Trust, accountability, and inclusion for locally-led social transformation
May 28-29, Mexico City
Co-hosted with the Ford Foundation
The Trust, Accountability, and Inclusion Collaborative (TAI), Funders for Participatory Governance, is a network of funders working towards a world where power and resources are distributed more equitably, communities are informed and empowered, and governments and the corporate sector act with integrity for the good of people and planet. We do this at the intersection of democracy, climate justice, economic justice, and a healthy information ecosystem.
TAI hosts annual in-person Learning Days to deepen connections and discuss shared priorities, challenges, and opportunities between TAI member funders, other funders, and activists. This year, around 50 funders and practitioners gathered in Mexico City to reflect, discuss, and learn about the political and practical implications of funding trust, accountability, and inclusion-related programming at the local level.
Key objectives of the 2024 Learning Days:
To create new connections that last beyond the Learning Days.
Discuss how donors can evolve their grantmaking strategies for more significant local impact and at the intersection of rights struggles (democracy, climate, social and economic justice, gender, information).
Explore evidence and insights on supporting greater societal trust, accountability, and inclusion for good governance outcomes (based on concrete experiences).
Identify concrete tools, approaches, and structures that funders can use to fund more locally-led initiatives to address inequalities in partnerships and to support a more harmonized civil society ecosystem.
Share experiences about ways in which trust, accountability, and inclusion approaches can be implemented on the ground within closing civic space.
Share knowledge, experiences, best practices, and challenges related to funding local organizations through intermediary funders.
The Learning Days were structured around four topics:
Fostering trust, accountability, and inclusion outcomes at the local level
Trust, accountability, and inclusion approaches amid closing civic space
Working at the intersections
Funding locally through intermediary funders
How can funders and practitioners better incorporate trust, accountability, and inclusion in local programming?
Understanding local communities and their levels of vulnerability and complexity is vital. The guiding star needs to be what positive change looks like for them (e.g., better access to services). To work locally and build networks of trust, you need people who understand those spaces and have the pulse of what is happening on the ground.
The more we have an ecosystem approach to this work, the more integrated it will be with social processes and movements. “We need to understand that we are building this ecosystem with complementary roles (funders, intermediaries, local partners, movements).” Practitioners urged working across sectors to bring solutions and build networks of solidarity. Inclusion means embracing the complexities.
Why is it so hard to fund trust, accountability, and inclusion programming in ways that embody those values? Funders need to address internal structures. While many foundation staff are former activists, they might find the funding space constraining.
There is a sense of urgency and push to get quick results, but trust is something that we build and create with others through practice. “We need to build a chain of mutual trust” among communities, civil society organizations, intermediary funders, and international funders, because “you don’t give what you don’t have.” It takes a long time to build trust, but it can be lost in a second.
Trust goes hand in hand with accountability and transparency; the terms are interrelated. Funders should be transparent about what was made available to grassroots groups. Integrity brings credibility.
Agile and adaptive grantmaking is key but must be coupled with investing beyond money and supporting institutional development (agency + capacity). Funders need to question themselves regarding the support they provide, making sure it doesn’t cause harm. While money is needed, it can also destroy the social construct at community level.
How can donors better ensure more significant local impact at the intersection of rights struggles and governance issues?
For instance, reforming the global tax system connects issue areas such as economic justice, democracy, Pan-Africanism (solidarity), and decolonization. Global spaces often do not include local voices and tend to act for the benefit of Global North countries – a network of organizations and individuals can more effectively (and safely) push for changes.
For instance, Indigenous women in Nepal resisting the building of a mega dam are defending their ancestral land and right to self-determination. This means they have to deal with land rights, extractive industries, colonialism, finance, indigenous people’s rights, and gender equity – and all in a closely interconnected way. The people's struggles are interconnected because the causes of the rights abuses are interconnected too.
Challenges for those working in interconnected ways:
- People attach different meanings to “intersectional,” so we need to be clear on what we are talking about (across themes, across stakeholders, across identities). The meaning of intersections comes alive when grounded in concrete examples.
- It can be hard to explain the complexity of the work and not lose sight of how the lives of people are affected. For example, taxation is not just a technical issue, but also a political one. Explaining the political nature of taxation is a challenge.
