Participatory Grant Making is Key to Shifting the Power

What’s the best pre­scrip­tion for achiev­ing the SDG’s? For inter­na­tion­al NGOs and fun­ders to cede pow­er and con­trol over deci­sion-mak­ing to the con­stituents they aim to serve. That’s the con­clu­sion of a pro­to­type tri­al on par­tic­i­pa­to­ry grant-mak­ing (PGM) under­tak­en through the RINGO Project and led by Trans­form Trade, an INGO that sup­ports farm­ers and work­ers to achieve trade jus­tice, along­side Nor­saac, a human rights organ­i­sa­tion work­ing with women and young peo­ple in Ghana.

For the past cou­ple of years, the RINGO project has been cen­ter­ing its work on decolonis­ing the aid busi­ness and shift­ing pow­er from inter­na­tion­al NGOs and donors alike. Through a series of pro­to­types, the project has sought to move the con­ver­sa­tion towards under­stand­ing the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of the ‘how’ in this whole endeav­our. One of the ini­tia­tives to emerge was a deep­er look into how PGM can strength­en local civ­il soci­ety and the com­mu­ni­ties with whom it works. This is one of the over­ar­ch­ing aims of the SDGs and also one of the cen­tral aims of the OECD’s devel­op­ment assis­tance community’s aims of strength­en­ing local civ­il soci­ety.

In a tri­al car­ried out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with local com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­i­pants expe­ri­enced not only a high­er income, but report­ed improved con­fi­dence and more inde­pen­dence. As a con­se­quence, the women’s col­lec­tive took on more lead­er­ship from Trans­form Trade and, in the words of one small­hold­er farmer began ‘cre­at­ing more inde­pen­dence for their own des­tiny.’ This speaks to the very heart of Goal 5 of the SDG’s: to achieve gen­der equal­i­ty and inde­pen­dence for all women and girls.

Nor­saac worked on PGM in Ghana at the nation­al, sub-nation­al and local lev­el. At the sub­na­tion­al lev­el, par­tic­i­pants saw it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to co-cre­ate solu­tions; at the local lev­el, they saw it as a process to take pow­er com­plete­ly into their own hands. ‘What we learned was that in each process, PGM sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed the pow­er rela­tion­ship that saw com­mu­ni­ties as recip­i­ents of aid/support to become chief par­tic­i­pants and deci­sion-mak­ers,’ said Mohammed Awal Alhas­san.

There is a lot of talk about par­tic­i­pa­to­ry grant-mak­ing, but in prac­tice, it remains on the fringes, as fun­ders are reluc­tant to let go of pow­er. A recent webi­nar host­ed by the RINGO Project high­light­ed that whilst PGM has been around as a con­cept for about 15 years, its prin­ci­ples have yet to be wide­ly adopt­ed.

Some of the rea­sons for this are because of the chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with the prac­tice. The mod­el goes against most main­stream prac­tice, where civ­il soci­ety applies for fund­ing; fun­ders decide if they want to fund it, and then hold them to account for short-medi­um term mea­sur­able out­comes. For one, PGM requires a dif­fer­ent approach to invest­ment: the pilot took longer and more upfront invest­ment than any of the par­tic­i­pants antic­i­pat­ed, as it took time to invest in build­ing trust amongst part­ners.

Mea­sure­ment of out­comes is also less clear. ‘PGM cre­ates chal­lenges for fun­ders who are used to see­ing reports for out­puts and out­comes on their report­ing cycles and the two just don’t align. Peo­ple are fund­ing us because they want to see out­comes around trade and devel­op­ment, because that’s our core mis­sion, but not recog­nis­ing the length of time the process takes and the val­ue in that process,’ said Char­lotte Tim­son, CEO of Trans­form Trade.

‘How we mea­sure change….will change,’ con­firms Alhas­san of Nor­saac.  It may seem obvi­ous, but process becomes the cen­tre of this work, not the same old short-term ‘mea­sur­able’ out­comes.

Ulti­mate­ly, invest­ing in process pays off. As a result of these tri­als, those engaged in the work were con­fi­dent that by let­ting go of the reigns of con­trol, PGM can reduce depen­den­cy on donors and INGOs in future, whilst strength­en­ing the hand and pow­er of local civ­il soci­eties to face the mul­ti­ple chal­lenges com­ing their way.

Diana Sama­rasan from the ini­tia­tive ‘Advanc­ing Par­tic­i­pa­tion in Phil­an­thropy’ goes even fur­ther: ‘It’s not enough to just have deci­sion-mak­ing in one aspect of work or one loca­tion: fun­ders should have more engage­ment from con­stituents in the actu­al gov­er­nance of the organ­i­sa­tion.’ To help deep­en par­tic­i­pa­tion, they’ve cre­at­ed a self-assess­ment tool that is being pilot­ed across 20 foun­da­tions in the USA, Europe, Mex­i­co, South Africa and India.

The impact on the inter­na­tion­al NGO mod­el was also acute­ly felt through this work. Both Tim­son and Alhas­san agreed that whilst resources should be decid­ed and man­aged by the local com­mu­ni­ties, it’s not to say that those in the glob­al north should walk away from the table. ‘This work changed us, and we want to deep­en our par­tic­i­pa­tion approach­es across every­thing we do. But part­ners still want­ed us to play a role. We need to focus on where we can add val­ue, in advo­ca­cy, facil­i­ta­tion, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly work­ing at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el,’ con­clud­ed Tim­son.

Cur­rent prac­tice in civ­il soci­ety remains both top-down and patro­n­is­ing: assum­ing that those in Europe or the US know best, mak­ing deci­sions, drip-feed­ing project-based, short-term fund­ing, and cement­ing the state of long-term depen­dence. As fun­ders and civ­il soci­ety pro­fess the desire to do more to localise, shift pow­er and decolonise, how­ev­er, let­ting go of pow­er is the much-need­ed step in the chain that will make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence to advanc­ing SDG 5 – and so many oth­ers.

Principles of PGM

• Trust based
• Indige­nous val­ues: cen­tre the val­ues that embody the con­text of the com­mu­ni­ties and cul­tur­al set­ting
• Trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty: Open­ness through­out will ensure mutu­al account­abil­i­ty and build trust.
• Sol­i­dar­i­ty, inclu­sion and non-dis­crim­i­na­tion requires devel­op­ment stake­hold­ers to com­mit to leav­ing no one behind.
• Do no harm and safe­guard the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.
• Co-cre­ation (par­tic­i­pa­tion)
• Col­lab­o­ra­tion and Net­work­ing among grantees and oth­er stake­hold­ers, fos­ters a sense of shared pur­pose and col­lec­tive action.
• Learn and Reflect iter­a­tive­ly and con­tin­u­al­ly.
• Telling sto­ries with dig­ni­ty calls for north­ern and south­ern orga­ni­za­tions to respect indige­nous sto­ries and their sources, and not mod­i­fy them to suit their inter­ests.
• Flex­i­bil­i­ty and Adapt­abil­i­ty rec­og­nizes that com­mu­ni­ty needs and cir­cum­stances may change over time.

Nor­saac and Trans­form Trade have pro­duced a prac­ti­cal resource for those inter­est­ed in adopt­ing a more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry way of work­ing: South meets north in pow­er shift: A par­tic­i­pa­to­ry grant-mak­ing mod­el 

This blog was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Alliance Mag­a­zine.

Pho­to by Wyl­ly Suhen­dra on Unsplash