Learnings from the RINGO Funder Action Pod: The Beating Heart of the System — how resources can help or hinder transformation

Ear­ly on in the RINGO jour­ney, it became clear that resources were a key theme impact­ing INGO behav­iour and their part­ner­ships. The nature of fund­ing has a pro­found impact on the shape and form of civ­il soci­ety, the norms and behav­iours of those involved, deci­sion-mak­ing process­es and struc­tures, and the way in which dif­fer­ent types of civ­il soci­ety enti­ties relate to each oth­er.

The RINGO Fun­der Action Pod, host­ed by the Coun­cil on Foun­da­tions, ini­tial­ly con­vened in 2021, brought togeth­er fun­ders from phil­an­thropy and civ­il soci­ety to explore the ways in which fund­ing sys­tems can be shift­ed to accel­er­ate efforts to shift­ing pow­er. The group con­vened over the next 3 years delv­ing into the areas where fun­ders could shift prac­tice, and explor­ing the bar­ri­ers and oppor­tu­ni­ties to change. 

Context

The foun­da­tion­al research under­tak­en by WACSI ‘Fos­ter­ing Equi­table North-South Civ­il Soci­ety Part­ner­ships: Voic­es from the South’, root­ed in con­ver­sa­tions with over 600 civ­il soci­ety groups in the Glob­al South, iden­ti­fied fund­ing prac­tices as a major obsta­cle in the rela­tion­ship with INGOs.

“Fund­ing usu­al­ly comes with a pre-set agen­da, and the glob­al south CSOs will most times bend over to fit into the fund­ing” Fos­ter­ing Equi­table North-South Civ­il Soci­ety Part­ner­ships: Voic­es from the South

Dur­ing the ear­ly stages of the RINGO Project, we sought to iden­ti­fy the areas of ‘stuck­ness’ in the sys­tem: the areas that were pre­vent­ing progress and trans­for­ma­tion. In the ear­ly RINGO Social Lab con­ven­ings, the ques­tion of resourc­ing was cen­tral and clear­ly iden­ti­fied as a head­line area of ‘stuck­ness’:

“Donors were felt to be dri­ving much of the exist­ing mod­els: large sums of mon­ey and the need for effi­cien­cy; risk man­age­ment; and donor allo­ca­tion also dri­ven by geopol­i­tics.” RINGO Inquiry Process Syn­the­sis Report

Our Approach

As RINGO sought to explore how to tack­le and reimag­ine how civ­il soci­ety could be resourced, we con­vened a group of pro­gres­sive change agents from a range of dif­fer­ent fund­ing organ­i­sa­tions. This was the RINGO Fun­der Action Pod, which met with the inten­tion of dis­cussing and iden­ti­fy­ing block­ers to trans­for­ma­tion­al change in resourc­ing approach­es and prac­tice, shar­ing the lat­est inno­va­tions emerg­ing on var­i­ous themes, and prac­ti­cal exam­ples from the RINGO Social Lab and beyond.

The Fun­der Action Pod focused on dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ty top­ics, includ­ing account­abil­i­ty, risk, the role of inter­me­di­aries and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry grant-mak­ing. Through these con­ver­sa­tions, a com­mu­ni­ty was built and iden­ti­fied areas of action. 

The Fun­der Action Pod had sought to explore and under­stand how to most effec­tive­ly influ­ence the fund­ing sys­tem to reimag­ine how account­abil­i­ties oper­ate and to strength­en com­mu­ni­ty voice and the fab­ric of local and nation­al civ­il soci­ety in the process.

The bar­ri­ers to change were iden­ti­fied, where fun­der prac­tice restricts the scope and speed of change due to their oblig­a­tions to dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers. How­ev­er, some very pos­i­tive shifts were iden­ti­fied and dis­cussed in the com­mu­ni­ty, and fun­ders were asked to con­sid­er how they might pur­sue these in prac­tice.

Learnings

1. Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry part­ner eval­u­a­tions that place account­abil­i­ty to the “end user” at the cen­tre of eval­u­a­tion is a con­struc­tive mod­el that isn’t extrac­tive, and involves active shar­ing and learn­ing at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el. The Fire­light Foun­da­tion shared its prac­tice in plac­ing com­mu­ni­ty based organ­i­sa­tions at the cen­tre of their account­abil­i­ty mea­sures, root­ed in trust­ing com­mu­ni­ties, hon­our­ing their knowl­edge and over­com­ing colo­nial mind­sets. The Pledge for Change intro­duced their new ‘PALM mod­el’, which also embod­ied greater par­tic­i­pa­tion.  This trans­for­ma­tion of tra­di­tion­al prac­tice, how­ev­er, requires sig­nif­i­cant time and resources and proac­tive edu­ca­tion of stake­hold­ers. 
   
