In recent years, there has been an attempt to transform the development and humanitarian landscapes by shifting towards directly funding local actors to implement the work. In 2021, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced that 25 percent of its funding would go directly to local organizations by 2025.
This report, which seeks to establish a baseline by tracking USAID funding to local organizations in eight countries from 2019–2021, uses the same methodology as Publish What You Fund (PWYF), which originally conducted this research in ten different countries. This report represents a comparative analysis of the methodology developed by PWYF and a methodology designed to reflect how USAID is measuring progress towards its local funding target.
The results show a significant difference between the two approaches, with the PWYF method concluding that 4.0 percent of funding went directly to local organizations, compared to 7.3 percent of funding going directly to local organizations using the method reflective of USAID’s approach.