4 organizations taking a fresh approach to localization

The global development sector is grappling with how to walk the talk on localization. USAID has grabbed the headlines, after Administrator Samantha Power pledged in 2021 that 25% of all funding would go to locally led organizations by 2025 — a goal she recently admitted could be difficult to meet. But leaders from low- and middle-income countries say it’s not just about funding. It’s also about the behavior and approach of the organizations working in the sector. “Localization is currently the trend but trusting local leadership is more important than simply shifting resources,” wrote Lydiah Mutimbanyoka, former chief operating officer for Women for Women International in a Devex op-ed last year. More than 2,000 global humanitarian and development professionals from over 100 countries surveyed in a March report from Humentum agree that global localization efforts are “missing the mark.” The report urged international nongovernmental organizations to adopt a more long-term view of partnership with local organizations that allows for “the building of mutual trust, co-created goals and outcomes, and mutual accountability grounded in respect and trust.” So how can INGOs and other development organizations change their approach to not only shifting funding — but also trust and power — to locally led organizations? And how can the sector ensure “localization” doesn’t just become another buzzword sitting in a drawer, but actually translate it into action? Devex spoke to four organizations taking a different approach to localization about how they are working to shift power, harness local leadership, and drive more local fundraising. Global Fund for Community Foundations — supporting local fundraising Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Global Fund for Community Foundations provides small grants ranging from $7,000 to $20,000 to support what it calls community philanthropy. This means helping local organizations to not only raise money from traditional donors and INGOs but also directly from local communities. A lot of development work has either involved handing out money from afar or paying foreign contractors to go into a community and implement already-made solutions. By funding in partnership with local givers, GFCF is trying to ensure that the local community has decision-making power and that local people feel ownership of development organizations. “The dominant system doesn't dignify or recognize local assets and resources and what they mean in terms of relationships, trust, and connections — and how local giving contribution can change power dynamics,” said Jenny Hodgson, the executive director for the U.K. and South Africa at GFCF. One of the organizations GFCF is funding is Dalia Association, which is based in the Palestinian territories and was created in 2009 as a response to the large influx of foreign aid and the dependency that it threatened to create. The organization works to raise awareness around the value of local resources available in Palestinian communities and to revive “al-ouna,” the traditional practice of giving in the Palestinian territories. More recently, Dalia has developed several new fundraising campaigns to encourage local giving, including a secondhand shop whose profits go directly back into Dalia’s community grantmaking programs. The GFCF is also working on building an evidence base and collecting data on its effectiveness and impact. The funding from GFCF allows organizations such as Dalia to test out ways to raise money locally and think about different ways of doing grantmaking. It can be anything from local fundraising campaigns to funding more complex social justice issues, explained Hodgson. Grants are awarded through a combination of proactive invitations for organizations to apply and when there’s enough capacity and resources, also through an open competitive process. GFCF tries to make sure its relationship with partners is not a transactional one dependent on their grants; they deliberately keep grants small “in order to be a better partner and ensure we don't have such a power relationship over them,” said Hodgson. This approach has allowed GFCF to identify local organizations that are prepared to fundraise locally despite it being really hard work. “It's easier to get international money than to think about local money. So it's been relatively easy to screen out those who aren't really up for this work, and bring in those who are,” she said. Restless Development — reorganizing for localization Restless Development is a mid-sized NGO which provides training and mentorship to young, local leaders. It has decided that if it is committed to local working, it had better put its money where its mouth is, and move its own offices out of the global north. Restless Development used to be headquartered in the United Kingdom but it's done away with an HQ altogether. Now it’s distributed over seven independently registered and governed “hubs” in India, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, explained Alex Kent, co-CEO at Restless Development. Six years ago, the U.K. office had 55 members of staff working across both U.K. programs and other international functions such as fundraising, communications, and finance. These “global” functions are no longer hosted in the U.K. and 186 out of the organization’s 207 staff are based in their hubs in Africa and Asia, explained Kent. The leadership team has also changed. In 2020, Restless Development transitioned from a senior leadership team that was mostly white, British, based in the U.K., and working through in-person meetings to a global — and virtual — leadership team that’s mostly led by people of color in the global south and where 25% are young people and 60% are women, added Kent. This new leadership is spread over the organization’s seven hubs, with every hub director sitting on that global leadership group, explained Kent. The agency works directly with young volunteers and leaders to provide them with training, mentorship, and support to become economically independent or to make changes in their communities. In Tanzania, for example, a program targeting young people in agriculture helped equip 25,000 young people with the skills to create and manage agribusinesses — 92% of participants got a job, and on average, they saw a 22% increase in their incomes. Power shifting is a key philosophy for the organization. It recently appointed its very first power shifting director, Yande Kalengo, based in her native Zambia, and it has power shifting targets that say at least 50% of money raised must