2. Inter­me­di­aries are much-need­ed enti­ties to help shift more pow­er and resources, how­ev­er this is an unde­vel­oped field that is still dom­i­nat­ed by inter­me­di­aries in the US and Europe, and less is under­stood by fun­ders about how to work with inter­me­di­aries so that they don’t become anoth­er lay­er of bureau­cra­cy. Although the term ‘inter­me­di­ary’ is con­tentious as a descrip­tor of the con­nec­tors between inter­na­tion­al donors and nation­al or region­al grantees, the role was seen as cru­cial. They can take on the bur­den of report­ing, car­ry risk and enable flows of funds to small­er and more local imple­menters, and even play a more polit­i­cal and rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al role to influ­ence pol­i­cy. The INGO ADD Inter­na­tional shared their own reflec­tions on their role, as ‘facil­i­ta­tor of flow’ of resources, and a ‘han­dler of trou­ble’ in that they seek to take on the com­pli­ance bur­den. Epic Africa shared their prac­tice of devel­op­ing a plat­form, gen­er­at­ing crit­i­cal data and analy­sis to sup­port the broad­er African civ­il soci­ety sys­tem. There was a call for fun­ders to acknowl­edge and fund this vital ecosys­tem build­ing ‘plumb­ing’ work, and to invest in inter­me­di­aries, in order to sup­port the flow of resources and deci­sion mak­ing as close to com­mu­ni­ties as pos­si­ble.
3. Risk is a key area that holds back moves to shift pow­er and con­trol with­in the civ­il soci­ety fund­ing ecosys­tem. A ten­den­cy to use tra­di­tion­al com­pli­ance and con­trol sys­tems, and to enable local and nation­al CSOs to man­age resources and risk direct­ly, are major inhibitors of progress. RINGO explored options for dis­rupt­ing assump­tions around risk and test­ing how ‘brave encoun­ters’ can be a mod­el for risk man­age­ment through rela­tion­ship build­ing and trans­paren­cy.  The use and test­ing of these approach­es led by ICSC and Alliance 2015 drew out clear insights on how to iden­ti­fy new test­ing grounds for hav­ing ‘brave encoun­ters’ and try­ing out trans­for­ma­tive risk man­age­ment sys­tems.
4. Sys­tems Change requires a sys­tem. It may seem obvi­ous, but the sys­tems that dri­ve shift­ing pow­er in the fund­ing sec­tor are not lim­it­ed to any one part of the sys­tem: Pri­vate or pub­lic fun­ders, for exam­ple, func­tion dif­fer­ent­ly and don’t often meet, but will each be crit­i­cal part­ners to accel­er­ate shift­ing pow­er. Co-invest­ing in the capa­bil­i­ty of the sys­tem and in the rela­tion­ship between and among the dif­fer­ent actors in the fund­ing sec­tor, will be key to build­ing and main­tain­ing a func­tion­al sys­tem.

Challenges

1. Find­ing time to col­lab­o­rate and chal­lenge. In order to real­ly affect the sys­tem as a whole, fun­ders and the way that resources flow need to change rad­i­cal­ly. Fun­ders need to con­nect and col­lab­o­rate (as they have been doing through the RINGO Fun­der Action Pod) in order to pro­vide peer sup­port, learn­ing and chal­lenge, but they often are stretched and have lit­tle time to allo­cate to this. They need to hold each oth­er to account to keep striv­ing to cen­tre com­mu­ni­ties and CSOs, and to shift pow­er. 
2. Lead­er­ship engage­ment. In order for fun­ders to be able to trans­form their own busi­ness prac­tices, their lead­er­ship must be con­vinced, as change will be com­plex and will require invest­ment and deter­mi­na­tion.
3. Get­ting  the right actors togeth­er to change the sys­tem can seem insur­mount­able at times. Mul­ti­ple levers are required in order to shift pow­er, but it’s dif­fi­cult to get all of the actors in the ‘room’ with the author­i­ty to act. Net­works can be help­ful here; and iden­ti­fy­ing prac­ti­cal joint under­tak­ings that every­one can get behind, so it’s not just a ‘talk shop’. Com­men­su­rate resources are also nec­es­sary to enable action.