Global Fund.