go to locally led youth organizations — and they won’t compete against those very same organizations for funding. About half of their global leadership started as young volunteers and then worked their way up. That was the case for Lesley Garura, who started as a volunteer back in 2001 and now acts as the Sierra Leone hub director. To him, the term power shifting “is about stepping outside existing systems and challenging the status quo. This means that instead of programme models designed by funders, we give resources, space, and support to young people to co-create their own programmes,” he wrote to Devex in an email. One such initiative is the Solar Backpack Project, supported through the Youth Fund which directly funds youth-led initiatives. It supported two young people from Sierra Leone’s Bo district to design and distribute solar-powered backpacks that make sure children can do their homework after dark. In addition to creating a reliable source of light, the backpack is also equipped with an alarm system to protect children walking home alone at night. People First Community — powering collective leadership The People First Community, a cross-sectoral group of over 500 members, is trying to make sure leadership in development comes from communities in the global south. And it wants development leaders in the region to learn from one another, rather than having organizations from the global north providing local leaders with a Euro-American education that’s not rooted in local contexts and values. The community is built on a distributed leadership model and the only governance structure is a 16-person steering committee, explained Anna Molero, who acts as the community’s secretariat in addition to her full-time job as the chief government officer of Teach For All. This means no one single organization is leading the initiative, which is a joint effort across individuals and organizations from different sectors, she added. “Focusing on spreading solutions alone will not make the difference. In order to transform systems, we have to also invest in people, and in particular in cultivating their leadership,” Molero said. One of People First’s main areas of focus is to build a community of practice where members can learn from one another, for example through frequent People First Talks with different leaders, but also by having organizations share insights from fellowship and leadership development programs with others in the network. Molero’s organization, Teach for All — a global network of 60 independently managed civil society organizations — selects and recruits the most promising young local leaders for a two-year teaching fellowship where they get to teach in underserved communities in their countries. These are individuals who would have gone into top jobs at big consultancy firms and investment banks, but over 70% of Teach For All alumni continue to work in education, explained Molero. “We will invest very intentionally in cultivating their leadership skills,” she said. Another member, Global Health Corps, specializes in identifying high-potential young people and training them to become effective leaders in the health workforce. Fellows are then embedded within health organizations in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, the United States, and Zambia and offered everything from training on management and advocacy to mentorship and coaching. This type of collective leadership is necessary to tackle the complex global development challenges at hand. “Just sending more funding to local organizations will not be sufficient for the adaptive challenges we have ahead,” Molero said. For example, it’s not enough to just create vaccines, she said. To actually get people vaccinated requires local leadership. Strong, preventive health systems need investment in the health workforce, not short-term “patch” solutions. Results for Development — connecting local leaders Results for Development, or R4D, works closely with local leaders — including government officials and civil society leaders — to help them set their own priorities. R4D wants local organizations to tell INGOs and funders what local solutions are needed, rather than the other way around. Despite progress on localization in the last few years, many funders are still too focused on their own agendas and processes, and have too much control over what gets done, explained Gina Lagomarsino, CEO of R4D. “Being an implementing partner that is trying to navigate between what local leaders want to do and what funders are willing to fund can be challenging,” she said. “Our goal is to try to get our funders to be very focused on the needs of the local leadership, and take and then follow their lead.“ In Tanzania, for example, a seven-yearlong partnership with the Ministry of Health led to a sustainable approach to treating childhood pneumonia by making sure the go-to treatment is financed and procured through government systems. The drug is now in stock in 90% of facilities compared to 25% in 2015 and the government is no longer relying on external parties, explained Lagomarsino in a recent LinkedIn post. They also create networks of local and national organizations and leaders to become the “go-to” source of expertise for governments in their regions, explained Lagomarsino. One example includes the Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Center, where R4D recruited a consortium of 11 Anglophone and Francophone Africa-based academic and policy analysis institutions to support their governments in health financing reforms. Supporting local leaders also means moving closer to them. When R4D was founded 15 years ago, most of their staff was located in the United States. Today, almost half of its employees are based elsewhere and they now describe themselves as a globally connected INGO without a headquarter, explained Lagomarsino. While R4D works across 27 countries, they’ve set up offices and local teams in five focus countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Indonesia. In order to boost recruitment in other countries, they are posting many of their positions with multiple country options and opening up more positions with a remote option. “When we hire people the idea is that they should have a more global career,” said Lagomarsino. R4D is also starting to think about their culture globally and are working on identifying a set of values and behaviors that are not overly influenced by any one country and that can be common across the organization, explained Lagomarsino. “We want to assess our culture to make sure that it is accessible to people around the world.”