Apart from trying to persuade them to use mod_perl ;-) have you had a look at CGI::SpeedyCGI? I've not used it, so I can't endorse it, but it seems to be close to what you're looking for and was described in an old YAPC 2001 paper. Another persistent Perl environment I'm aware of is PPerl. Another general approach to speeding up CGI is FastCGI.

References Added Later

• Common Gateway Interface (CGI) (wikipedia)
• FastCGI (wikipedia)

• Re^3: Can two separate responses be sent to the client's browser from Perl, such as via fork{}? by afoken (2023)

• CGI.pm on AIX 7.2 by anonymonk (2023)
• Review of CGI::Alternatives by anonymonk (2018)

• fastcgi without the module by morgon (2020)

Update: using this old node for CGI References nowadays

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