INGO leaders on the big trends affecting their organizations in 2023

Global development is in a period of flux. Between the ramp-up of localization, the so-called polycrisis, the rise of artificial intelligence, and changes to the funding landscape, it’s an interesting time to be at the helm of an international NGO. A panel of INGO leaders told Devex about how these key trends are affecting their organizations. Managing transformational changes For CARE USA President and CEO Michelle Nunn, one of the fundamental questions for leaders is how to keep the wheels turning during these huge transformations. “All of us have an immediate crisis that we're dealing with,” she said, so “we’re all trying to both meet the moment at an immediate level but also at a more transformational and long-term level.” CARE, for example, has gone from a majority focus on long-term development to a 50-50 split between development and humanitarian action. “The danger obviously is that we're not investing sufficiently in the broader, longer-term, sustainable opportunities that will help prevent and preclude the kind of humanitarian disasters of the future,” she said. One of the key challenges for Yannick Du Pont, founder and CEO of Netherlands-based Stichting SPARK, has been the funding landscape, particularly the way in which it has been affected by the war in Ukraine. “The big trends are really influencing us, and will be influencing us in the coming period,” he said. “While it may be very well warranted for political reasoning and geopolitical considerations, it's defunding a lot of the work that we do in other places.” Not everyone is experiencing these shifts in the same way, though. Dr. Githinji Gitahi, CEO of Amref Health Africa, said his organization’s top line grew during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and with a focus on development rather than humanitarian work. “We've seen ourselves actually … quadruple our top line in the last five years,” he said, with new revenue streams coming from philanthropic organizations. Localization The movement to shift power and resources toward local organizations was a key theme for all the participants. Du Pont said he is confident that the movement is heading in the right direction. Donors are codifying localization with financial incentives, which he said is the right thing to do. “I think we've all had good intentions since the 1950s in development, but this particular point hasn't really taken off,” he said. “So I think we need to look at creating financial incentives to shift that power to local organizations.” Part of the challenge for many organizations trying to navigate this shift is that there is no clear definition of “local.” “For the U.S. government, localization and proximity is a legal status,” Gitahi pointed out. Amref is an international organization based in Kenya and focused on Africa, but for the purposes of USAID funding, it was not local enough. That meant Amref had to fragment its operations in order to register locally, which poses potential problems, Gitahi said. This gray area around what “local” means is also relevant for Nunn. “Is an organization that's worked in India under the mantle of CARE for 70 years, and has been registered with the local board … is that a local organization [or] is that not a local organization?” These questions matter, she said, because the key is to create networks that operate globally. “None of the problems that we have in the world can be solved without scale, without advocacy, without innovation, without some of the market-based approaches,” she said. Artificial intelligence Technology was another topic of discussion. “I think CARE is already behind on AI,” Nunn admitted. “This next iteration is just the tip of the iceberg, and I can tell you we’re already behind.” CARE isn’t alone. As Du Pont pointed out, the corporate sector has been much more on top of these technological changes, and the aid sector needs to catch up. But as of yet, many promising initiatives are not scalable. “I think there is a big market there, but I don't see the scalability yet,” he said. “I see amazing initiative[s] around me, but they're all still piecemeal.” For Gitahi, it’s a double-edged sword. “On one side, AI has a huge opportunity to close the equity gap. But it also has a huge opportunity to increase that gap as well,” he said, particularly in light of how many people around the world still lack access to the internet. He offered one example of how his organization has used AI. His team wanted to use an image of a woman and a child that had been taken in Kenya, but they realized they did not have the woman’s consent for long-term use. Instead of sending a photographer out to take a different photo, they simply generated an image using AI. These sorts of use cases may affect staffing needs in the future, he said.