In November 2020, Adeso, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, Peace Direct and Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security held a three-day online consultation with 158 activists, decision-makers, academics, journalists and practitioners across the globe. Participants and guest contributors exchanged insights and local experiences on the current power dynamics and imbalances that exist within the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sectors. They discussed how structural racism manifests itself in their work, and how they envision a decolonised system that is truly inclusive and responds to their needs. The consultation received more than 350 detailed comments across nine discussion threads. This report presents the findings and recommendations from that consultation. Published: May 2021 Published by:...

In March 2021, the World Communities Forum brought together organizations working with local communities to reflect on the past year and how COVID-19 has impacted the work that they do. TrustAfrica hosted a session on “Community as a response: Communities organizing for their development” to tease out what are the enablers in supporting local communities in self-organizing for their development. This follow-up report elevates key recommendations offered during the session, by first giving some context on the challenges faced by local communities (often in conflict) and then looks at the factors that have enabled communities to respond to development challenges, including what priority interventions donors should invest in to support community...

The crisis caused by COVID-19 provoked a flood of generosity from Ghanaians and institutions in Ghana. This research report captures the nature and motivations for Ghanaians to give at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study uncovered that Ghanaians, both at home and abroad, were giving in cash and in-kind to support efforts to fight the pandemic. The report highlights that these donations were received mostly from people in the working-age demography, while relatively high-income including celebrities, leaders of religious institutions and members of civil society also donated to the cause. It is apparent from the report that civil society organizations have garnered the necessary trust and confidence of Ghanaians...

This report is based on a survey conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Middle East, South America and Oceania from August to November 2020 to capture views from global south NGOs to identify, understand, and inform what is needed to better respond to the challenges of engaging with INGOs. The survey is one of the critical research and documentation phases which include case study collection, focus group discussions and desktop research. This report presents the outcomes of the survey and presents the views and voices of global south CSOs and provides records of ideas, suggestions and recommendations on how NGO north-south relationships and power dynamic should evolve. It captures the concerns of...

The purpose of the research, carried out between October and December 2020, is to identify emerging trends and practices in philanthropy in East Africa that have emerged due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study design was participatory and entailed active involvement of philanthropy organizations and key informants based in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Ultimately, the research shows that over 95% of the organizations that participated in the study indicated having been affected in one way of another by the pandemic. In particular, 89% of the respondents had experienced funding disruptions, with 42% of respondents experiencing an overall reduction in funding levels over 2020. On a more positive note, 41.9% of respondents...

The concept of community philanthropy continues to take shape around the world, though researchers and civil society development institutions in many countries are concerned with the same questions: what role does community philanthropy play in local development, what ideas and resources are invested in it, and how can it be measured and evaluated? The research in this report surveys the work of four Russian community foundations - in Angarsk, Perm, Pryazha and Pskov - and uses the Assets-Capacities-Trust (ACT) Framework to begin to address these questions. It looks at how these organizations measure their work, particularly around tracking the small, often invisible, markers of progress, and how together they all...

To celebrate 25 years of advancing womens’ rights and building local philanthropy in Nepal, Tewa - The Nepal Women's Fund released this report, as well as this short video. Both resources feature anecdotes from members of the Tewa family - staff, board, grantee partners and volunteers alike - that collectively begin to tell the story of Tewa. The report offers a snapshot of Tewa's milestones over the years, considering its grantmaking, local resource mobilization efforts, volunteer programmes, grantee partner support programmes as well as the establishment of the Tewa Centre. Published: January 2021 Published by: Tewa Download: 'Marking the silver jubilee'

This paper explores community development as an effective participatory approach to overcome development fatigue. The first section focuses on the dynamics of donor fatigue while the second section explores the fatigue experienced by implementing civil society organizations from the global south and the effect on the communities they serve. Since power imbalances are the common trait to all stakeholders’ fatigues (donors, civil society organizations and beneficiaries), this paper will then explore how to streamline and shift power between stakeholders, and move from a top bottom to a bottom up approach where beneficiaries’ communities own and decide their development agenda. This paper further presents selected case studies of organizations in the global...

Noting preliminary lessons from how coronavirus has affected the philanthropic response to big societal issues, this report calls for three major steps to incorporate these learnings into the long-term approach of philanthropy to the grand challenges facing the Global South and beyond: Fund networks to build infrastructure, capacity and knowledge. Increase partnerships between Global South governments and Global South philanthropists. Build resilience by funding core costs. Published: February 2021 Published by: Centre for Strategic Philanthropy, University of Cambridge Judge Business School Download: 'Philanthropy and COVID-19: Is the North-South power balance finally shifting?' or the Executive Summary

During 2020, the world faced an acceleration in the rate of dramatic shocks: the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting economic turmoil, the ever-gathering climate catastrophe, and the global reverberations of calls against structural racism. These developments occurred against the constant drum beat of rising inequality that erodes the capacity of states to manage the combined effects of these crises. Such developments make the concept of resilience even more salient. People are asking "how can we cope and survive?" and "how can we make sure that we build back better from this crisis?" This paper considers what resilience looks like in practice, and is based on the work of three organizations – Tewa, Global...

The GFCF Annual Report, covering the period 1 April 2019 - 31 March 2020, offers a snapshot of the organization’s activities for the financial year. The report lays out key outcomes for the period in three areas: supporting individual community philanthropy organizations; connecting the field and growing the evidence base for people-led development; and, building a global movement to #ShiftThePower. A particular highlight for the period covered by the report was the Pathways to Power Symposium, held November 2019 in London. Published by: GFCF Published: January 2021 Download: ‘GFCF Annual Report, 1 April 2019 - 31 March 2020'