Establishing trust funds is one effective way for donors to channel finances and partner with local governments and other development institutions to deliver targeted assistance to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.
But building a robust and stable trust fund can be an arduous and slow task for development professionals caught up in the tussle of bureaucracy.
At the World Bank, staffers are familiar with long clearance processes involving coffee with potential donors, writing and rewriting proposals to account for changes in country-level fees or policies, seeking approval from several World Bank departments and officials, and then struggling to recover the costs associated with a new fund.