The international aid sector is in shock. The brusque downsizing of USAID has an immediate impact on millions of people and many aid-funded organisations: UN, NGOs, and government institutions running programmes with US funding. The brutality of it tends to obscure that European aid donors have been, and continue cutting, their aid budgets for some time now; USAID maintained its level until the new administration took over this year. It is the cumulative impact of budget cuts of the main Western aid-donors that is biting deep.
The aid sector is responding with arguments to the Western donors not to cut so drastically. Some hope this decline will be temporary, with official aid picking up again in a few years, when the political landscape has changed. Meanwhile, while searching for alternative sources to at least partially compensate the drastic losses in income, many must let go of large numbers of staff, and several have already closed down.
We are beginning to hear views that this must be the opportunity to drastically change an aid sector with significant flaws.
This brief supports the argument that radical change is needed. But it goes deeper in its analysis and imagining of the nature of that change. First, the analysis of what is happening needs improvement: The cuts in aid budgets go together with a sustained disregard for international norms and with an increasingly frontal attack on the primary multilateral institution tasked with promoting and defending them, the United Nations – by several of the countries behind its creation at the end of WWII. Simultaneously, we are also seeing a clear attack on the freedom of speech, academic independence, civic activism and the right to protest in the US, a trend that was already noticeable in several European countries. Therefore
- ONLY focusing on ‘downsizing’ and ‘re-prioritising’ project, and searching for alternative funding, is not good enough.
-The aid sector cannot continue to ignore the national, regional and international political economies that create and maintain poverty, disease, ‘underdevelopment’, wars, forced displacement, and humanitarian suffering.
- INGOs in particular need to engage much more with the marginalisation, climate crisis impacts, but also polarisation in their home societies, and the economic policies of their own governments.
- Agencies need to fundamentally rethink purpose, role, and collaborations in a new world disorder. That must start with a critical self-examination, in each, about how it has been working, individually and as part of a wider sector. We must let go of mindsets and ways of working similar to those that drive today's crises. Only then can we consider, with fresh eyes, how we best contribute to what the world now needs. The Annex offers some initial points for such critical reflection. Find the full brief here.
WHEN DID YOU LAST DISCUSS YOUR DECISION-MAKING PRACTICES?
Teams, organisations, consortia, coalitions, networks, ‘community’ groups, constantly make decisions. Decisions have consequences. Yet, surprisingly, rarely do we review how we make decisions, and whether certain approaches could be more appropriate than others. This brief is an invitation to have an explicit reflection on decision-making, and introduces you to different possible approaches.
Three decision-making styles are most common in work environments: Formal authority (‘I decide because I am the highest ranking person in the formal hierarchy here’); majority vote, and consensus. Each of these carries potential weaknesses: There is no guarantee that someone with higher authority takes better decisions; voting risks the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and a disaffected and resentful ‘minority’ that obstructs implementation; while ‘consensus’ risks the ‘tyranny of the minority’, as everyone has de facto veto power – leading to negotiated compromises that may not longer be the most insightful and wisest decision.
More fundamentally, none of these approaches actively invites deliberation, where listening attentively to the perspectives and proposals of different stakeholders creates the atmosphere for decisions grounded in more collective intelligence, even collective wisdom.
The argument against ‘deliberative decision-making’ is its slowness. In a rapidly changing world, and where efficiency and productivity (though not effectiveness and sustainability!) are associated with speed, fast decision-making is preferred over slower approaches. While there is a place for fast thinking, its risks, when practiced to most decision-making, have been comprehensively exposed by Daniel Kahneman. So beware!
This brief introduces you to three deliberative approaches to decision-making: decision-circles, dynamic governance (also referred to as sociocracy), and gradients of agreement. All three reduce the influence of formal or informal power in decision-making, in favour of purpose-led collective intelligence and collective wisdom. Ultimately decisions need not just be taken but also implemented: more inclusive and deliberative approaches increase the willingness to support implementation, a time-saver in the medium-term! The brief also touches on ethical dilemmas where there is no clear ‘good’ option, and how to try and find a ‘least bad’ of them.
