Introduction
The only way positive change happens is when powerful changemakers are recognised, resourced and supported. Citizen action is evolving. We now see less formal civil society organisations (CSOs) and more people-led collective efforts moving quickly and fluidly to meet rising interconnected crises. They are not only acting as first responders during local emergencies, but are also the ones closest to the needs, demands and visions of their communities. Their undeniably critical work is driving positive change in very concrete ways:
- Modifying unfair laws
- Encouraging policy change
- Holding duty bearers accountable
- Crafting solutions to some of our most vexing social problems, and
- Promoting peace, human rights and equality.
We must keep learning how to build honourable and lasting relationships with these local changemakers, grassroots groups and movements, and engage in solidarity with them.
Why should we push ourselves out of our comfort zone?
There are major barriers that exist between local leaders, donors and other potential allies (like international NGOs). A large part of the international support system for civil society – besides being designed to cater mostly for established CSOs – remains stuck in the past, plagued with top-down, colonial, North-predominant, racist and transactional practices rooted in the “white saviour industrial complex.” These slow, risk-averse institutional and personal barriers within donors and enablers hinder the flow of essential resources to the frontlines of change.
Many donors and allies, including the most progressive ones, struggle to understand, trust and connect with groups operating at the grassroots level because they are too focused on large-scale and broad solutions and frameworks. Despite the desire of donors and allies to respond to social, political and economic injustices, they are often navigating institutional policies and procedures that enshrine extractive and transactional grantmaking processes and that make trusting relationships hard to realise.
The challenge
How do we nurture stronger and more meaningful connections and solidarity with these brave changemakers – not just in theory or abstraction – but most importantly, in our day-to-day practices?
This 12-month Donor Transformation Challenge was designed to accompany leaders within funding and enabling institutions working with civil society as they solve this challenge and dismantle dated practices, mindsets and systems of oppression within their organisations and their teams and, perhaps most importantly, within themselves.
- January: Dare to imagine
- February: Reassess the most important considerations
- March: Focus on more than money
- April: Communicate differently
- May: Doubt out loud
- June: Take more risks
- July: Earn trust
- August: Ask the right questions
- September: Extend Care
- October: Measure what matters
- November: Make room for “no”
- December: Reflect on how we show up
The Challenge covers one topic per month that we identified as key to advancing this transformation. It also provides weekly reflection questions, facts, suggestions and resources that will support you to cultivate trust in your partnerships, develop new ways of thinking, have deeper conversations, help transform organisational culture and create more intentional and meaningful collaboration between local leaders, activists, donors and allies.
How you can join us in making change happen
If we change one thought, one habit, one rule and one process at a time – consistently and with purpose – we can transform ourselves and transform systems. It’s like building a muscle; you start small and work up. This is all the more powerful if we work together. Improving the support ecosystem for the people, activists and groups leading social transformations requires collective action and commitment.
Invite your co-workers, other partners and/or create a group to take this challenge with you. Share your journeys, reflections, motivations, dilemmas and challenges. Get on social media (#DonorChallenge), talk to journalists, your communities, colleagues, and spread the stories. Even better, join forces to practise what you learn and to push together for change.
We truly hope this Transformation Challenge will inspire and enable you to take big and small actions within your institution in support of partners. At the end of the year, let us look back on these pages and see an improved quality of partnerships and working relationships, so that we can be more responsive and accountable to the needs and ambitions of changemakers.
Our beginnings
The reflections, questions and resources featured here are informed by our learning journey within the Strengthening 21st Century Citizen Action (STCCA) Programme, an initiative implemented by CIVICUS in partnership with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) between 2018-2023. This programme helped us deepen our understanding of the resourcing landscape and needs of those individuals and groups leading social transformation (necessarily identifying as formal civil society). During this time, we co-designed and tested eight initiatives to strengthen new generation citizen action and explore avenues for more direct and democratic resourcing of smaller and informal groups at the grassroots level.