Disaster Philanthropy Playbook
Strengthening Local Humanitarian Leadership Philanthropic Toolkit
Overview
This toolkit is designed to inform and guide philanthropic institutions and private funders committed to supporting locally-led action and strengthening local humanitarian leadership (LHL) before, during and after crises. The toolkit was launched by the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP) in 2018 and is continually updated with new evidence and practical resources and tools. It includes an overview of how philanthropy can support locally-led action and key considerations for funders drawn from the grantmaking and partnership experiences of a wide range of actors, including CDP, peer funders and partners.
The downloadable portion of the toolkit (linked below) includes a curated list of educational, practical and usable resources on topics such as equitable grantmaking and partnerships, locally managed pooled funds and the use of proximate intermediaries.
Why focus on local humanitarian leadership?
Conventional international disaster preparedness, response, recovery, resilience and development efforts have long been critiqued for being externally driven and influenced by the agendas, goals and practices of the funders (usually wealthy Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] nations) rather than the needs, priorities, preferences and existing capacities and resources of local affected communities, leaders and service providers, including local governments and businesses. Bilateral and multilateral governmental donors (such as USAID, EU, UN or the World Bank) and private funders continue to wield significant decision-making power and influence in the formal aid sector. However, it’s commonly accepted that the most effective strategies are those informed and implemented by long-term, equitable, strategic partnerships and trusted relationships with local actors.
Global, regional and national governments, humanitarian organizations and community leaders worldwide have long advocated for a greater emphasis on locally-led leadership in aid efforts. This goes beyond merely increasing direct financial support for local organizations (an overly simplified indicator that has failed to result in meaningful change, despite its promise); it means prioritizing local decision-making in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Ultimately, the focus of those committed to LHL is to enable those directly affected by crises to have a stronger say and greater control in determining philanthropic and social investment priorities, strategies and actions.
International solidarity, external funding and technical expertise continue to be valued and necessary considering the increasing scale and frequency of disasters, complex humanitarian emergencies and crises. At the same time, the evidence and instances gathered in this toolkit demonstrate that recognizing, supporting and empowering local leadership with adequate resources allows them to quickly and effectively leverage local knowledge, historical perspectives and networks to better prepare for and respond quickly to emergencies, and strategize and plan holistically for long-term recovery. This approach ensures that responses are customized to fit the cultural, socio-political and economic realities of their communities, and solutions are not only more likely to succeed, but they are more cost-efficient.
What Types of Changes Can Funders Make to Support Local Leadership?
There is no formulaic approach. Many of the resources on “localization” describe a wide range of steps grantmakers can take to better support local leadership and ensure more locally relevant responses. Some can be implemented immediately, while others may involve bringing others along with you on your change journey.
We invite you to use the toolkit to explore the rationale, guidance, practical steps and concrete actions that funders and aid providers can take to shift power and agency to local actors. Drawing on the wealth of resources compiled in the toolkit, we offer a summary of key considerations and recommendations below, along with a more detailed list of practical actions with concrete examples drawn from members of the Local Humanitarian Leadership Funder Collaborative convened by CDP.
Overall considerations for funders
- Consider the context and conditions in which local organizations work, including factors such as the current state of government or political arrangements, regulatory environment, civil society space, security context, power and financial/economic infrastructure or natural resources.
- Pay fair compensation to local organizations for the staff time required to take on more responsibility. Salaries vary depending upon location, agency, community size and current stage of the event to which actors are responding. However, salaries can be determined by evaluating all these factors in context.
- The question often arises, “How local is local?” In some protracted crises and major disasters, recovery efforts require coordination mechanisms and greater presence of national or regional actors alongside the local community leaders to ensure that aid moves through channels with access to the affected area. This does not mean that localization is not occurring — this occurs “in country” rather than as directed by an international organization from a distance.
- Successful processes of returning power and decision-making to representatives of affected communities require funders’ humility, sensitivity and trust in listening carefully to the community’s expressed needs and acknowledging the political and cultural contexts in which these decisions are being made.
- Although there will be instances when it may be necessary to rely on INGOs to serve as fiscal partners, direct funding may be the only method to distribute aid in some contexts. Direct funding can also stretch dollars on the ground, bypassing other intermediaries.
- Additionally, funders can support local actors by increasing their visibility in larger public and philanthropic circles. Recognizing the roles, results and innovations of these leaders and organizations expands the audience for support.