No approach is presented as always better than any other. The message of the brief is to encourage you to explicitly reflect on the decision-making ‘culture’ in your work sphere and in your family, and wider society – and whether there is scope for better approaches. Find the brief here!
ARDD & GMI COLLABORATION
The Renaissance Strategic Centre of the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD) civil society organisation, and GMI have formally come together to facilitate dialogue and exchange knowledge and experiences between stakeholders, to enhance civic space internationally and nationally. This aligns with ARDD’s broader objectives under the Arab Transformation Programme, on civic space, civil society and localisation.
Our November 2024 webinar examined collective leadership. Collective leadership is not easy as most of us are used to top-down leadership. Inevitably, individuals and organisations who come together for a shared purpose, also have diverging interests, and will want to get something for themselves out of the collaboration, not just give their time, energy, ideas and resources to it. In this webinar we explored what makes collective leadership work, what challenges to it frequently arise, and how they can best be dealt with.
The insights of the participants, but especially of the panelists Naomi Tulay-Tsolanke, Apollo Gabazira and Manal Wazani, as well as the learning from others, on Network Weaving, Impact Networks and collective impact, are captured in this new guidance paper, full of practical tips: Collective Leadership - Making it Work.
RISK SHARING IN PRACTICE. Getting Started.
Are you part of several organisations collaborating for a shared purpose? How do you handle ‘risk’ between you? Does one try to transfer risk to the other? Does one try to absorb some risk on behalf of the other? Do you ‘share’ certain risks – and if so, how does that happen in practice?
Why, in the first place, would you share risks? Perhaps because of a pragmatic, instrumental reason: If a serious threat happens to one of the collaborating agencies, this will affect everyone’s ability to achieve the shared purpose or objective. Or because of a more ethical consideration: If you consider your collaboration a genuine partnership, you may accept an ethical duty of care and solidarity with each even if there is no legal obligation for it.
The question of risk transfer, risk absorption and/or risk sharing in recent years has come to the foreground between aid agencies, particularly those working in volatile and dangerous environments. But it poses itself also for private sector or public-private sector collaborations.
This new GMI brief details how this complex and at times also sensitive conversation between collaborating agencies can be started and structured.
It builds on the work of the Risk Sharing Platform, which has been leading on this topic in the aid sector, but also goes beyond it by taking a somewhat different approach:
· It adds some risk categories to the eight recognised by the Risk Sharing Platform (health and safety, security, legal/compliance, financial/fiduciary, information; operational; ethical; and reputational risks), notably ‘political risks’, risks to ‘organisational stability’ and risks to the willingness and ability to collaborate for collective impact (i.e. because of the strong incentives for competition in the international aid sector).
· It includes risks for the people and populations we seek to assist: How aid agencies manage their risks, individually or collaboratively, can have impacts on the risks to which people-in-greater-need are exposed.
· We make an important differentiation between risks that originate from outside the collaboration chain, and others that originate from within the collaboration chain. Read more here.
DONORS AND INTERMEDIARIES: Critical self-awareness and a conversation guide
Given that aid donors will continue to use intermediaries, this second paper focuses on what donors can and must do to ensure that intermediaries use their power responsibly, strive towards equitable partnership with national and local subgrantees, and intentionally work towards role changes, with the national-local actor taking on more and more leadership. The paper consists of three components:
1. A practical conversation guide for donors to use, proactively, with organisations they intend to fund which in turn will subgrant to (other) national and local actors.
2. An invitation for back-donors to be self-critical about how their behaviours influence how an intermediary organisation plays that role: sometimes donor requirements are such that it becomes difficult for an intermediary organisation to play a truly supportive and enabling role for its local and national subgrantees/partners.
3. An answer to the question whether a direct communication is appropriate between a back-donor and a LNA which receives its funds through an intermediary. Access the paper here.
INTERMEDIARY ORGANISATIONS UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT - WHY?