- Communicating intersectionality to funders and other stakeholders can be difficult. Foundation boards are often less supportive of intersectional approaches – they like clean lines and “can get uncomfortable when there are multiple layers.”
- Working in intersectional ways can bring out “imposter syndrome” among staff and movements. They may need to speak about issues they aren’t necessarily experts on, but they need a certain level of expertise to have credibility.
- Going beyond our silo takes a lot of work and time.
- Prescribed solutions might look tempting, but effective work at the intersections is reflective of a human centered design approach.
- Today’s polycrisis creates more tensions and stress for civil society partners, which collaboration can exacerbate. We need to give each other space for healing and celebration of what we have achieved. Do not neglect well-being.
Takeaways for the philanthropy sector on working in interconnected ways:
- Funders can unintentionally divide movements. Be careful and find ways to strengthen movement building and their power, including self-determination.
- Bring voices but also context and structural analysis of what intersections are about. Look at power analysis when funding at intersections.
- Think carefully about the role of philanthropy in supporting technical and political work. The more you interact with local communities, the more the work becomes political.
- Think about who is excluded. It is not about how the silos are constructed, but who has been left out of the conversation. We need a profound privilege analysis. If intersectionality is not done right, it could further marginalize people.
- Many of the philanthropic organizations are siloed, even internally. Call for funders to be more flexible in how they view the boundaries of their strategies: “Strategies and budgets constrain me and limit the pool of grantees,” as one program officer noted.
- Do grantees need to adapt their language to donors’ portfolios? Will funders be open to concept notes developed by multiple organizations for interconnected work?
- Funders can be well positioned to spot thematic or cross-regional connections from a more “bird´s eye” view and might consider inviting partners to consider working together – although it is important to recognize the risk of being overly supply-driven. Collaboration that works best is “where dollars come on top of connections that have already started.”
- Consider creating a central fund within the funder organization for the programs to collaborate better and independently.
- Funders need to assess their own bias, undo some of the understanding and framing, and rearticulate terminology that both spaces use.
- Intersectionality should be the means to an end – the path to justice is the end.
How can trust, accountability, and inclusion approaches be implemented on the ground within closing civic space?
- Strengthen civil society to be resilient and to be able to respond to ever-changing conditions. For instance, by supporting resource organizations in the Global South that can provide services to CSOs on legal compliance, fundraising, and financial resilience, strategic adaptations to conditions that are operating, communication, safety and security, and holistic protection.
- Support a holistic approach and support preventive, reactive, and proactive actions.
Preventive actions: Offer preventive security support to partners, but watch out: there is little demand for this until the threat is real. Make the case for the value of civil society through supporting work on narratives.
Reactive actions: Have security and protection services ready to go. Invest in security infrastructure and have a global security hub available.
Proactive actions: Invest in the strength durability and infrastructure of the civil society groups.
- Look not just at local but at global levels for mechanisms to keep space open. For example, address how the Financial Action Task Force has been manipulated and weaponized, using the narrative of counter-terrorism to criminalize CSOs.
- While transparency is the norm, funders must carefully assess the safety and security of their partners and, when needed, opt for discrete funding models and avoid naming some of their beneficiaries to protect them.
- Invest in leadership to address the behavior and standards of the decision-makers and leaders of the civil society itself. Don’t focus on individuals only, but support coalitions to amplify impact and share resources, tools, and knowledge. Encourage community protection mechanisms when threats or attacks occur.
- Work with activists in campaigns using civic technology. Create spaces of popular education to share technologies and communications capabilities. The challenge is that it is difficult to convince donors to invest in creating independent technology.
- Invest in building evidence and measuring civic freedom in the country and use that to enhance advocacy and resilience among CSOs.
- Support broader civic space and organizational resilience and remember that resilience requires interdependence – networks, cooperations, community-generated crisis groups (that can answer to new legislations, shape narratives, and more).
- Assess civil society in specific contexts, power dynamics, and how resources are shared. In some countries, for instance, resources are concentrated in the hands of a small circle of civil society organizations. Do not contribute to more fragmentation in civil society.
- Contribute to existing pooled funds for the protection of human rights defenders that can provide emergency responses in a closed civic space.
