The foundation of my course, ‘RADIQUAL M&E: Practicing Participatory, Decolonial, Intersectional, and Inclusive Approaches’ is a study of power and especially, the #ShiftThePower movement which seeks to transform the way we engage with and share power in the social impact space.

This conversation is a few years old, but still quite niche – it looks at reshaping our space to rebalance power, shifting it from the traditional power holders to be more equitable. It starts by looking at the flow of financial and other resrouces from donors, institutional funders, and philanthropy, to the role of INGOs in perpetuating those power dynamics, and rethinks how to better redistribute wealth. There’s a lot to unpack here, and I will do so over several blogs, but here’s a quick overview of the whats and whys.

Understanding Power in Social Impact

In our space, the power to make decisions, shape policies, and to drive change is dominated by organisations and entities from wealthier countries, large and well-resourced organisations, the Global North, institutional funders, institutions themselves like the EU, and all the other associated faces of power that are coming to you as you read this.

These groups also include the large INGOs and donors, and groups who have historically benefitted from the flow of resources in our space. They have crowned themselves technical experts, and therefore also have a lot of decision-making power.

They have power within themselves to control the ways projects are designed, strategies are written, and to shape grant cycles. That has given them power over the social impact sector, to set the agenda, and everything from what constitutes data to national priorities is determined largely by them. Here I am using of course, VeneKlasen-Miller’s ‘types of power’ framework to understand the ways power is wielded here. This means that certain groups of people -USAID, FCDO, OSF, Sida – is the one who determines what development even means, all the way down to the types of organisations who get their funding.

By contrast, there are people they wield power over: smaller NGOs, grassroots movements, local communities, national foundations, and others. These are the organisations and groups of people who are traditionally at the receiving end of these decisions, despite possessing invaluable lived experience and deep contextual knowledge.

This imbalance has led to a top-down approach in our sector, with the global aid agenda determined by a small group of external actors. They may or may not fully understand or integrate the nuanced needs and expertise of local communities, often preferring a one-size-fits-all approach.

In that space, the #ShiftThePower movement of NGO actors is calling on power holders to recentre the people directly affected by social issues—essentially, from those with technical expertise to those with lived expertise.

Locally-Led Leadership

One of the ways that should happen is to nurture local leadership. That means shifting power to the local sphere, empowering local communities to take the lead in addressing the issues that affect them. This involves moving decision-making authority, resources, and responsibility closer to the people who know best and who are most affected, and also where the impact is felt most directly. I have written elsewhere about participatory grantmaking, a great approach to encourage true local leadership.

It also means valuing the fact that local organisations and communities often have the best understanding of their own needs, and a nuanced understanding of the most effective solutions. By empowering these communities, Shift the Power calls for efforts to be more responsive, contextually relevant, and sustainable. In effect, this would allow our work to practice the OECD-DAC criteria in their purest form.

In that way, it also challenges the status quo, which has often sidelined local voices in favor of external technical experts, larger organisations, or groups with privilege. Shifting power means opening processes and policies to do our work more in partnership, and to step away from this binary.

The shift to local leadership can take many forms – geographically decentralising a head office from the capital city of a country to rural or peri urban areas, involving a greater type of organisation to the funding conversation, such as funding movements, and to better connecting funders with their grantees. This also strongly links with restorative justice, shifting power from historically powerful actors, who have traditionally held control, to historically marginalised or oppressed groups who have often been left out of the decision-making process.

The move to strengthen local leadership isn’t just done internationally though – it’s not just a question of FCDO opening the space for more Indian-led NGOs to set the agenda. Within India, the conversations are led by elite organisations, often based in large cities, led by people with caste and language privilege. Shifting power here means focussing on other parts of the country, and grounding it in their realities. In a sub-continent like India, that could look like individual offices in each state of a national NGO managing their work autonomously. You may not be surprised by the number of Delhi-based NGO workers I’ve met who are blown away by the fact that they will need translators when travelling to other parts of the country. Promoting locally-led leadership here could mean that work with other states is done in at least in partnership with local NGOs, or better yet by having them lead the projects and activities there.

Partnerships

We need to also think about how to balance local and international funding, projects, and strategies in a way that can make partnerships more equitable. Interdependent relationships between actors can lead to some great co-learning, true partnerships, and allow the space for new projects to be community-led, or at least community-informed. Local actors, NGOs, movements, and communities should be at the forefront of social impact initiatives, with global actors playing a supportive, rather than directive, role.

This principle is particularly crucial in ensuring that social impact efforts are not only effective but also just and inclusive.

Performative Power Shifting

There are a few things to be mindful of when doing this, though. The first is to ensure authenticity, which can prevent us from being performative. When opening up conversations around how projects are designed, starting with the intentions and aims can help us to keep the target in mind as we learn how to do better. If we want to ensure projects are co-designed with communities, we have to truly interrogate why that is. If it is to help position our organisation as a partner, to help attract donors, that is not good enough. If we are truly interested in co-designing, we will need to unlearn, relearn, and to challenge our ways of working. This is one of the first conversations I have with clients while shifting power, and it’s there for a reason. Going into any process of change involves us knowing what that could mean for our established beliefs, practices, assumptions, and privileges. Are we truly ready to be confronted with damaging behaviours we’ve been perpetuating? Are we ready to change them? Are we prepared to be uncomfortable?

Fetishising and Exoticising

Another large one is the romanticisation of local actors or localisation. There is a reason I am carefully neutral with the language and do not share examples; it’s so that as you are reading, you can fill in the blanks with your power holders, organisational practices, and local partner organisations. There is a romanticisation of community-led, or of communities themselves, and a deeply held set of patronising attitudes we all have towards those we have ‘othered’ to whatever extend. Stepping away from this means being aware of your biases and tendency to romanticise, fetishise, or exoticise a group of people. Think about the languages you speak and that come naturally to you. Think of the groups of people who speak it as their second or third languages, and of those who don’t speak it at all. What assumptions are you making of their comfort with expressing themselves, and maybe of their knowledge? Extend that to the assumptions being made of your organisation’s power holders, and the groups over whom you hold power. If there is no evidence base for your assumptions, that’s your opportunity to shift power by making yourself as a person, your work, and your partnership respectful and equitable.

Shifting power therefore requires all of us to commit to breaking down traditional hierarchies, starting with ourselves. This can help us create the spaces for local leadership and true partnership to thrive, and to recentre those who are marginalised by systemic oppression.