Many community-rooted organizations carry responsibilities that far exceed the resources available to them. They are the first to respond in crises, navigating local dynamics with nuance, and delivering results built on legitimacy and trust. Donors increasingly express their intent to empower these local organizations often calling them partners. Practical and scalable ways to fund them however, remain limited, especially in high-risk environments. This gap is rarely about a lack of organizational motivation or talent. It is usually about inadequate systems: compliance, controls, and risk frameworks often designed far from where delivery happens.

One example of this tension is seen in our work alongside a Haitian private-sector organization operating at the intersection of agricultural development, rural livelihoods, and market access. This entity brought strong field presence, technical relevance, and deep community credibility. Like many capable organizations, it faced a familiar challenge: scaling impact while meeting donor requirements that are not always compatible with the realities of implementation on the ground. Rising to this challenge required more than short-term project funding. It required a partnership funding model that could align accountability with ownership, and rigor with speed, while enhancing institutional readiness over time.

A bridge must elevate, not overshadow

Fund management can be part of the solution if it is designed as a bridge rather than a gate.

Globally, fund managers are often used to channel resources to organizations that are close to communities but not fully aligned with stringent donor compliance expectations. At their best, they reduce fiduciary risk, strengthen systems, and help move funding to frontline delivery without sacrificing oversight. At their worst, they add a layer that slows delivery, weakens ownership, and recreates the very imbalance that accompaniment is meant to correct.

In many communities, these imbalances have been amplified over many decades of implementation by external organizations with complex compliance capabilities, and approaches that are misaligned with local operational realities. Where institutional strengthening is offered to local partners, it usually fades away when the funding ends. Control-heavy fund management  substitutes for national leadership rather than building it. The measure of success should be simple: the extent to which fund management capability is transferred during the funding period, effectively putting partner organizations in the lead going forward.

Proximity turns risk management into institutional growth

Proximity does not replace rigor; it makes rigor usable.

Nationally anchored, in-country fund managers bring contextual understanding that cannot be imported, while still meeting the financial discipline, compliance standards, and governance expectations funders often require. Being on the ground enables real-time problem solving, faster course correction, and support embedded in implementation rather than delivered as training. It also enables continuity via relationships, institutional memory, and steady improvement beyond the life of a single project.

Locally embedded fund-management de-risks investments while progressively transferring systems and responsibilities. Compliance is met without constraining delivery. Oversight is paired with practical accompaniment: strengthening controls, workflows, and accountability in ways that match the local organizations’ operating reality. The end result should be that organizations directly access funding and participate fully in subsequent program design and implementation. That is empowerment with a credible pathway: a bridge built to be crossed, not occupied.

Accompaniment should strengthen identity, not replace it

Organizations do not start from the same place, and readiness is not a fixed threshold.

Some organizations need light-touch oversight to align with donor requirements. Others need deeper accompaniment: financial controls, procurement systems, reporting routines, governance practices, and leadership accountability that stand up under stress. In both cases, the organization must retain its identity and its direct relationship with the donor. Fund management should not eclipse local leadership. It should create conditions for it to mature, while honoring the wisdom and lived knowledge of actors on the ground.

From practice to framework

Practiced with proximity and rigor, fund management mitigates risk without impeding action, ensures that standards are applied without substituting leadership, and makes skills transfer an explicit outcome.

Nationally anchored fund offers donors a way to trust without overreaching, and it gives promising local organizations a way to grow without being overwhelmed. Communities with the leadership and local legitimacy needed to drive progress forward need a funding architecture aligned with a reality that protects accountability without punishing proximity, and that strengthens organizations rather than substituting for them.

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