Impact Report 2024

Linksbridge SPC

Linksbridge expands the capacity of our partners to improve human lives.

Since 2008, we've:

  • Helped global health counterparts save over $1 billion on vaccine purchases through market shaping initiatives that expand the reach of immunization programs worldwide.
  • Helped health campaign planners reduce wastage, reduce planning time, and reduce the burden of campaigns on healthcare workers and communities through data platforms, campaign integration analytics, and communication resources.
  • Supported developing country vaccine manufacturers with data and intelligence tools that level the playing field with multinationals, ensuring healthy markets for essential products.

Letter from our executive director

Impact has driven our business since Linksbridge was founded in 2008.

From the beginning, we set out to expand the capacity of NGOs, IGOs, and nonprofits to improve human lives. We believed consulting and advisory services could be delivered in a values-centered way, profoundly in alignment with the efforts of international development, global health, and other social impact stakeholders.

In 2012, our home state of Washington introduced the social purpose corporation (SPC) framework for companies prioritizing a positive impact on the world around them. The following year, Linksbridge became the first enterprise in our category to secure SPC designation.

Under Washington law, SPCs must produce an annual report sharing their social purpose objectives, progress toward those objectives, and upcoming plans. We're taking this opportunity to state it clearly:

Linksbridge exists to create positive social impact through our work serving clients and partners in global health, global development, education, humanitarian assistance, social justice, and other related fields.

Our vision of impact has grown through the years. In addition to the work we do, we hope to contribute to a better world through our day-to-day conduct as a business and the way we apportion our profits. From our decision to operate as an employee-owned enterprise to the continuing investment of a share of our proceeds in nonprofit grantees through the Linksbridge Foundation, impact drives everything we do. This report provides an overview of how Linksbridge fulfills its obligations as an SPC.

To you, our partners, we offer thanks for your extraordinary work and for giving us the opportunity to help advance it.

Heather Ferguson

Executive Director

Our impact begins with the work we take on. Linksbridge works exclusively with purpose-driven partners in pursuit of goals that benefit the greater good.

2024 impact: Our work

Global Health Market Shaping Conference

In March 2024, our Market Dynamics team hosted the inaugural Global Health Market Shaping (GHMS) Conference in Barcelona.

Outcomes

  • GHMS established the first practitioner network for market shaping professionals across product categories.
  • The conference welcomed over 150 participants committed to strengthening a field of practice that's helped dramatically reduce vaccine costs and significantly expand access to HIV antiretrovirals across sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Attendees shared their approaches to improving access to essential health commodities in low- and lower-middle-income countries.
Learn more
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Switching to MCV 5-Dose

Our Technical Assistance team in 2024 advanced its support for country-led switches to fewer-dose vials of measle-containing vaccines (MCVs).

Outcomes

  • Our team gave presentations and shared resources at EPI managers meetings in Cape Verde and South Africa.
  • In addition, our support enabled Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Pakistan to apply to make the switch to 5-dose MCV vials.
  • Thanks to vial-size switches, today more than 350,000 additional measles-zero-dose children under age 1 are reached annually with MCVs.
Learn more
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CEPI Vaccine Impact Assessments

Our Data + Analytics team partnered with researchers at the OxLiv Consortium to design scenarios to evaluate CEPI investments, quantifying the potential impacts of vaccines against Lassa fever and other diseases.

Outcomes

  • The results indicated that deploying a Lassa vaccine across 15 West African countries could save nearly 3,300 lives over 10 years.
  • For a hypothetical “Lassa-X” virus with pandemic potential, rapid deployment could prevent 1.2 million infections, save 18,300 lives, and avert nearly $783 million in societal costs over two years. 
  • The work demonstrated the potential impact of the CEPI-backed 100 Days Mission.
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Targeted News Services

Our Strategic Communications team reached over 2,000 subscribers in 2024. Linksbridge delivered intelligence on pharma industry developments in global health, campaign-based health delivery, and more.

Outcomes

  • The Linksbridge Pharma newsletter builds alignment among diverse counterparts who share the goal of developing and delivering drugs, vaccines, and health products for vulnerable populations.
  • In 2024, our news services informed counterparts from ministries of health, intergovernmental organizations, developing country vaccine manufacturers, multinational drugmakers, donors, NGOs, and academia.
Learn more
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We’ve organized our operations to positively impact our team, our community, and our world.

