Local and national actors are at the heart of effective humanitarian action – relied upon by communities to provide timely and relevant support, and by the international system to provide legitimacy, expertise and reach.
An ecosystem of financing mechanisms and approaches supporting locally-led humanitarian action has emerged, yet severe funding cuts mean that progress is now precarious and without urgent action, key local and national capabilities will be lost. Securing their financial futures is crucial.
No single financing model will be sufficient
Locally-led humanitarian action requires an ecology of instruments – public, philanthropic, and private – that balance speed, scale, accountability, and sustainability.
Above all, it requires trust, built through sustained relationships, honest negotiation of risk, and genuine recognition of local actors’ legitimacy and leadership.
This report introduces a new tool – a shared diagnostic framework for funders, intermediaries, and local and national organisations, to understand and negotiate where their resources and capabilities can best be deployed to advance financing for localisation and local leadership.
The tool guides all these parties to the financing relationship through the following steps:
- Locating their motivations and positions on the ‘localising’ to ‘locally-led’ spectrum.
- Identifying the ‘building blocks’ for financing instruments and what each party offers
- Establishing quality criteria for what constitutes ‘good’ localised or locally-led financing
Each section includes illustrative examples of live or recent financing instruments which highlight good practice and emerging lessons, including:
- The Resilio Fund – Philanthropic Support to Scale-Up financing to Community Action
- IFRC/ICRCS National Society Investment Alliance – Supporting Business Income Generation
- DCA Uganda Soil Cycle Fund – Blended Financing
- Warande and ShareTurst ‘Local Coalition Accelerator’ – Combining Financial and Technical Support
- Ukraine Pooled Fund
- Supporting community-led initiatives – ‘sclr’ and mutual aid in Sudan
- OCHA Country-Based Pooled Funds – Localising Governance Structures
- Aid Fund for Syria – Hybrid Governance Structure and Working Across the Nexus
- NEAR Change Fund & Sudan Local Response Pooled Fund – Locally-Led Governance Structures
- The NEAR Change Fund – Flexible and Core Funding
- Oxfam GB’s Partners Investment Fund (PIF) – Fully Flexible Grants
- The Abot Kamay Community Solidarity Fund – Achieving Scale and Impact Through Community Capacities
It is intended that the toolkit will be iterated and tested through use across the wide communities of stakeholders, and user feedback is encouraged.
The report was developed by Sophia Swithern and Lydia Poole for DanChurchAid.
Executive summary
Full report
