7 experiments tackling the barriers to localization

The localization agenda is becoming a key issue for the development sector, with leaders of NGOs consistently raising it as one of the topics they are most concerned about. But successfully implementing it involves changing decades of entrenched behavior in multilaterals, donor agencies, and NGOs. That’s where a new project comes in. Reimagining the INGO — or RINGO — is run by a group of development workers who are experimenting with new models to transfer more power and funding to locally led organizations. The project is hosted at Rights CoLab, a consultancy that fosters collaboration in human rights, and has a budget of a little over $1 million. RINGO Founder Deborah Doane said the current system suffers from “functional inertia” — a state in which the existing structures and incentives make it difficult to make changes to how things are done, despite many different people wanting those changes to happen. Doane said the project has identified “areas of stuckness” where the system needs to change. RINGO is intended to develop prototypes for different ways of doing things. It will support many small-scale experiments by individuals and groups working in the current system, Doane said, who will try to do things differently and see what brings about practical change. “RINGO was devised out of a conviction that one organization couldn’t change what needed to be changed,” she said. “There were a lot of systemic factors at play — donor rules, business models, legal issues. We wanted to stop putting out reports talking about what was wrong. We’ve seen too many reports that explain the problems but don’t lead to change. We wanted to do practical work and find solutions.” Doane and her collaborators turned to a process called “design thinking” to try and find different ways of tackling the problems that prevented localization from taking root. “Design thinking is a science-based approach to creating change, which involves a lot of thinking about the problem, then designing solutions that you can quickly and practically test, and then learning the lessons from the first test and going back for another go,” Doane said. “We gathered together a group of people and talked about why things were stuck. We asked how might we overcome those challenges. The lab members are people from the system — from both the [global] south and the north; from funders, agencies, NGOs.” The RINGO lab is currently testing seven design prototypes in four main areas: accountability, partnerships, leadership and governance, and resourcing. Doane hopes this fresh approach will be key to success. “I’ve worked in international development for 25 years and I’ve concluded that process is everything,” she said. “I’ve never seen a process like this in international development.” We wanted to stop putting out reports talking about what was wrong. … We wanted to do practical work and find solutions.” --— Deborah Doane, founder, Reimagining the INGO Below are the seven prototypes RINGO is working on: • The requirements map: An attempt to map out all the risk and compliance requirements in a funding chain. As funding is passed down from a donor agency through intermediaries, more and more requirements and restrictions are put in place, making it difficult for the end user to use the money effectively. The project will identify ways the process could be simplified and improved. • The local leadership question: An examination of how local people can have more leadership over funding, in the context of climate justice in the Philippines, where imposing climate-friendly solutions from outside risks exacerbating existing conflicts. • The “reverse call for proposal”: This model will be tested in Swaziland, where instead of a funder specifying a problem and how it should be solved, local people will define the need and ask donors and INGOs to respond to their requirements. • The knowledge bank: This involves an attempt to set up a knowledge bank of activists and advisers from the global south to advise on “decolonizing” the development sector, in response to a demand from INGOs and funders to understand how to go about the decolonization process. • The accountability challenge: A system of accountability mechanisms that INGOs can sign up to, and which will effectively allow people living in the global south to hold them to account in a consistent way. This will build on the Pledge for Change, an agreement already signed by influential organizations such as the U.K. branches of Oxfam, Care International, and Save the Children. • Untying aid: A campaign to end tied funds — a process where a certain amount of aid from many donor countries is earmarked for nonprofits headquartered in their own country. • Power to the people: A participatory grant-making platform, to be tested in Kenya and Ghana, which will involve committing a pot of money to a particular region, and allowing local people to make decisions about where funding goes. More prototypes are in the pipeline to be resourced by RINGO but have not yet reached the threshold to be launched. Other concepts developed through the RINGO framework are going ahead independently because they don’t need RINGO support. The initial round of testing will take place over the next few months. Once the initial results are in, they will go through a process of testing, refining, and iterating, until it becomes clearer what solutions are needed.