The post-pandemic NGO

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of significant reflection for many, and the development sector is no exception. The crisis forced huge demands on NGO programs, as organizations simultaneously adapted to new working practices and took care of employees who were themselves dealing with the impacts of COVID-19. Midway through 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement reverberated around the world, and organizations in the United Kingdom also entered a full blown political and funding crisis. The development sector — like the rest of society — will not look the same after the pandemic recedes. And with vaccination programs gathering momentum in the global north, NGOs are tentatively looking to the future. Experts expect the “post-pandemic NGO” — a phrase coined by Bond, a membership organization for U.K. NGOs — to embrace changes in its approach to funding, work, and well-being. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” said Stephanie Draper, chief executive at Bond. “We think this is a moment of change and there are things we could do differently and better as a sector, and we should take that opportunity. … We have to look differently about how we organize and how we deliver our work.” Beyond the pandemic, the NGO sector is shifting to address the interconnected agendas of anti-racism, decolonization of development, and localization. NGOs are “very much grappling” with how to “acknowledge the inequities that we see and shift power operationally” to countries where programs are run, said Malikkah Rollins, senior programs manager at Humentum, an international membership organization for NGOs. While in practical terms this might mean moving a headquarters or altering recruitment procedures, “some are asking if this means whether they should exist at all,” said Christine Sow, CEO at Humentum. “The pandemic and all the racial inequities ... have lifted a veil that's been over the sector for decades, and now it's impossible, hopefully, to have that veil go back on.” --— Malikkah Rollins, senior programs manager, Humentum For STOPAIDS, a U.K.-based health advocacy network, it meant the adoption of an “anti-oppression framework,” according to Director Mike Podmore. This followed a review of all aspects of STOPAIDS’ work, which formed a strategy — based on the pillars of “humility, solidarity, collaboration, and autonomy” — that Podmore said will “fundamentally guide'' the rest of the organization's work. “We have a set of guiding principles or questions we’ll be asking ourselves in every event, every paper that we’re developing, every partnership we’re building,” he said. “We’ll be asking ourselves questions like: ‘Are we listening? Sharing the space? Is our communication inclusive?’” The pandemic “absolutely encouraged us to think big on this stuff,” he added. But the situation for NGOs in the U.K. — especially those that received significant government funding in the past — is made challenging by the government’s severe cuts to its aid budget, announced in November. For many organizations, this makes business planning and transitions hard, according to Bond’s Draper. “You need to be able to invest in new ways of doing things, and that’s going to be difficult with less funding available,” she said. Flexibility in funding is also key, such that donors need to be taken “on a journey of more organizational-based funding … investing and trusting that people can make their own decisions,” added Draper. “We’ve seen a lot of [U.K.] charities that were getting money from FCDO looking elsewhere to get funds — for example, USAID,” said Sow, referring to the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and U.S. Agency for International Development. She added that this has brought fresh challenges around managing new funding with different requirements, such as compliance reporting. But the money problem is not limited to the U.K. “Certainly lots of [U.S.] organizations are thinking about how they raise funding, business models, looking at investment bonds, social impact investing, social enterprise, different ways of functioning than they have worked in the past,” said Sow. She added that “a lot” of consolidations are taking place between NGOs, a point echoed by Draper. But Sow said a potential barrier to the diversified funding that many organizations are encountering has been their traditional structure, prompting the creation of affiliates, hubs, or registered offices to gain eligibility or credibility for new funding in different places. “A lot of this is very interwoven. They may be thinking about their structure because of racial justice and decolonization ... but they may also be thinking about that same structure because of funding,” she said. As with many other sectors, development is unlikely to go back to the office full time. Every organization Draper speaks to will “not be going back to five days in the office for all staff,” she said. “This has accelerated the demand for flexible working,” she added, with U.K. staffers likely to be at home for up to three days a week but visiting offices for critical meetings and “optimizing shared time together.” Remote working through the long months of the pandemic has taught organizations what works from home and what doesn’t. Indirect working practices will require greater transparency and decentralized decision-making, according to Draper. “If you’re not together all of the time, the way you communicate at all levels has to be clearer,” she said. “You need a clear sense of direction that everyone understands and is brought into, so they can make decisions more autonomously that they know will feed into that sense of direction.” Sustained communication about what is going on across the organization is also required for staffers to understand the wider consequences of their individual actions, added Draper. Also changing is the nature of relationships between development organizations themselves. Bond is looking at a trend of how business models “get beyond just diversifying funding … and into more creative ways of working collectively,” said Draper. While she added there is no clear picture yet of the form this new interorganizational working will take, partnerships, alliances, and the transition to local delivery are likely to be important components. NGO chief executives will not be able to carry out radical changes to their organizations without the backing of trustee boards. Here, both Humentum and Bond identified a potential stumbling block to systemic changes in the sector. “Trustee boards are so variable. Some will be fantastic enablers while others will be much more protective of the status quo,” said Draper. After all, the changes the sector is grappling with are not simple. “The pandemic and all the racial inequities ... have lifted a veil that's been over the sector for decades, and now it's impossible, hopefully, to have that veil go back on,” said Humentum’s Rollins. “But with that comes so much complexity because this is a whole new territory. There is no rule book. … It's a day-by-day challenge.” No organization has discovered a “magic bullet” answer for new models of working, said Rollins, and many are nervous about being the first to create such models. “What it takes is someone to take the first step and have it work out pretty well, and then others will follow suit.”