IDEAS TO ADVANCE LOCALIZATION

This article captures the full range of notes and ideas to address localization challenges, generated by workshop participants during brainstorming and small group discussions. The views and conclusions contained in this article are primarily those of non-USAID participants and should not be interpreted as representing the views, positions, or official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Government.

USAID

Ideas to Increase Collaboration

Institutionalize consistent local partner input through co-creation.
Require co-creation with local partners post-award and regular pause and reflect sessions with local organizations.
Invest in and set aside funds for co-creation with local organizations and international partners to build consortia and collaboratively develop new approaches; extend invitations to local organizations that have not won bids, ensuring time is fully compensated and travel costs are reimbursed.
Foster prime-sub collaboration and support.
Redefine the role of international partners to provide coaching to local organizations, setting aside funds that allow international organizations to embed coaching into projects. Ensure that primes help local partners budget for operational costs during application processes, and set aside the time needed to staff up.
Create prime-sub mentoring arrangements and require primes to involve subs in proposal development and meetings with USAID regardless of exclusivity/non-exclusivity.
Create an accessible database of local organizations in which USAID has already invested.
Facilitate inter-donor contracting collaboration.
Adopt a USAID policy to accept other donors' pre-award surveys for local partners (i.e. Gates, GAVI, etc.).
Do away with SAM, and streamline mechanisms with other OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members.

Ideas to Manage Risk

Adopt a higher risk appetite.
Train international partners, USAID staff, and local partners on managing risk aversion and where they can exercise greater flexibility.
Operationalize risk tolerance by publishing risk levels, justifications, etc.
Eliminate Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement (NICRA) or standardize (at 25 percent) for all.

Ideas to Facilitate Procurement

Make procurement easier and more accessible for local organizations.
Financially support international partners to develop a common/universal vetting questionnaire for local partners to simplify the process of local organizations joining bid teams.
Simplify SAM registration.
Make procurement timelines longer to allow for new partnership building, co-creation, and to give local organizations adequate time to prepare application materials.
Simplify selection processes and lower barriers to entry through relaxed and/or simplified rules and regulations that enable more local organizations to compete; this includes removing onerous requirements such as prior USAID experience.
Provide applications in different languages and change USAID regulations to allow proposal submission in the official language of a country.
Ban exclusive partnerships on bids (as the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, FCDO, has done).
Create more flexible procurement models that factor in local input.
Co-design RFPs with local organizations.
Use Annual Program Statements (APS), including concept note and application, instead of Request for Applications to ensure solutions match an actual locally-identified constraint.
Subsidize local organizations’ engagement in procurement.
Fund proposal development and make pre-award costs allowable for local partners.
Guarantee that a certain amount can be recovered and local partners will be compensated for their advisory role in shaping procurement, and for any focus group participation.

Ideas to Support Contracting and Award Implementation

Prioritize local partner friendly contracting mechanisms.
Eliminate large contracts in favor of smaller programs and cooperative agreements with built-in partnership requirements.
Move towards pay for performance funding.
Increase fixed price contracts for locals, define targets with local partners.
Use a less formal, less complex means of gaining local input, screening and sourcing local ideas (co-creation through APS, etc.).
Focus on assistance, as it is much easier and more accessible, with fewer regulations.
Prioritize awards that require 50-75 percent of total award funding to be subbed to new, underutilized and local partners.
Decrease time between program idea and funding.
Facilitate local organizations as primes on contracts.
Make local organizations primes, with requests for partnerships with international organizations.
Have awards transition legally to local subs halfway through implementation (i.e. prime partners shift to sub); make it standard to allow a change in award prime from international partner to local partner during an award.
Accommodate local organizations’ needs during award implementation.
Lengthen start-up period (six months) to establish meaningful partnerships and better support new local partners.
Increase flexibility for reasonable changes, such as budget amendments, extending projects, recognizing that local context may require adaptations.

Ideas to Expand Funding

Leverage additional, alternative sources of funding.
Partner with foundations to expand grant-making.
Engage other funders in-country.
Use blended finance mechanisms to mitigate financial risk incurred by taxpayers.
Support local funders, particularly country-based foundations and accelerators that can sub to local organizations.
Incentivize small businesses to support localization, engaging the private sector by making the business case for localization as a value proposition.
Create long-term, flexible funding structures.
Increase timelines for funding agreements and programs to five to ten years to facilitate systems change and allow local actors to better plan for the long term.
Give block grants to local organizations so they can freely decide how to spend funds, eliminating earmarks as a basis for determining what countries and local contexts need.
Create a spigot of funding for international or national NGOs to incubate local organizations and build leadership, capacity, and other infrastructure; utilize large NGOs as fund managers with a mandate to equip and empower local partners to pursue their own scopes of work.
Develop funding streams specifically for global south actors and proactively identify global south-led networks and organizations.
Institutional support grants for unrestricted funding for local organizations.
Make funding more simple and small.
Offer a greater number of smaller awards to allow new partners to grow incrementally, and lower procurement floor to local levels (i.e. hundreds of thousands, not millions of dollars). Numerous smaller grants can be more widely distributed among multiple local partners, and better align with their capacity. This will help more local partners gain USAID experience and encourage collaboration and coordination rather than competition.
Develop small grants that allow USAID to test the waters with new partners and provide capacity building, due diligence, and compliance support.
Help local partners cover costs.
Increase de minimis rates (from 10 percent to 20-25 percent) and expand eligibility to allow local partners to adequately recover costs.
Allow local NGOs to propose their own overhead rates to better support their internal development; pay a greater proportion (up to 100 percent) of local organizations’ overhead costs; require established partners to provide overhead and pay a certain percentage of allocated grants to local organizations.
Offer letters of credit to local organizations.
Mandate that 70-80 percent of USAID funds go to the field to incentivize changes in USAID’s business model and concentrate job creation internationally rather than domestically.