2024 Impact: Our Business

Linksbridge is staffed by employee-owners committed to a better world. As an SPC, our social-impact focus guides not only the projects we accept but the way we run our enterprise each day:

  • Our employee ownership structure ensures that our business serves our team on equitable terms, leaving no one behind.
  • From transparent and equitable pay practices to best-in-class benefits (including a two-month paid sabbatical for every five years of employment), we take care of our team.
  • Through the Linksbridge Foundation, we invest at least 5% of each year's profits in awards to grantees, extending our impact to nonprofit partners fighting for intersectional justice and human rights locally and globally.
  • Our participation in the Duwamish Tribe's Real Rent program, our carbon offset initiative, and our charitable contribution matching program help direct our resources to our community.

The Linksbridge Employee Ownership Trust

In late 2023, we established the Linksbridge Employee Ownership Trust as the legal owner of our enterprise, and we formalized the objectives of the trust as follows:
  • To ensure that Linksbridge SPC continues to fulfill its special purpose of creating positive social impact through its work.
  • To ensure the sustainability of Linksbridge SPC as an enterprise.
  • To ensure that the proceeds of Linksbridge SPC benefit its employees.

Salaries

Linksbridge pays competitive salaries to attract and retain skilled professionals for our Seattle and Washington, D.C. offices. We practice pay equity and pay transparency because we view them as imperatives for a workplace where everyone can flourish. The ratio between our highest and lowest salary levels is less than 3:1.
In 2024, our entire team received a 5% cost-of-living increase to the following salaries:
  • $81,034 for consultants
  • $95,524 for senior consultants
  • $115,763 for associates
  • $144,717 for senior associates
  • $173,644 for directors
  • $202,597 for principals
  • $231,525 for partners and our executive director
Linksbridge also returned retention bonuses totaling $316,874 to our employee-owners.

Benefits

In addition to becoming beneficiaries of the Linksbridge Employee Ownership Trust, all team members working at least 50% FTE earn standard but important benefits like employer-sponsored health insurance, 401(k) retirement plans with employer match, 11 paid holidays, and four weeks of paid vacation.
Our most unique benefit is a two-month paid sabbatical every five years. In 2024, team members Josh Axelrad and Sheldon Halsted enjoyed sabbaticals.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice

In 2024, a series of frank discussions among the Linksbridge team made it evident that our existing initiatives were falling short of our objectives in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ).
In response, we enlisted a third-party consultant with DEIJ expertise to conduct an assessment of how we're doing and how to improve. In an era when the most powerful forces in the U.S. political system are explicitly targeting DEIJ initiatives of all kinds, we see this work as more valuable than ever.
In 2025, we'll review the assessment's findings, implement recommendations, and schedule new evaluations of our collective progress.

Team News

Our team welcomed two new hires in 2024:

  • Senior consultant Reba Bowe brings a background in direct patient care and managing large-scale health projects.
  • With an informatics background, data engineer Alex Wong has joined Linksbridge to develop automation systems for the Global Vaccine Market Model (GVMM) and other platforms.
Meanwhile, Erik Osland, Dena (Seabrook) Pittman, and Andy Torkelson were promoted to the director level in 2024, joining our senior management group.

With a focus on the fight for intersectional justice and human rights locally and globally, the Linksbridge Foundation operates with a keen recognition of the challenges inherent in the work of fundraising.

The Linksbridge Foundation

In 2024, the Linksbridge Foundation allocated over $40,000 for awards to grantees.
The foundation also entered candid discussions with grantees amid a rapidly changing political context. As a result of these conversations, we shifted a planned multiyear grant renewal to a larger upfront contribution, which had the added benefit of supporting a donation-matching program for a grantee.
We recognize that our giving power is relatively modest, but we try to make the most of our autonomy and flexibility as our grantees navigate a changing landscape for intersectional justice and human rights.
Our 2024 grantees include:
Women's Regional Network
2024 Grant: $5,000
Amplifying the voices of unheard, marginalized women in South Asia, East Africa, and beyond.
Legal Counsel for Youth and Children
2024 Grant: $5,000
Protecting the interests and safety of youth in Washington State by advancing their legal rights.
Densho
2024 Grant: $5,000
Preserving Japanese American stories of the past for the generations of tomorrow.
Outright International
2024 Grant: $20,000
Working with partners around the globe to strengthen the capacity of the LGBTIQ movement.
Confidential grantees
2024 Grants: $5,750
Linksbridge awarded grants on an emergency basis to organizations under renewed threat in the wake of the 2024 U.S. presidential elections.

