Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will need more funding and a change in approach to localise development efforts in a way that creates an enabling environment for civil society and ensures access to resources from local and international philanthropy.

At the United Nations High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development, capping the 2023 General Assembly and SDG Summit, the final theme was about ‘Innovative approaches and partnerships to boost private finance for the SDGs’. Held on 20 September at UN headquarters in New York, there was not a single mention of philanthropy or civil society’s role in such partnerships nor any mention of creating a conducive environment for finance for development (and ensuring it is articulated with the rule of law, governance, and human rights imperatives).

WINGS Executive Director Benjamin Bellegy, on hand to listen to some of the 38 Heads of State and country representatives at the UN leaders’ session, and heard a repetition of references to blended finance, Public Private Partnerships and making a conducive business environment.

‘They unanimously called for more private capital to support the SDGs through partnerships,’ he noted, yet none mentioned the role of local or international giving. Every single representative from emerging economies called for a wide reform of the international finance architecture, including multilateral and public development banks, to make it more equitable, adapted and accessible to them. Nor was there mention of shifting power to locally-led efforts.

‘If philanthropy had been mentioned, I’m pretty sure it would have been about de-risking business investments,’ reflected Bellegy about the rhetoric he heard during his week at the meetings at the UN.

‘Our potential contribution as philanthropy goes way beyond that and I hope we will have a chance to work with our partners at the UN, with development banks and governments to create a culture of collaboration on the ground with philanthropic actors that can play a critical role in reinventing financing for development models.’

The day after, on 21 September, Bellegy moderated a frank dialogue about SDG funding between bi-lateral donors (USAID and the InterAmerican Foundation), international grant-makers (Hilton Foundation) and regionally based foundations  (Avina Foundation and EPIC Africa).

Funders of all stripes underscored how restrictions are hindering the localising of development action and philanthropy’s contribution to the 2030 Agenda. WINGS organised the exchange with the Council on Foundation, Hilton Foundation, the Network of Engaged International Donors (NEID Global) and ADESO, a civil society organisation working in the Horn of Africa.

Impromptu exchanges explored how funders should address the enabling environment for civil society as part of localsing resources. Starting the debate in a call to action recorded from Algeria, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association Clément Voule made what he called his ‘most important message’ to the UNGA: ‘Governments should be recognising philanthropy’s role to help those in need – and not be stigmatising it’.

‘States should repeal any law restricting access to international or national funding,’ he said, noting situations from Zimbabwe to Kyrgyzstan that have critically hindered the development agenda by restricting the growth of local philanthropy.

Michele Sumilas, the Assistant to USAID Administrator Samantha Power, applauded the new UN General principles on the right of civil society to access resources as a tool to promote self-awareness about how to work with local partners and change funder behaviour to engage local civil society in new, different ways.

‘We often hide behind accountability requirements as an excuse and ask local NGOs to jump through a thousand hoops and fill out the paperwork like one would ask of a big international NGO,’ Sumilas said.

Peter Laugharn, the CEO of Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, applauded the USAID-led joint commitment signed by 19 bilateral development agencies and 15 international foundations to locally-led development. But he went ‘off script’ to ask: ‘How good is our follow through when we say we are ‘shifting the power’?

Philanthropy has provided models for implementing localisation for better results in achieving the SDGs. Laugharn believes foundations should keep using Monitoring and Evaluation techniques in grant-making for accountability ‘without making it a fetish, but learning how to do this work better’.

Laugharn called for big foundations to show more humility, noting that worldwide, the biggest source of development funding comes from households, then governments, then ODA and finally from philanthropy. ‘We have power as philanthropy but we are a small player in this picture.’

The head of the Inter-American Foundation, Sara Aviel, replied that her organisation explicitly recognizes and harnesses the contributions of households and other local actors as co-investment to its grants. The IAF is also pursuing an ecosystems approach that sets up community foundations and builds the permanent infrastructure for expanding local philanthropy.

‘We have worked with WINGS in doing some of that mapping, and we have a network of community foundations in Mexico who are doing that work, and bringing their own resources, expanding to Argentina and Brazil,’ Aviel said.

Avina Foundation’s President Sean McKaughan called for diversity of those involved in local development to build consensus with actors who might not want to be at the table with some others. ‘You have to have sectors at the table that usually don’t get involved in these kinds of change processes. We work with business. We work with governments — local government, regional government, national government, international organisations — because we realise that it’s only by putting all those people in the same room that you can make a difference.’

Summing up the vigorous exchanges between the panellists and audience, Rose Maruru of the philanthropic infrastructure builder EPIC Africa, made a plea to funders to meet local organisations where they are, and not try to replace an international NGO with a local organisation they remodel into the same shape. Some small organisations with operating budgets under US$ 50,000 can be excluded by funders in favour of a few larger ‘unicorns’ of localisation. ‘We need to scale impact and not organisations,’ she concluded.

Casey Kelso is the Senior Advocacy and Policy Officer at WINGS