- Support organizations that reach out to those whose voices you want to strengthen, and work with them to design strategies to build trust with (more conventional) funders to attract more funding to the field.
- Watch out for external threats, such as the far right trying to change legislation to constrain civil society and portraying international philanthropy as a subversive threat to national sovereignty
- Don’t confuse narratives with communication strategy. Invest in providing space for multistakeholder actors to come together and shape that narrative together – to be effective, they need to be owned by people and communities.
- Watch out for governments that are co-opting movements and dismantling civil society.
- Interest in exposing the people/institutions behind exporting the authoritarian playbook, those pushing/orchestrating copycat restrictions from country to country – can we name and shame them?
- Have more honest discussions about power and address root causes. What role can private philanthropy play in shifting power?
- How do we claim the potential of AI, which has been used very negatively for civic space, freedom of speech, democracy, and liberties? For instance, design a prototype AI tool to map messages from those in power and map financial networks.
- Support long-term work. The success of the “others” is because they play the long game – in the long game, what is the balance between resistance, persuasion, and coexistence?
How can we share knowledge related to funding local organizations through intermediary funders?
Trust, Accountability, and Inclusion Collaborative mapping of intermediaries
TAI conducted a brief scoping focusing on intermediaries in the Global South (Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America) advancing just and equitable governance, focusing on inclusion and social cohesion, transparency, and accountability funding. This was done through desk research and interviews to provide a few case studies.
The scoping defines a few models of intermediaries, recognizing that they are very diverse and it is impossible to fit them all in categories. The scoping analyzed how intermediaries were created, who created them, the purpose for which they were created, whether regranting was their primary objective, who is making the decisions, and where accountability lies. The document also provides recommendations from intermediaries to funders.
OAK FOUNDATION’S MAPPING OF INTERMEDIARIES
Oak Foundation commissioned a mapping of movements, networks and intermediaries based in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia, working on environment, gender, social justice, and human rights, using system change and an intersectional approach. The impulse to map the ecosystem comes from the need to make sure that grantmaking solutions are driven and led by community and constituency organizations, rooted in the Global South.
The mapping – which included more than 100 intermediaries in all regions – showed incredible diversity. It also showed that philanthropic support organizations come in different sizes and also have the capacity to sustain themselves in the long run.
While some express concerns about the level of flexibility, particularly those involved in pass-through funding, it’s important to note that there are also exciting developments happening. Many are nurturing other intermediaries or organizations with the aim of working more closely with the grassroots level. This is a positive step towards more localized and effective solutions. It’s a testament to the adaptability and innovation in the field. So, even amidst challenges, there’s a lot of forward-thinking and proactive work being done.
This work is informed and enriched by the intellectual contributions of partners, Ruta Cívica and Africa-based consultants. Their expertise and insights are instrumental in shaping Oak's strategies and actions. While Oak provides the platform and resources, it is the invaluable work of Ruta Cívica and the Africa consultant that truly drives Oak's mission forward.
Key findings:
- Few intermediaries focus only on the governance field. Most do not identify themselves as governance intermediaries, even when covering related themes. Because of the approach we had, we found many organizations that were created by local activists who operate locally. These intermediaries are mainly funded by Global North philanthropies.
- There is tension on the use of the term intermediary funder. How should we talk about these entities? How would they like to be identified? What is the common denominator?
ADVANTAGES OF WORKING WITH INTERMEDIARY FUNDERS:
- They have an understanding of the local context, have local reach, and can more easily navigate local complexities.
- They can be part of the social fabric that already exists and trust in the capacity of these organizations to solve their own issues. Being proximate helps build trust.
- They have capacity to navigate power dynamics because of their “bridging” role.
- They have a role beyond grantmaking – they are part of the ecosystem of the causes they support.
Takeaways for the philanthropy sector on working with intermediary funders:
- Philanthropy often says that local groups have no capacities, and this justifies continuing to fund through Global North organizations. Support more Global South funds as well as more locally based, locally rooted organizations. Philanthropy has invested flexibly in Global North entities and inflexibly in local entities. There is also a lack of sufficient systems in the Global South
- Trust, accountability, and inclusion are possible when there are more horizontal relationships across funder intermediary movements.