Other Initiatives

SOC 2 Attestation

Linksbridge has long served as the custodian of important global health data assets, such as GVMM.
In 2024, we launched a third-party audit of our data security practices. Our objective was to achieve System and Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2) attestation, an industry-recognized standard requiring rigorous controls across areas including software development, data governance, business continuity planning, recruitment and retention, and disaster preparedness.
After a dedicated effort led by our Data + Analytics team in collaboration with an AICPA-certified auditing firm, Linksbridge received SOC 2 attestation in February 2025.

Real Rent Duwamish

Our Seattle headquarters is situated on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people. In solidarity with the Duwamish Tribe, Linksbridge participates in the Real Rent program, making annual payments to Duwamish Tribal Services equal to the real estate taxes on our Seattle office.
In 2024, we paid $5,927 through this program, supporting the revival of Duwamish culture and the vitality of the Duwamish Tribe.

Carbon Emissions

Compared to the prior year, our 2024 carbon emissions rose 50% to 65.3 metric tons. Increased international travel drove this change, a reflection of our return to a more typical business posture after the Covid pandemic.
Recognizing the negative impact of emissions stemming from our business activities, Linksbridge has purchased the following offsets through the U.N. Carbon Offset Platform:

Investments for the Future

Linksbridge made investments in 2024 to explore positioning staff in African and European time zones. In 2025, we plan to conduct a trial of an expanded footprint in advance of establishing a permanent office east of the Atlantic Ocean.
In addition, the team has invested about 30 hours each month studying the potential uses of large language models (LLMs) in global health. Building on Linksbridge data assets like GVMM, we've identified promising capabilities in text summarization, question answering, translations, and basic content development. Our Data + Analytics team has created an alpha version of a proprietary AI agent and is currently evaluating adding such a resource to our Linksbridge Workspace data platform.

Looking ahead

Almost as soon as we started preparing this report, the global health ecosystem experienced a disruption of shocking, bewildering, terrible scale.

Rash and chaotic policy changes from the U.S. government cut off nutrition for the starving, health clinics for the sick and vulnerable, and medicine (like antiretrovirals) for vast populations in the poorest regions. The apparent obliteration of the United States' foreign aid commitments represents a stark challenge for the world at large.

In addition to the stunning toll on human lives, the radical retrenchment of the U.S. role in international development and global health—coupled with aid reductions from donors including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—jeopardizes many of our closest partners. A worldwide ecosystem is at risk.

Charting a way forward through these new circumstances will take time. In the near term, Linksbridge has:

In 2025 we're embarking on a project to increase equitable access to insulin in low- and lower-middle-income countries—an initiative that once again brings together stakeholders from the nonprofit space as well as industry.

The objective is to set up an operating model led by global health partners that can define, prioritize, and implement actions to improve insulin market health. An industry partner has provided catalytic funding for this project, contracting directly with Linksbridge. It's a funding arrangement we've not used before, and we've decided to proceed on this basis because the work aligns closely with our social purpose, we have no active engagements in the insulin space that would pose conflicts, and—importantly—no nonprofit funding structure currently exists as an alternative. Our industry partner has agreed to the guardrails we feel are necessary to prevent conflicts of interest and ensure the initiative serves global health.

As this project moves forward, we're committed to staying transparent with our community. We will continue to provide updates on the successes and challenges of this approach.  

In solidarity with you, our partners, we reiterate our commitment to impactful work.

We work on issues that matter.

Linksbridge expands the capacity of NGOs, IGOs, and nonprofits to improve human lives.  A social-purpose consulting and advisory firm, we help changemakers multiply their impact through creative thinking.
© 2025 Linksbridge SPC, All rights reserved.
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