International investment in the response to HIV and AIDS has plateaued and its future level is uncertain. With many countries committed to ending the epidemic, it is essential to allocate available resources efficiently over different response periods to maximize impact. The objective of this study is to propose a technique to determine the optimal allocation of funds over time across a set of HIV programs to achieve desirable health outcomes. We developed a technique to determine the optimal time‐varying allocation of funds (1) when the future annual HIV budget is pre‐defined and (2) when the total budget over a period is pre‐defined, but the year‐on‐year budget is to be optimally determined. We use this methodology with Optima, an HIV transmission model that uses non‐linear relationships between program spending and associated programmatic outcomes to quantify the expected epidemiological impact of spending. We apply these methods to data collected from Zambia to determine the optimal distribution of resources to fund the right programs, for the right people, at the right time.