Venture Strategies is a unique nonprofit organization combining scientific evidence about tractable problems in health with opportunities inherent in the power of local market forces around the world. We are using business approaches to find ways to help large numbers of low income people.

Venture Strategies for Health and Development was launched in 2001 as a program of Population and Development International (PDI), the United States affiliate of the Population and Community Development Association.  In 2002, Venture Strategies for Health and Development achieved its current status as an independent, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, incorporated in California.  In 2005, Venture Strategies was awarded the Global Philanthropy Forum Prize for social entrepreneurs with special recognition for our scalability, sustainability and strategies to launch initiatives that will endure long past our direct involvement.

In 2008, we created a new collaborating non-profit organization, Venture Strategies Innovations.  VSI is responsible for delivering reproductive health technologies in developing countries.  The two organizations work very closely with one another.

Venture Strategies was designed and its earliest programs initiated with support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Contributors to the work of Venture Strategies include the following:

Fred H. Bixby Foundation
Brush Foundation
Conservation, Food & Health Foundation
Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW, German Development Bank)
Morris S. Smith Foundation
World Bank

... and a number of family foundations and private donors.

Additionally we would like to acknowledge past support from:

Sapling Foundation
Shell Oil Foundation, U.K.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Winrock International