The Child Survival Portfolio is a $100 million Impact Portfolio dedicated to reducing child mortality. It seeks to fund nutrition and immunization programs while backing new ways to get care where it’s needed most. Since its initiation, it supports 18 organizations addressing gaps in funding and on-the-ground delivery so urgent care reaches children quickly and effectively.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the systems children rely on for nutrition and basic protection from disease are stretched thin, and in many places, at risk of breaking down. In 2025, over 14 million children’s lives were at risk. USAID’s abrupt withdrawal of approximately $12.7 billion in global funding, including major reductions across both regions, left immunization outreach, nutrition treatment, and frontline health services without the staffing and supplies needed to keep children safe. The withdrawal deepened existing gaps in countries already carrying the world’s highest burdens of severe malnutrition, zero-dose children, and preventable child deaths.
The Child Survival Portfolio was created to help break this cycle. It aims to direct philanthropic capital to the places, partners, and systemic gaps that will help save children’s lives today while strengthening the systems that will help protect them tomorrow. The Impact Portfolio aims to channel resources to areas of greatest need and potential impact, complementing existing funding and focusing on gaps left by recent aid withdrawals, as well as organizations historically overlooked by traditional global health financing.
14.3M
Globally in 2024, 14.3 million children missed out on any vaccination, so-called zero-dose children. A further 5.6 million were only partially vaccinated.
45%
Undernutrition is estimated to be an underlying cause of 45% of child deaths worldwide.
9 in 10
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia account for nearly 90% of global child deaths, over 85% of severe wasting, and more than 70% of zero-dose children worldwide.
Saving lives today and safeguarding a child’s future.
Nutrition and immunization are twin engines of child survival, powerful on their own and stronger together. A well-nourished child builds stronger immunity; a vaccinated child is less likely to become malnourished from infection. Yet these interventions are often funded separately. Supporting both strengthens the shared supply chains, health workforce, and delivery systems that serve families, making every visit more efficient, every service more integrated, and every child better protected.
Making sure life-saving care reaches children, every time.
Many funders support one part of the system, such as purchasing supplies or funding local programs. The Child Survival Portfolio seeks to take a whole-system approach, investing across the chain from production and supply to community-level delivery. A drug stuck in Nairobi and a health worker without supplies are often symptoms of the same breakdown. We seek to fund the connections that close that gap, where the last mile turns investment into impact.
Accelerating and sustaining impact.
Even before recent aid cuts, millions of children were beyond the reach of traditional delivery systems. The Child Survival Portfolio supports practical innovations, including predictive data tools, solar-powered cold chains, AI-enabled logistics, and local manufacturing, to strengthen delivery and make integrated nutrition and immunization services more reliable. By supporting testing and scaling solutions that help health systems respond in real time, the Impact Portfolio can help save more lives today and build resilience for the future.
Closing the structural gaps that cost children’s lives.
This initiative complements what some larger funders often overlook, fueling innovation and delivering life-saving care. While major donors strengthen global frameworks, this Impact Portfolio invests further down the chain, supporting regional and national solutions, adaptive models, and frontline organizations that turn ambition into impact. This funding works to enable large systems to work better, closing the distance between global and local and ensuring investments deliver lasting results.
ICONIQ Impact receives a fee for the creation of the Impact Portfolio, and it serves as a philanthropic advisor to the third party sponsoring the Impact Portfolio and receives compensation for its advice.
ICONIQ Impact, which is an adviser on philanthropic efforts and which does not provide investment advisory services, is a division of ICONIQ Capital, LLC, which is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. None of the organizations illustrated have endorsed or recommended the services of ICONIQ Impact.
Sources: KFF; OECD; UNICEF; WHO; UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation; Center for Global Development; UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Group; Immunization Evidence / VoICE; The Lancet
