Photo Credit: Jim Huylebroek for OTI and Creative Associates International
By Ina Jamuna Breuer, Executive Director of NEID Global
The call to change the manner in which international assistance is practised is not new, but after many years of advocacy by local leaders around the world and renewed recognition as a result of Covid-19 of the stark inequalities that exist globally, the needle is finally moving. There is now a genuine effort underway to change entrenched power imbalances in the global aid system.
This shift in norms and practices could not have come at a more important moment. The World Bank has reported that as a result of Covid-19, 100 million people have been forced into extreme poverty and millions more families struggle daily to meet their basic needs. In addition, the IPCC is warning that detrimental effects of climate change will come sooner than expected if we do not act now. Like Covid-19, climate change will affect the poor, disadvantaged and marginalised the most. We are at a critical juncture where real structural change is needed and private donors can and should meet this moment with urgency.
At Network of Engaged International Donors (NEID Global), a community of globally engaged donors that I manage, we host over 50 events on international philanthropy and development a year. Our mission is to educate and connect globally-oriented private philanthropists and family foundations. We have placed heavy emphasis in our programmes on helping our members understand how they can change their philanthropic practices to help shift power. Many in our community have heard the call and are practising some or even all elements of what is widely known as trust-based philanthropy, namely to:
- give general support;
- give multi-year support;
- give to organisations and leaders with lived experience;
- listen to grantees and let them set priorities and evaluate success; and
- simplify reporting requirements.
A big part of what is so exciting about this moment is that much can and is being done to make it easy for private philanthropy to play an even more active role in decolonising philanthropy globally. This is how:
- For decades, one of the biggest reasons donors cited for not giving to local organisations was that they could not find them. Now our virtual reality is enabling philanthropy serving organisations such as NEID Global to highlight local grassroots leaders and their work directly to our members through events. In addition, two new websites are about to go live which seek to connect local leaders directly to donors around the world and vice versa. These are Share Point, to be launched by the African Philanthropy Forum at the end of May/June 2022 and KujaLink, created and hosted by Adeso.
- Another big and continuing factor that has prevented funders (big and small) from funding local organisations is a narrative of risk. Donors were wary of corrupt practices in far-away places or were not sure how local organisations could provide financial accountability for funds they gave, especially for larger grants. Now, new organisations such as The Share Trust or CORE, are providing back-office support and offering NGO collectives ways to jointly apply for larger grants from bi-lateral as well as private donors. Similar practices were used by the World Bank in their efforts to scale successful grassroots initiatives in the past.
- Today donors also have many new models to emulate when it comes to shifting power and decisions to local organisations. In the refugee space for example The Global Whole Being Fund and Asylum Access are amazingly effective donor fund models for how to collect funds and then give refugee-led grantees the leading voice in how these funds are distributed, used and evaluated.
- Finally, we can all see that USAID is trying hard to change its institutional practices and make good on promises to meet the Grand Bargain outlined in Istanbul at the 2014 World Humanitarian Summit. Most recently, the current administrator, Samantha Power, has committed that USAID will be giving at least 25% of its support directly to local leaders and aims to require that 50% of its funds given involve local leaders in programme design and decision making. This will likely take time to realise, but local leaders, as well as private philanthropy, will play an important role in holding bi-lateral donors such as USAID accountable for these promised changes to their practices.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the author Arundhati Roy reminded us that we had “a window of opportunity” to enter a new world. The efforts outlined above create such a window and make it easy for private philanthropy to take even more steps to help empower change-makers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Now it is up to them to use these resources so that we can work together to shift systems and practices and create a more equitable world.
Ina Jamuna Breuer is Executive Director of NEID Global, which is a national peer-to-peer learning community of global donors, social investors, and family foundations. Previously Ina was the Executive Director of Beyond Conflict, where she worked for 17 years to help leaders in the Middle East, Central America, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and South Asia address difficult challenges relating to reconciliation and change. Prior to BC, Ina was the Assistant Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. She completed her studies at Northwestern University, the Free University of Berlin and the New School for Social Research. Ina is a German citizen that was born and raised in India and South Korea. She recently also became a US national.