In 2016, at the World Humanitarian Summit, all the big players in the international humanitarian aid system, committed to ‘better support and reinforce national and local actors’. Since then, the roles and behaviours of notably international aid agencies, acting as ‘intermediaries’, have come under closer review.
‘Intermediary’ aid organisations are those that pass on part or all of the funding they receive from a ‘back-donor’ (typically a bilateral or multilateral, but this can also be a foundation or a corporate sponsor) to a local or national actor (mostly governmental, non-governmental or community-based). The ‘intermediation’ role therefore is fundamentally related to the flow of funding.
In the current global aid system, most intermediaries are international entities such as UN agencies, INGOs, international financial institutions, donor Red Cross societies, Western research, training and consultancy outfits, and Western for-profit contractors. This also includes pooled funds, managed by the UN or by others. But there are also national agencies acting as intermediaries who subgrant to more local ones and/or directly to target groups. Examples are the Manusher Jonno Foundation in Bangladesh; larger Myanmar NGOs who in 2022 came together in a Local Intermediary Actor Network, and in future perhaps, the National Network for Local Philanthropy Development in Ukraine (initially co-hosting a fund together with the Start Network).
This briefing paper looks at why ‘back-donors’ use them. It unpacks how intermediaries can add value but can also abuse their power over national and local actors they sub-grant to. Abusive behaviour can come from specific individuals, but unjust practices can be more structurally embedded in how an organisation sees its intermediation role, and its wider organisational culture and self-image. Organisations playing intermediary roles now can and must reflect self-critically about how they choose to play that role. Find the first paper here.
A next briefing paper will offer practical guidance for the conversations back-donors can and must have with those they fund in intermediary roles.
EVALUATING PEACE MEDIATION AND PEACEBUILDING in ONGOING CONFLICT. What have we learned about good practices in peace mediation and peacebuilding?
A clearer understanding of the meaning of the OECD/DAC evaluation criteria is not however of direct help to peace actors who intervene in volatile and uncertain environments and try to figure out how they can be most relevant, effective, and efficient, nor for donors who try to assess the potential of different proposed interventions to be so. A second possible source of insight is what we have learned from the collective experiences in mediation and peacebuilding over the past 20 years.
This second briefing paper summarises key such insights. These are not ‘best practices’ that are valid across all contexts and at any moment. There is no blueprint design or technical-methodological manual that, if followed, is guaranteed to resolve the conflict. They constitute ‘good practices’ that seem to increase the likelihood that individual and collective efforts will, eventually (but no one can confidently predict when), have positive influences on a vicious circle of violence and distrust. When and how precisely to apply them will remain a matter of situational judgment by the peace actor. Access the paper here.
EVALUATING PEACE MEDIATION AND PEACEBUILDING in ONGOING CONFLICT. Correct use of the OECD evaluation criteria and implications for evaluations and evaluators
Peace mediation and peacebuilding are notoriously difficult endeavours. Many actors are definitely beyond the ‘control’ of the mediators or peacebuilders, very difficult to influence or even hard to reach. Most conflicts evolve into a set of interlocking conflict dynamics, with international, regional, national and local layers that are interconnected but also have somewhat different driving factors and key actors.
Yet donors, as well as mediators, want to assess, even ‘evaluate’ the ‘effectiveness’ and ‘impact’ of their actions. The question is: What is the reference, what are relevant criteria? Two main reference sources can be used: the OECD evaluation criteria, and what we have learned, from years of comparative experience, about practices that increase the likelihood of having some positive influence or impact.
This brief focuses on the OECD evaluation criteria and how applicable they are to peace mediation and peacebuilding. It observes that there is significant misunderstanding, among those commissioning such evaluations and sometimes among evaluators themselves, about the realities of peace mediation and peacebuilding, certainly in ongoing conflict situations, and ignorance of how the OECD advises they be used.
It concludes with the observation that evaluating peace mediation and/or peacebuilding is by no means only a matter of methodological competence. That has important implications for the choice of reviewers and evaluators. Read the brief here.