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 (PDA). PDA, founded by Senator Mechai Viravaidya in 1974, is Thailand's largest nonprofit organization. It is a highly successful model of sustainability, in which for-profit businesses are established explicitly to provide financial support to PDA's nonprofit programs.

We achieved our 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 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 has expanded the implementation of our work with misoprostol in developing countries.

We are most grateful to Senator Mechai Viravaidya, Chairman of PDA and PDI, for graciously hosting our Venture Strategies program as we were shaping it in its first year. Khun Mechai's original ideas about organizations and related enterprises have contributed to our own thinking about what an efficient nonprofit in the United States should be able to attain.

We owe grateful thanks also to the late Henry P. David, PhD, who served for many years as the Secretary-Treasurer of PDI in the United States. Dr. David helped to develop the administrative structure of our newly formed program during its critical first year, and continued to provide guidance for Venture Strategies until his death in 2010.