2025 was a year that laid bare the fragility of the global funding ecosystem as we have known it. Yet this moment is not entirely new. For years, traditional funding models and NGO structures have proven inadequate, extractive and disconnected from grassroots realities. In response, organizations and movements across the world working in pursuit of more just, equitable and peaceful societies have been reimagining how social change is resourced — shifting the focus from money alone to questions of power, voice and agency. Many of us are looking within communities, drawing on creativity and long-held traditions of solidarity to understand...

Below is the contribution of Nour Nusseibeh, Dalia Association (Palestine) to the online session “Building the New: Reimagining Civil Society Resourcing in Times of Global Transformation”, held on 30 October 2025. Nour shares her perspective from the midst of an ongoing genocide and from years of community-rooted work at the Dalia Association in Palestine. Nour’s reflections illuminate how aid has reshaped Palestinian civil society, leading to fragmentation and dependency, and why returning to cultural practices of solidarity offer a meaningful alternative. You can read the full report / transcript of the session here, or the individual contributions from the other three...