Ideas to Support Accountability

Clarify and standardize the definition of “localization.”
Clarify eligibility criteria and clearly define “local” and “local voices” to ensure appropriate engagement at each level.
Consider quality, not just quantitative indicators, by asking: Why does localization matter? Is it more inclusive? Does it lead to more sustainability?
Establish a global localization monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) framework.
Make evidence-based policy the norm.
Generate evidence that co-creation increases local voices and local input during design.
Hold international partners accountable.
Monitor budgets international organizations allocate to local partners, ensuring they align with what was originally submitted in proposals.
Ensure international partners do not block localization by registering themselves locally and competing with organizations in-country.
Better train prime (and USAID) staff on managing power differentials, localization, respectful collaboration, communication, fair and reasonable processes, respecting the time and expertise of local organizations, racial and cultural equity, encouraging humility and mutual respect.
Do not allow primes to change formats and processes mid-grant; this is a major source of frustration, wasted resources, and feeling that small organizations are being disrespected.
Annually evaluate and publish performance of primes against awards.
Score international primes and intermediaries on their subgrantees’ feedback; for example, through a grant perception survey like the one conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
Establish feedback loops from local organizations to primes and USAID to hold both accountable when they violate stated values around localization.
Demand exit/transition strategies from international partners, ensuring all USAID projects include transition plans.
Share agency notices with international partners so USAID can hold Contracting Officers (COs) and Award Officers (AOs) accountable to push best practices.
Institutionalize USAID’s accountability to its localization goals.
Factor localization costs, time, and resources into every facet and stage of projects.
Create a special localization fund to offset costs of co-creation exercises.
Require one local sub new to USAID funding on each award.
Require greater transparency and accountability by making public reporting a condition of funding.

Ideas to Support Localization through the Mission and Country-level Strategy

Increase Mission authority, responsibility, and ownership of localization.
Require Missions to include steps to ope-rationalize localization in their Country Development Cooperation Strategies.
Harmonize the risk between USAID/Washington and Missions.
Allow Missions flexibility to react to their communities.
Require Missions to hold monthly training to address USAID funding mechanisms and transparency issues.
Require Missions to hold self-assessments on their capacity to manage additional responsibilities and facilitate regional operations.
Decentralize USAID procurement to Missions for the majority of funds, increasing Mission authority to partner directly with local and new organizations in response to ministry requests.
Make Mission MEL platforms responsible for engaging local voices and creating resourced spaces.
Have Missions hold regular co-creation sessions on localization with local partners.
Institutionalize localization in country-level strategies and priorities.
Set localization targets for each Mission, addressing associated staffing challenges at regional and local levels.
Establish Advisory and Decision-Making Councils composed of local organizations in each country to set the priority for USAID in that country, and provide input on country budgets, strategy, and USAID spending priorities.
Set goals for each Mission to have local primes, not just local sub-awardees.
Monitor awardees to ensure Missions work with diverse swathes of local actors, including actors and partners in rural areas outside urban centers.

Ideas to Increase Capacity of Local Partners

Offer long-term, capacity-building funds and resources to local organizations.
Allocate five to ten percent of an award to capacity building on every project.
Offer transitional grants after a few years of co-implementation to incentivize and help local partners apply newly acquired capacities and skills.
Hire dedicated USAID, project, and expert staff to help local partners navigate USAID procurement and implementation, such as a Localization Desk officer in each country to advise local organizations on how to work with USAID and other international partners.
Leverage experience and capacity of small businesses in support of local organizations on growing and managing their programs.
Staff an accessible USAID help desk.
Boost local partners’ operational capacity.
Decrease the compensation gap between local and international actors to allow local partners to better compensate and retain trained staff.
Fund or contract international organizations to provide capacity building sessions/services for local organizations, focusing on “back office” functions such as organizational development, financial management, budgeting, HR procurement, governance, and MEL to support viable and sustainable local organizations.
Fund extra admin/finance/operations support on all grants to offset the burden of USAID’s complex bureaucratic processes on local partners.
Fund at least three months pre- and post-award (ideally six months) for local partners, providing training, processes, expectations, communications, materials, baseline data collection support before project initiation dates.

