If we were to compare the power of businesses to be agile with NGOs, we would find that businesses have a much more enabling ecosystem to disrupt and moderate their work. The ecosystem around NGOs is seldom as bold, it is limited by a longstanding mission of merely sustaining NGOs through crises rather than enabling them to thrive. A recent survey notes that over 60% of NGOs in rural areas reported fewer than three months of financial reserves to continue operations while only 18% were able to invest adequately in organizational development.
Even though NGOs often lack an ecosystem that provides the freedom to transform themselves on their terms, such as trust-based flexible or long-term funding, we expect them to be similarly agile as businesses. This gap is even more pronounced in the case of smaller grassroots NGOs that are led by proximate leaders or those with lived experience in the communities they serve.
Challenges faced by grassroots NGOs in accessing philanthropic capital
For decades, NGOs have been pushed into submitting elaborate proposals that pander to the sectoral inclination of funders. By relieving NGOs of restricted funding that dictates sector-specific giving, it is possible to design even more relevant and impactful models for development that can create sustainable pathways out of vulnerability for communities. This is possible by letting NGOs lead and define their own solutions or by partnering with them to solve for change with a learning mindset rather than a funder-led power dynamic that disables NGO autonomy.
Most grassroots NGOs also function in remote geographies with erratic or limited access to mainstream communications. This further limit their access to philanthropic networks. With trust being critical to building collaborations and securing investments, NGO leaders in regions like North East India or Jammu and Kashmir are seldom able to reach out and be heard- they remain largely invisible at the margins and consequently unable to build trust-based relationships.
Another challenge faced by grassroots NGOs is that they are relentlessly pushed to define their successes, productivity, and impact in terms that often do not corroborate with the pace at which communities are empowered after enduring centuries of exclusion and poverty. Sometimes, the ecosystem even ignores that proximate NGO leaders are from vulnerable or marginalized communities, having invested their lives in an endless struggle to set up and sustain small organizations. We also often forget that these leaders continue to grapple with their traumatic histories and expectations from the communities they serve. These small community-based NGOs are also expected to exhibit skills and have resources at par with larger NGOs that often have a language, geographic, or capital advantage.
What shifts can philanthropy enable?
The idea is very simple – philanthropy is resource-rich and NGOs are idea-rich. The goal is to develop greater trust and communication between these entities and build collaborative platforms that enhance learning and support leaders in breaking the cycle of vulnerability. There is an urgent need to invest in shaping collaboratives that enable power-sharing, exists as an open-source multi-stakeholder platform, and create path-breaking trust between funders, proximate leaders, and vulnerable communities.
To build this platform and a strong trust-based relationship, potential funders need to understand the geography, communities, and personal journeys of proximate leaders and invest time in listening directly to them.
As a first step, applying a Gender Equity Diversity and Inclusion (GEDI) intentional approach to the sourcing and selection of NGO partners ensures that funder investments are made in the most vulnerable and largely ignored communities. Such investments build the capabilities of leaders and teams that best understand their own communities’ needs and are most likely to give successful and impactful solutions to longstanding needs such as education, health, livelihoods, or issues such as climate action, mental health and well-being which all require interventions that are anchored in geographies where the most marginalized live.
Most importantly, funders can enable a lasting shift by fostering an attitude of listening to communities as a core value – one that is integral to every trust-based, long-term giving relationship between philanthropy and grassroots NGOs. Funders must begin to think about investing long-term into NGOs so they can achieve and deliver on their causes while enabling leaders of these smaller grassroots NGOs to articulate and create their agenda for dignity, and resilience while defining their own measures of success.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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