Practical examples and actions funders can take to strengthen local humanitarian leadership
- Fund legitimate proximate actors (as defined by communities) while supporting field building and systems change. Invest in partner-led innovation and new and flexible local resourcing models. This helps build the “infrastructure” for supporting locally-led efforts, intermediaries and platforms that act in solidarity and channel funding quickly to known local actors. Uplift, highlight, promote and replicate existing good work and practices.
- Invest in and support locally-led and managed pooled funds to leverage local knowledge and expertise, support local decision making and accelerate disbursement of emergency response and recovery funds to multiple small organizations. CDP invested in the Local Response Pooled Fund in South Sudan.
- Support preparedness and anticipatory action in high-risk areas by pre-positioning funding and other resources with trusted national networks. Start Network’s Anticipatory Action Service offers support to Start Network members with guidance, resources, capacity-strengthening support and grants to help them make the best use of timely, reliable risk information.
- Alter internal grantmaking practices to simplify application and reporting processes. CDP embarked on a change management process to alter its grantmaking practices based on an understanding of the complexities and challenges that local leaders often face. For other examples from some of the members of the LHL collaborative, see Global Giving’s streamlined application process.
- Remove earmarks and restrictions and increase multi-year funding. These have consistently been highlighted as one of the most easy-to-implement practices to support local actors that have far-reaching and tangible organizational and programmatic value and impact.
- Increase investments in long-term equitable recovery, risk reduction and mitigation, including durable solutions for refugees and social protection systems. Having this as part of your giving strategy has significantly better cost-benefit and sustainability impacts at the local level, decreases vulnerability, increases resilience and decreases the need for international support. Research has consistently demonstrated that every dollar spent on risk reduction and mitigation saves $6-$20 in emergency relief assistance and aid. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded the Regional Network for Risk Management in Central America (CRGR) to provide an Action Research course offering a practical training process for members of the network.
- Improve coordination, collaboration and planning between humanitarian, development, human rights and peacebuilding actors to make better use of resources, magnify relief and response investments into long-term social and economic impact when local organizations, movements and communities are strengthened, local markets are stimulated by investments in local procurement of goods and services, and employment opportunities are generated by good planning and early implementation of recovery programs. One such effort underway is the Better Preparedness, Funding Resilience initiative led by Human Rights Funders Network.
- Support sector-wide initiatives that seek new and innovative solutions to address long-standing, structural issues in the aid system, and reimagine and transform the roles, relationships and practices of conventional aid actors. Examples of such efforts include the Reimagining INGO Project (RINGO) hosted by the West African Civil Society Institute (WACSI) and the Pledge for Change 2030 hosted by Adeso, both African organizations that have taken the lead on collective action and advocacy for a more equitable and just aid system based on appropriate power-sharing.
- Think big and system-wide. Funding for local organizations can have a bigger impact if it is part of a larger-scale flexible investment in local ecosystems and interconnected, coordinated, and complementary efforts.
How Do We Know It Works?
There are ongoing efforts to monitor the effectiveness of localization and to track funding to local actors. Humanitarian Advisory Group (HAG) report “A Pathway to Localization Impact: Laying the Foundations” makes a compelling case for measuring the impact of localization at the community level and outlines the barriers to measuring the impact of localization. A study by the Share Trust and the Warande Advisory Centre, “Passing the Buck: The Economics Of Localizing Aid,” estimates that local intermediaries could deliver programming that is 32% more cost-efficient than international intermediaries by stripping out inflated international salaries and overhead costs.
More research could provide additional evidence that direct support to regional networks, national and local actors, and mutual aid groups is more effective. Philanthropic institutions can support such research to build more evidence and make a stronger case to their peers.
We hope the materials in this Local Humanitarian Leadership Philanthropic Toolkit will aid you and others in your work to strengthen local humanitarian leadership.
Download Local Humanitarian Leadership Toolkit Resources
Strengthening Local Humanitarian Leadership Philanthropic Collaborative
CDP convenes a funder collaborative, which consists of U.S. and non-U.S.-based philanthropic institutions that are shifting power to crisis-affected communities and local humanitarian leaders by adopting more equitable grantmaking and partnership practices.
Click here to learn more about the Collaborative and how it can help transform and amplify the impact of your disaster giving and support more equitable power distribution within the disaster and humanitarian aid ecosystem.
