Respect, agency, and collaboration: practical advice for development funders

By Tomaida Banda, Firelight Program Officer for Child and Youth Rights, Care and Protection

Most funding organizations would like to believe that their funding practices do not perpetuate negative outcomes for the communities they seek to support. Increasingly, Global North funders around the world are looking for ways to emphasize their partnership with the Global South communities in which they fund programs. Across global development conferences and publications we increasingly see headlines and discussions highlighting the need to reconsider how our sector operates and change our ways to better respect community agency and ensure equal collaboration. Most funders across the sector have expressed some degree of support for these initiatives.

And yet, the feedback we at Firelight Foundation hear from the community-based organizations (CBOs) we partner with tells a very different story.

Top-down approaches, a lack of collaboration, and a ‘charity’ mindset that maintains power inequity and does little to further solidarity between funders and grantee partners continues to be the status quo for many of our partners, who operate in eastern and southern Africa. These CBOs have shared the challenges that these funding practices create, and together we have sought to establish alternative practices that better recognize and respect the insights and agency of communities.

Today, we share these practices with you as practical advice that is shared and, we hope, received in the spirit of sector-wide collaboration and solidarity.

At the core of these recommendations is the need to shift power - that is currently captured and held by Global North funders - towards a more equal balance with Global South communities, based in respect and recognizing the agency and expertise of communities and community-based organizations.

To achieve this balance, we need practices that center and are led by the needs and priorities that communities identify; that ensure mutual accountability between funders and grantee partners; that implement co-decision-making processes; and that provide flexible, context-specific funding.

These practices cannot, however, be implemented on a piecemeal basis. True solidarity is not achieved by any single policy or measure. A true shift will require a deeper change in mindset and an honest evaluation and examination of the inherent biases and assumptions upon which much of the global development sector currently operates.

It starts with seeing the power that communities already hold – including but by no means limited to their deep knowledge of local norms, their understanding of community priorities and needs, their historical perspective and analysis of the root causes driving many of the issues we seek to address.

From there, funders can begin the process of examining their own subconscious and conscious assumptions and work to reject the white supremacist mindset that places funders above the communities with which they seek to partner.

The Fallacy of ‘Ready-Made’ Solutions

Many funders view their position as outsiders (often coupled with high levels of education) as an asset that allows them to operate from a place of supposed expertise and ‘objectivity’. They work under the assumption that they know the problems facing communities, and that it is possible to design interventions based on their own, external analysis of the situation. After identifying a community and deciding what ‘issue’ they want to prioritize, the funder then arrives with ready-made solutions that CBO partners are recruited to implement. In reality, when international organizations or funders implement their projects directly or impose ideas onto communities, they rob those communities of agency and position CBOs as working for communities, rather than with them. The dynamic is rooted in a belief that local communities are merely recipients of externally-generated charity – and often results in initiatives that are at best short-term and unsustainable once the Global North funder moves onto the next project, and at once disruptive of local systems and harmful over the longer term.

Firelight’s Community-Driven Systems Change approach seeks to operate from a position of collaboration from the very inception of projects. We include funding for a specific planning phase that prioritizes the agency and expertise of community based organizations and communities by allowing CBOs to engage with their communities to surface root causes to issues and identify different systems that need to be part of the potential solution. This shifts power from the funder to the community by ensuring that the program is designed with community guidance from the inception, bringing ownership and allowing partners to think about the change they want to see, not the change a distant funder imagines.

Mutual Accountability = Partnership

For true partnerships, accountability needs to go both ways. Most of us are familiar with the standard system of reporting. The flow of information moves from the grantee partner up to the funding partner, who then delivers the information to donors. The grantee partner is responsible for accounting for how they used any funds provided, and are usually asked to provide data to demonstrate that their work has had an impact in the community. The power, therefore, lies with the funder (and donor): if the grantee partner ‘fails’ to show impact, then the unspoken threat is that funding will be withdrawn.

Once again, the dynamic is based on the assumption that the funds provided to grantee partners (and via grantees, communities) are simply an act of charity, and that donors are entitled to exclusive decision-making power over how ‘their’ money is spent. The Community-Driven Systems Change approach operates instead from the perspective of solidarity, where donor, funder, and CBO and community share power, responsibility, and agency. The CSDC encourages funders to recognize that they, too, must be held accountable for their behaviors. Simply making a donation does not absolve funders or donors from criticism. Instead, funders should remain open to the feedback of their CBO partners, especially when they are pushing back on approaches that perpetuate inequality. Listen to CBOs when they share how best funders can work together with communities to empower and address community needs to achieve the best results according to the contextual factors.

Recognize Strengths, Provide Supports

A key factor in shifting power is recognizing and respecting the strengths of CBO partners, while also remaining flexible around areas where CBO partners might need support. CBOs often face limitations, both technologically and financially, that impact how they maintain and operate systems. They may also have differences in the levels of formal education held by CBO staff and leadership compared to funding partners. This does not, however, detract from the rich experience they have working with communities. Too often funding partners remain fixated on largely arbitrary metrics for ‘professionalism’ that have little impact on the programmatic work itself, rather than recognizing the impressive relationships and cultural knowledge that sets CBO partners apart from external actors.

Funders should consider the capacity gaps in CBOs as areas of improvement, and recognize that formal education levels of CBO staff hold little bearing on their passion or capability to develop their communities. Funders should work to accommodate the needs of CBOs over their comfort or ease. Addressing the capacity gaps needs to be a participatory process and not top-down. Grantee partners shouldbe consulted on how they want the gaps addressed and by whom. Language, for example, is often a major barrier when it comes to resource mobilization among CBOs, so allowing CBOs to write proposals and reports and engage in meetings in vernacular languages and work with a translator is one practical sep that can dramatically increase theaccess of CBO partners who might otherwise be excluded. Another route that funders can take is to simplify the grant application wherever possible, ideally with the feedback and input of grantee partners themselves. It also involves allowing the grantee to submit the proposals in ways that are not too taxing on their part. These supports allow CBO partners the space to focus on the important programmatic work at hand, and are a step towards balancing the scales.

It Takes Time

Engaging in this work can present challenges, and Firelight Foundation is by no means naive as to the resources that are required for implementing changes like these. The process of working with CBO to identify and prioritize their needs can be time consuming, and more costly in the short term as funders and CBOs work together through trial and error. Some funding partners are still not keen to invest in the planning phase that allows CBOs to identify their needs, struggling to recognize the value of investing in this phase when they see more obvious ‘outputs’ from a more traditional funding structure.

However, this is not simply an argument grounded in idealism. While the Community-Driven Systems Change (CDSC) approach is rooted in a set of core values, the reality is that in the short time we have been implementing it with our grantee partners, so far it has also helped to maximize the intended impact of our work. We’re hearing over and over from partners that these shifts are having outsized impacts on their feelings of agency and ownership towards the work, and are seeing strategic outcomes that could not have occurred without taking the time to truly listen to and be led by communities. This is an investment, certainly – but it appears to already be paying off across the board.

Conclusion

CBOs have made it clear: the status quo is not sustainable or effective. As funders, we have the opportunity to shift our approach now. To do that, we have recommended: 

✔    Simplicity: Just like Firelight, funders should simplify grant application

✔    Flexibility: CBOs should be allowed to change their activities amid implementation when situations change in their communities

✔    Leniency: Special consideration based on the unique needs of CBOs

✔    Engagement: Allow CBOs to engage their communities and support these efforts

✔    Adopt the Community-Driven Systems Change approach

Tomaida Banda is Firelight’s Program Officer for Children’s Rights, Wellbeing, Care and Protection. You can read more about her here.