- Word of caution that intermediaries can have views that might be divergent from funders and local organizations – we need a clear set of values and rules that guide intermediary funder settings based on transparency and accountability.
- Intermediaries rooted in the local context can be ecosystem builders. However, not all intermediary funders have this local understanding – something to assess.
- Sometimes intermediaries can claim to represent movements, creating tensions with local smaller organizations.
- Intermediaries may recreate unhelpful power dynamics and replicate their funders bad practices– “channels of violence.”
- As channeling funding becomes more difficult, more funding will be channeled through intermediaries. Are intermediaries making assumptions about what the local level can absorb? Could we pass on more?
Mexico Session
As TAI Learning Days took place days before the Mexican presidential elections, we invited Miguel Pulido, co-founder and director of Creatura, Critical Thinking Advocates, and Lisa Sanchez, executive director of Mexico United Againstagainst Crime (MUCD), to ground participants in the current Mexican context, the role of civil society and the philanthropic sector.
Key takeways:
- Mexico for many years had just one political party, and it is hard to move away from the model. Today, there is a return to a similar situation, where one big party rules almost all the positions, while other parties have to go with alliances.
- While the previous governments implemented many economic and political reforms and a lot of institutions were created, the structural problems continue. For instance, the poverty rate in Mexico today is similar to that in 1976.
- From the 1980s through the 2000s, there has been social pressure to have a progressive political project. Mexico’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), in 2018 came with a program aiming to reverse inequalities. He was a strong candidate to change security and justice policies, promising to withdraw the military off the streets and have a citizen security policy.
- Today, however, Mexico is returning to consolidating a hegemonic political project that will make it more difficult for other parties to compete and that will punish dissent.
- The most dangerous trend is the reliance on the military to avoid facing conflicts through institutional and political channels. The centralized power has given military the control of territory, customs, and migratory policy among others.
- While it is exciting to see such a big election (the biggest electionelections in Mexico’s history in terms of the number of voters), it is also the most violent electoral process ever.
What is the role of Civil Society?
- Reminder: Civil society and civil society organizations are not the same!
- Mexican civil society has a lot of experience in organizing. What is new from the 2000s is a professional civil society sector that knows how to speak to fundamental ideas and how to use the international human rights framework and standards—but are they speaking with the grassroots? Locally based discourses and solutions are needed to implement new standards and narratives.
- For instance, the Access to Information (ATI) campaign created huge institutions and laws; CSOs and journalists are actively using the law, however, they did not manage to address structural problems. There was also a wrong original assumption that the law would be massively used by people. CSOs need to reflect on the assumptions and approaches, as they haven't found solutions for the structural problems.
- The fact that Mexican CSOs are disconnected from politics and just beginning to become policy experts is a problem. We need to build social movements, not only CSOs. The global trend was to keep the politicians out and put the citizens in to solve problems, through autonomous organizations led by citizens as watchdogs. However, we didn’t solve problems, and we learned that civil society organizations cannot replace the State.
- For civil society, finding their own path is hard, as all donors have conflicting priorities and CSOs are becoming ‘schizophrenic’ (instead of focusing on their own priorities, they shift directions and make compromises, to be able to obtain funding).
- On the positive side: Mexican civil society is diverse and has created many collectives and movements, has professionalized many organizations, and has taken CSOs out of the capital. It is also encouraging to see how many women are becoming leaders of civil society projects.
takeways FOR FUNDERS:
- International donors stopped funding the security and justice field. It has been hard to work on civic space and anti-authoritarianism now, as donors in Mexico are focusing on big tech issues, but other sectors need funding too.
- Area of opportunity: Look closely at current work connecting civil society and government
- Decentralize civil society interventions—an opportunity and danger: Some funders give small grants to small projects outside the main cities and ask them to be collaborative. Due to several reasons, this only worsened small groups’ working conditions.
- Obvious and still must be repeated: Just one-off funding is not sustainable. Funders need to consider giving more long term and flexible support.
- Professionalization of civil society is NOT the only solution—find other ways to support civil society.
- CSOs want to help the movements, but also want to be in the front; they should be behind supporting them.
- Think about future problems. For instance, there is a huge gap in Centennials, also known as Gen Z: Women are progressive, men are conservative, and we are not working on that.
Gallery