Ideas to Support Reporting and Compliance

Make reporting more streamlined, flexible, and locally adaptive.
Simplify tools used to assess local partners, including Non-U.S. Organization Pre-Award Survey (NUPAS) and other reporting tools.
Accept reporting in local languages.
Design success indicators with local organizations.
Make USAID staff available to help smaller organizations understand and meet compliance and regulatory requirements pre- and post-award.
Help local partners feel empowered, confident to lead and innovate while being transparent with USAID, donors, and communities by working with local intermediaries capable of managing large sums and complex reporting, allowing them to work directly with local partners with less capacity.

Ideas to Support Local Inclusivity and Context

Institutionalize local involvement at every stage of projects.
Include local partners in the co-creation of projects to actively engage local stakeholders in the program design process, and not just as key informants.
Require projects to have management structures that include local experts and leaders in decision making management roles.
Make community consent, consultation, and design mandatory for all programs, including it in budget and built into procurement (i.e. FCDO model).
Involve and include local organizations and community leaders in developing funding strategies and opportunities to ensure local context and community needs are better considered for long-term shared success.
Assess and prioritize local demand, priorities, and cultural context.
Examine inter-cultural dynamics and DEIA within countries, recognizing that a one-size-fits all approach to localization is inadequate given the diversity among local partners and contexts.
Learn from different local environments by listening to local partners regarding new development challenges rather than imposing a top-down agenda.
Award funding for using existing local approaches based on evidence.
Set aside funding for local unsolicited proposals.
Creatively shift power to diverse local stakeholders at every level.
Expand the definition of local organizations to include government entities, and work through local ministries and procurement systems to help strengthen these systems.
Develop a means for local communities to select or weigh in on the selection of winning proposals.
Engage local partners with diaspora presence; leverage the bridging power of diaspora communities with both local and international experience by expanding eligible ‘local’ entities to include natives - not just citizens - of a given country.
Consider relevant regional issues, leaders, and organizations: seek thought leadership from regional leaders and examine new evidence generated by regional partners.

Ideas to Address Staffing

Boost staffing and training.
Hire more staff to facilitate the management of multiple smaller awards and support local community engagement.
Prioritize project managers and USAID procurement offices over technical staff.
Hire partnership officers to train on local partnerships.
Provide more guidance to COs and AOs on how to work with local organizations.
Train USAID staff on managing power differentials, localization, respectful collaboration, communication, fair and reasonable processes, respecting the time and expertise of local organizations, racial and cultural equity, encouraging humility and mutual respect.

Ideas for Better Communication

Communicate clearly and consistently with local organizations.
Rely on easy-to-use platforms.
Reducing the complexity of information conveyed to render content more accessible to and digestible by local partners.
Establish open and transparent communication channels, including ones between local partners and USAID without primes as intermediaries.
Consistently provide feedback, especially on proposals.
Engage in sustained dialogue with potential partners.
Communicate the easiest paths available to local partners.
Discuss agreements with local organizations, clause by clause, before contracts are signed.
Devise a communications strategy and make it available to partners before contracts are signed.
Have Missions host open meetings with local organizations to improve communication and transparency around localization, help inform a better localization process, and build positive relationships to achieve mutual goals. Ensure Mission and USAID/Washington staff attend convenings and visit projects.

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

Ideas to Support Collaboration

Build and expand networks.
Introduce USAID to local partners to expand USAID’s network.
Help local partners meet other local organizations to build networks and facilitate information exchange.

Ideas to Address Capacity

Build USAID capacity.
Help build capacity among Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) and Agreement Officer’s Representatives (AORs) and Mission staff in general.
Work closely with USAID/Washington and Missions to identify USAID needs that international partners can help fill.
Increase information sharing around experience working with local organizations.
Build local partner capacity.
Provide technical support.
Share best practices with local partners, playing a facilitating role in project implementation.
Increase information sharing regarding opportunities available to local organizations.

Ideas to Address Accountability

Drive localization independently of USAID mandates and requirements.
Develop internal localization goals.
Advance and normalize evidence-based policy.
Design and implement the Capacity Building Indicator 9 (CBLD-9) metric to measure capacity strengthening; this metric must be co-designed with local partners and is part of New Partnerships Initiative action plans, but is currently underutilized by international partners.

Ideas to Support Reporting and Compliance

Reduce burden of local partner due diligence.
Coordinate on a shared, universal vetting system; alternatively use a facilitated self-assessment for due diligence. Currently, all international organizations have their own vetting questionnaires; a common and reciprocal questionnaire developed in partnership with USAID and local organizations would eliminate redundancy and support cost/time saving for local partners. Ten organizations are already on board; Humentum is willing to convene and manage this undertaking with consultant support.
Develop a guiding typology for different kinds of organizations with different needs and limitations by creating archetypes in collaboration with international partners and local organizations.