The devastating nature of the COVID-19 pandemic means that many large foundations in the Global North have pragmatically diverted some of their funding to the health sector even if this was not previously a core focus.
This shift has highlighted the historically unequal power dynamic between philanthropic organizations in the Global South and resource-rich foundations of the Global North. It has underlined the control foundations exert over the allocation of funding and removed the veil that concealed deep frustrations with established grant making practices. Grantees have increasingly found their voice and demanded faster disbursement and more unrestricted funding. Foundations in turn have been flexible, deviating from traditional practices, simplifying processes and responding more directly to the real needs of the frontline in the Global South.
As the Radical Flexibility Fund argue, donors could improve accountability further by assessing their assumptions and asking questions such as: “Did we help communities engage and solve their own problems? If not, why not?” and in so doing ensure the “community has the power to identify the goals of an intervention” and that donors thus enforced the rules and standards of the community rather than imposing their own.
This session will explore the pandemic-induced changed dynamic of philanthropy and how it can be encouraged, entrenched and lead to much greater scalable and sustainable impact.