RINGO Community Gathering : Untying Aid

Dur­ing the RINGO process of analysing the glob­al civ­il soci­ety ecosys­tem, the RINGO Social Lab iden­ti­fied sev­er­al key areas of ‘stuck­ness’. One shone out loud and clear: the chan­nelling of funds for local and nation­al civ­il soci­ety in the major­i­ty world/Global South is cur­rent­ly heav­i­ly skewed towards minor­i­ty world/Global North organ­i­sa­tions, which sit clos­est to OECD donor funds.

Too Southern To Be Funded

‘Unty­ing Aid’ is to end the prac­tice of restrict­ing funds for civ­il soci­ety to cer­tain actors with­in the sys­tem, and specif­i­cal­ly to cer­tain nation­al­i­ties of civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions (CSOs). This was cho­sen as an area of focus for RINGO inno­va­tion, so that we could dig into this imbal­ance, under­stand this part of the sys­tem and inno­vate to try out alter­na­tive approach­es. The cam­paign Too South­ern To Be Fund­ed, spear­head­ed by the Glob­al Fund for Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tions, emerged from this process.

As so many of us try to work out what decolonis­ing means for our organ­i­sa­tions, the sta­tis­tics high­light­ed in the cam­paign report make the prac­tice of tied fund­ing a com­pelling pol­i­cy to chal­lenge:

“More than 90% of the sup­port to civ­il soci­ety in OECD-DAC mem­ber coun­tries goes to CSOs in their own coun­tries and oth­ers in the Glob­al North. Mean­while, less than 10% goes to CSOs in part­ner coun­tries in the Glob­al South.” (Too South­ern To Be Fund­ed)

RINGO Com­mu­ni­ty Gath­er­ing

At the RINGO Com­mu­ni­ty Gath­er­ing in May 2024, we wel­comed over 200 mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty to join a nuanced and polit­i­cal­ly aware con­ver­sa­tion on the issue of unty­ing aid, and explore what gen­uine sol­i­dar­i­ty and fund­ing equi­ty looks like across the move­ment for shift­ing pow­er and local­ly led devel­op­ment. Our con­ver­sa­tion took place in the con­text of a mix of recent pol­i­cy shifts, and a wor­ry­ing polit­i­cal con­text in both OECD coun­tries and those in the major­i­ty world/Global South. RINGO’s per­spec­tive is that bilat­er­al fun­ders should open up their civ­il soci­ety fund­ing to organ­i­sa­tions in the major­i­ty world/Global South, and should stop ring fenc­ing funds for INGOs who are prox­i­mate to fun­ders in the minor­i­ty world/Global North. How­ev­er, such pol­i­cy changes need to be done respon­si­bly and eth­i­cal­ly, and in a way that works to strength­en civ­il soci­ety every­where.

RINGO’s Jen­nie Rich­mond (Impact Works Asso­ciates) facil­i­tat­ed the ses­sion and we were joined by a fan­tas­tic pan­el who shared a range of expe­ri­ence and per­spec­tives on the ques­tion of unty­ing funds to civ­il soci­ety.

Esh­ban Kwe­si­ga (Knowl­edge Weaver and Influ­enc­ing Man­ag­er, Glob­al Fund for Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tions) has been lead­ing the Too South­ern To Be Fund­ed cam­paign and reflect­ed on how some actors in the sys­tem are focussed on debat­ing the ter­mi­nol­o­gy of ‘unty­ing aid’ and get­ting caught up in the seman­tics. There is a ten­sion between the def­i­n­i­tion of the pol­i­cy by the OECD DAC and what actu­al­ly hap­pens in prac­tice. The Too South­ern To Be Fund­ed cam­paign is call­ing for ‘an end to dis­crim­i­na­to­ry fund­ing prac­tices against glob­al south CSOs’. What­ev­er you call it, as Esh­ban keen­ly observes, it’s what hap­pens in prac­tice that counts.

“When it looks like tied aid, walks like tied aid and restricts fund­ing flows like tied aid; it is tied aid.” (Esh­ban Kwe­si­ga, GFCF)

Esh­ban talked about how across the world, the space for civ­il soci­ety is shrink­ing and we need to think cre­ative­ly about fund­ing flows. In the spir­it of glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty, he calls on those who are inter­est­ed in fund­ing local organ­i­sa­tions, to build on local sys­tems that are already there and invest in local sys­tems and resources that will some­day hold civ­il soci­ety when inter­na­tion­al fund­ing has become impos­si­ble or too dif­fi­cult.

