Attempts at risk-sharing between agencies that collaborate to achieve a shared objective are a positive step in building a genuine ‘partnership’. But as practiced so far, the risk sharing tends to remain incomplete in its own terms and from a broader partnership development perspective. This brief provides practical recommendations to further strengthen risk-sharing, but also to complement, and ideally precede it, with serious and frank conversations about trust and power. Get the brief here.
YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR ORGANISATION MORE DIVERSE, EQUITABLE AND INCLUSIVE? Some questions to help you think this through
For many of us, the environment in which we live has become ‘more diverse’. Compared to 30 years ago, there are more ‘strangers’, from other countries and continents but also from other parts of our own country. Do you want to bring that ‘diversity’ more intentionally into our organisation? Why would you want to do that? And what diversity would you emphasize, all our primary social identity changes depending on the context we are in? Moreover, the catch phrase of ‘DEI’ goes beyond ‘diversity’. It also refers to ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’. Some even talk about ‘DEIB’, adding ‘belonging’ to it. What do these other references mean, and how does it all relate to each other, in practice?
Here a set of questions to help you think this through.
· What is your motivation, what is your purpose?
· What diversity will you be looking for?
· How do you acknowledge multiple social identities?
· Where in the organisation would you start?
· How broad will your DEI practice be?
· What do you want your organisation to be, in terms of diversity, in five years from now, and in ten years?
· What to prioritise: diversity or inclusion?
· Do you need to specifically address biases and racism?
· Do you need to specifically address ‘power’?
· Are you ready to absorb the costs of DEI?
· How in practice do you get to a more diverse organisation?
· Do you add the ‘B’ of ‘belonging’ to your DEI strategy?
Our short brief elaborates this in more detail. Download it here.
From Relief to What Development? Strategic learning from 'livelihoods' to 'blended finance' to 'new economics'
In the 1990s we had a long conversation about the ‘continuum’ from ‘relief’ to ‘development’. Over the past decade that has been repeated under the ‘nexus’ label.
But today, what development are we talking about?
· Is it mostly about livelihoods, at the fairly local level?
· Is it about national ‘development policies’? In which case there is a specific field of learning to travel: public expenditure choices; public debt and debt markets; global seed markets; global commodity markets; patents; tax policies and global infrastructures for tax evasion etc. You may also need to learn about the new approaches to ‘development’, that now rely much more on trade than aid, and on investment – attracted with ‘blended finance’. Perhaps you need to go into the question whether all goods and services that were funded by aid are likely to attract investment? And who will pay the expected return-on-investment? This is a very different world from ‘humanitarian aid’ – with different key players, different worldviews and discourses, different appreciations of what is worth putting money into, different measures of success. That require different collaborations. Different universes rather than a ‘continuum’.
· Or are we ready to tune in to the urgent, and gradually spreading, reflections on different economic paradigms: that question the obsession with ‘growth’ (for what and whose outcomes?), and GDP as the key measure of success; that recognise that our planet has finite resources which we are dramatically overexploiting – to the great detriment of our children and grandchildren. That are developing a new economics and financing purpose and paradigm that works for the global majority (across ‘North’ and ‘South’) instead of a global elite minority; that calculates in the cost of environmental damage and avoiding or restoring it. In short, a regenerative rather than extractive-destructive economic paradigm that actually works for people, the public good, and our unique and irreplaceable planet.
This brief elaborates these observations in some more detail, and offers some relevant – English language- references. Get it here.
LOCAL AND NATIONAL VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS MUST ACT MORE COLLECTIVELY
Many local and national voluntary agencies (LNA) around the world face similar challenges:
§ More appreciation from the national authorities for how they contribute to inclusion and wellbeing of people living in their country,
§ More effective support from international actors, based on the recognition that they are part of the long-term capabilities and -solutions of the country.
§ Increasing financial pressure because of the cumulative cuts in Western ODA and sometimes because their governments restrict access to ‘foreign’ funding.
The ongoing conversations about ‘localisation’ and ‘decolonising aid’ have mainly focused on the second challenge: what LNA want to see differently from international aid actors. The competition for who gets what part of the remaining ODA is intensifying. While understandable, this is counterproductive: It leaves the initiative with the international aid establishment, and reduces the ability to have deeper impact through collective action. Being fragmented and divided only further weakens the LNA’s position. That is not easy to turn around, but this brief offers a set of ideas on what they can do to strengthen their current and future position.
Come together with more joint programming but also a sharing of operational infrastructure and in-house expertise.
·Strengthen coalitions and networks and weave a network of networks, avoiding however the dominance of bigger LNA and those based in the capital city. This requires a greater willingness and organisational and individual capabilities to collaborate. Collective leadership can succeed, where there is proactive attention to egos, selfish individual and organisational impulses, and the cultivation of a servant leadership style.
Define and communicate own standards and commitments to transparency and accountability: Such standards can find inspiration in international ones, but must not be a ‘copy paste’ version of those. Most importantly, they must be realistic, recognizable and understandable for others in that society, and strongly owned and defended by its own voluntary associations.
· Strengthen the connections and collaborations with other civil society actors, such as universities, farmer cooperatives, professional associations, chambres of commerce, tourism development bodies, local finance institutions etc. Doing this individually is challenging, as a collective action more options arise.
Collectively address the challenges of financial health: International foundations, country-based pooled funds oriented primarily or exclusively to LNA and/or national foundations acting as grant-dispersing intermediary, are some of the options but maintain dependency on international funding. Inevitably, LNA must find more domestic and regional sources of income. Going it together may make this less difficult than going it alone.
·National/regional centers of excellence and expertise: Too much of the expertise and intellectual capital remains within international aid agencies, whose ad hoc and fragmented ‘capacity-building’ does little to change that situation. National and regional centers of expertise, possibly associated with a university, would be a much more cost-effective approach. Read the brief here.
PARTICIPATORY LEADERSHIP and DECISION-MAKING. Why and how
Take decisions fast! Break things if needed! That seems to be the current model for leadership and decision-making, promoted by e.g. the tech-barons, in an ultra-capitalist world which has no other concern than maximizing profit.
Such approach tends to feed the ego and the wallet of the very few at the top. It gets justified by arguments about efficiency, effectiveness and adaptability. It can work – for a while- if you degrade people, the environment, a healthy and inclusive society. It is an expression, and enforcement, of hyper-individualism.
In the medium- and longer-term run however, the limitations and damaging consequences of such leadership style and decision-making approaches, become very visible. We can see them all around us, and the next generation will be confronted with them even more. There are other ways.
This brief examines participatory leadership as an alternative to traditional top-down decision-making. It highlights how involving people in decisions leads to better outcomes, smoother implementation, professional growth, and less pressure on leaders. It also identifies common barriers—such as leaders’ fear of losing control—and outlines the conditions needed for genuine participation beyond simple consultation. The brief further introduces deliberation and gradients of agreement as effective approaches for building broad support. Three case studies demonstrate how these participatory methods work in practice. Find the brief here.