Shifting power, process and funding to put local actors in the driver’s seat on the design and implementation of programming is critical to ensure effective and efficient locally led development and a healthy civil society. A 2022 study - “Passing the Buck: The Economics of Localizing Aid” - estimates that local intermediaries could deliver programming that is 32% more cost efficient than international intermediaries, by stripping out inflated international overhead and salary costs. Applied to the ODA funding flows allocated to UN/INGOs in 2018 ($54bn), this would equate to cost efficiencies of US$4.3bn annually. Following this study, The Share Trust was asked by a bilateral donor to construct a similar analysis using country specific data for a $80m bilateral-funded Alternative Pooled Fund (“APF”) model in the Middle East.
The APF was developed specifically to balance the Country Based Pooled Fund (CBPF) approach with a more localized approach to delivering humanitarian assistance in a protracted crisis.