For five years, The Share Trust has been working to shift power and funding to local actors. Through research, advocacy, and collaboration, we have gathered practical insights into what it takes to move from intention to implementation. Our series, 5 years, 5 Actions, from Learning to Practice, brings those lessons together, outlining five clear pathways for donors, INGOs, and global institutions to contribute to building more equitable, locally led systems. 

There is widespread recognition that development and humanitarian assistance must devolve more resources and decision making power to local levels. But locally led does not mean local alone. International NGOs and multilaterals like the UN each play valuable roles alongside government and local civil society. What is needed is better, more intentional partnerships that leverage the unique strengths of each entity and focus on how these partnerships can reinforce local leadership rather than displace it.

Drawing on dozens of interviews across eleven countries—for research on the roles of local actors in social protection and forthcoming studies on intermediary models and the linkages between local agency and effectiveness—The Share Trust found broad agreement among local NGOs, INGOs, and donor staff on which actors bring which comparative advantages, as summarized below.

Some of these comparative advantages are relatively fixed. For instance, the UN has an inherent political heft and legitimacy that is essential for working with country governments; and, as a multilateral body, it has strong convening power for developing and disseminating global norms, tools and learning. INGOs will always have proximity to donors and Global North audiences, just as local organizations will have roots in their communities. Other comparative advantages are mutable. For instance, some local organizations may, with experience, become equally adept in donor compliance and take on a range of programmatic functions, including design, implementation and learning activities that have historically sat with international actors.

Context, individual organizational characteristics, and even individual staff members matter enormously, of course. Capacity and technical skills are not uniform within any category of actors. For instance, some organizations—whether they are INGOs or LNGOs—will perform better than others in certain areas. Individual organizations may have distinct technical expertise, networks, or constituencies that constitute core comparative advantages. Within the category of LNGOs, for instance, grassroots organizations will likely have very different strengths and capacities relative to national NGOs. The strength of community engagement will also vary within these broad groupings. For example, local organizations—just by virtue of being local—do not inherently engage diverse local communities well; it is the quality of their community ties and participatory approaches that matters. There can also be heterogeneity within large organizations at the country or team level, depending on the specific skills, attitudes, and priorities of leadership and staff.

Certain comparative advantages may map to specific functions. Access to international banking systems—in contexts where other actors lack this—implies a clear role in fiscal management. Other comparative advantages can apply across a range of functions. For instance, local actors often cite elements such as long-term presence, community acceptance and nuanced political and economic understanding as their key strengths—strengths that can help, for example, ensure appropriate program design, support effective delivery alongside communities, or facilitate improved monitoring and evaluation.

It is important that donors and international partners, who tend to lead planning and coordination processes, assess rather than assume different actors’ comparative advantages when allocating roles. Examination of local actors’ preferences for engagement or opportunities to transition functions to them is also a critical step.i This step has often received insufficient attention, however in part because donors often fail to elevate these goals or signal to their partners that they are important. Fulfilling their commitments to locally led action will require donors to act with more intentionality to foster the types of partnerships that devolve power to local levels and leverage international actors’ strengths in support of greater local leadership.

In addition to fostering localization goals, focusing on comparative advantages and shifting responsibilities accordingly can lead to more efficient programming. UN agencies have relatively high cost structures and limited budget transparency; these higher costs are justified in cases where the UN’s scale, mandate, or authority add unique value, but are harder to justify for functions that local (or other international) actors could perform.

While the findings above are based largely on interviews, The Share Trust also adapted a tool first employed by FCDO during their Covid response to structure an analysis of comparative advantages and opportunities to transition roles to local leadership. This tool, the Separation of Functions framework, identifies, through collaborative engagement with local and international NGOs and UN agencies:

Which actors hold different comparative advantages,
Which programmatic functions each group of actors could or should lead now;
Which programmatic functions each group should evolve to lead in the future, with a focus on shifting to local leadership; and
What factors might enable (or block) this transition.

In conducting Separation of Functions exercises across multiple contexts, what stood out was the broad agreement among local NGOs, INGOs, and UN agencies about which roles could and should shift to local actors. This convergence suggests a clear path forward, if the motivation and incentives to travel it are there.

Donors and international partners should map comparative advantages and opportunities to shift power and responsibility to local levels. During strategy setting and planning phases, donors should map current and potential partners, identify comparative advantages, and determine where roles can devolve locally in the short or medium term. A similar assessment should be used by donors and international partners during project design to inform concrete, timebound transition plans for shifting identified functions to local actors with milestones and accountability mechanisms.

Donors and partners should ensure complementary support as functions are transitioned to local actors, identifying and budgeting for investments[CN1] —for example in capacity strengthening or protection and security—that will help local actors succeed.

Because of the UN’s higher cost structures, donors should ensure UN agreements center around the UN’s unique comparative advantages, with other activities going to actors that can lead them more efficiently and accountably.

Please reach out for more information about a forthcoming tool on Separation of Functions analysis.

Five Years, Five Actions: Assess, Don't Assume — Build Partnerships That Leverage Comparative Advantage and Shift More Roles to Local Actors