Sarah Rose (Senior Advis­er on Local­i­sa­tion, USAID) explored the con­nec­tions between unty­ing aid and local­i­sa­tion objec­tives. She dis­cussed the oppor­tu­ni­ties and con­straints of a bilat­er­al fun­der like USAID, reflect­ing on how to bal­ance open com­pe­ti­tion with com­mit­ments to domes­tic civ­il soci­ety. Although Sarah acknowl­edged that USAID is still far from achiev­ing their goal of send­ing 25% of their pro­gram funds direct­ly to local part­ners, they are work­ing to embrace and reflect local pri­or­i­ties, local knowl­edge and look­ing to strength­en local sys­tems. Their two key goals are: to expand their direct rela­tion­ships with local part­ners; and to ele­vate local lead­er­ship across all of their pro­gram­ming.

“The empha­sis should always be on those rela­tion­ships [between all devel­op­ment actors], because the goal is to make sure that we are build­ing on the unique exper­tise, the resources, the knowl­edge, the net­works of all devel­op­ment actors, but doing so in a way that sup­ports and cre­ates the con­di­tions for local actors to take the lead to address local chal­lenges.” (Sarah Rose, USAID)

Romil­ly Green­hill (CEO, Bond UK) shared lessons learned from the UK aid expe­ri­ence, what went right and wrong, and how it could be done more eth­i­cal­ly. She explained how UK used to have core fund­ing arrange­ments for NGOs called Pro­gramme Part­ner­ship Arrange­ments (PPA) which pro­vid­ed long term core fund­ing. In 2016, this process was opened up to cre­ate a more com­pet­i­tive bid­ding expe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, some fund­ing mech­a­nisms remained tied, and the new process includ­ed strin­gent trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty require­ments, a cost­ly appli­ca­tion process and offered awards for short-term project-based mod­els. An inde­pen­dent review found it actu­al­ly reduced oppor­tu­ni­ties for self dri­ven capac­i­ty devel­op­ment, longer term strate­gic think­ing, and adap­ta­tion to the evolv­ing local con­text, and didn’t address issues of clos­ing civic space. Mov­ing for­ward, Romil­ly shared that she would like to see a mod­el which pro­vides fund­ing for domes­tic part­ners to raise aware­ness, pub­lic engage­ment and edu­ca­tion, and for local part­ners to receive long term, pre­dictable and flex­i­ble core fund­ing.

“How do we work togeth­er, col­lab­o­rate and show sol­i­dar­i­ty across our com­mu­ni­ties… between civ­il soci­ety in the glob­al south and glob­al north to help cre­ate a much bet­ter polit­i­cal con­text which will enable us to have the space for that untied, long term, core flex­i­ble fund­ing that we all real­ly need.” (Romil­ly Green­hill, Bond UK)

WATCH THE RECORDING OF THE FULL SESSION:

Call to Action

Fol­low­ing a high­ly engag­ing Q&A with mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty from all around the world, RINGO’s Charles Kojo Vandy­ck (WACSI) sum­marised with a call to action for fun­ders:

• pro­vide direct, good qual­i­ty and flex­i­ble core fund­ing
• syn­the­sise your process­es;
• co-cre­ate and enable local organ­i­sa­tions to make their own deci­sions from con­cep­tion and through­out the whole project cycle, not just imple­men­ta­tion

And issued a call for gen­uine sol­i­dar­i­ty across glob­al civ­il soci­ety:

“There is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for us all, whether we are in the Glob­al South or the Glob­al North, to engage and influ­ence change so that ini­tia­tives to untie aid can be done effec­tive­ly, eth­i­cal­ly and leads to a more fair and equi­table civ­il soci­ety.” (Charles Kojo Vandy­ck, WACSI)

For a full list of rec­om­men­da­tions, read Charles’ blog: Trans­form­ing Aid Deliv­ery: A Call to Action from the Too South­ern to be Fund­ed Report

The call for core fund­ing was a run­ning theme through­out the ses­sion, and it was fit­ting that the final word of the RINGO Com­mu­ni­ty Gath­er­ing went to Alex Mar­tins (The Equi­ty Index) who led on the research com­mis­sioned by Peace Direct which informed the Too South­ern to be Fund­ed report. Alex high­light­ed the shock­ing truth that although the cam­paign cites that less than 10% of fund­ing goes direct­ly to local CSOs, only 1% of that is core fund­ing.

“It’s about sol­i­dar­i­ty and dig­ni­ty: how can we say that we are tru­ly inter­est­ed in devel­op­ment if we are only giv­ing 1% of core fund­ing to organ­i­sa­tions who are already based in their con­texts and know what to do… Core fund­ing is gold dust… if you are going to untie, let it be every­body that can access that gold dust.” (Alex Mar­tins, The Equi­ty Index)