The Risk Pool Fund was founded by the Eleanor Crook Foundation, Vitol Foundation, CRI Foundation, and Open Road Alliance.

The Health Risk Pool Fund (a.k.a. Risk Pool Fund) is a pooled resource specifically targeted to prevent the derailment of otherwise fully-funded maternal and child health and nutrition projects in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. The Risk Pool Fund is a collaborative experiment that makes fast, flexible funding available to pre-selected non-profits that are encountering an unexpected obstacle that threatens impact.

The Risk Pool Fund was created to provide such grants in order to enable NGOs to address unforeseen, mid-implementation obstacles and non-routine problems that could put an otherwise fully-funded project at risk.

By distributing risk among a group of donors and implementers who share a common programmatic focus (in this case, maternal and child health and nutrition in Low- and Middle-Income Countries), the Risk Pool Fund aims to ensure impact for both the NGOs and the funders. Ultimately, this group hopes to create a replicable model for risk mitigation in development.