Designed more flexible financing approaches
Traditional rules are relevant up to a point, but it’s clear they’ll only work when circumstances don’t change. After that, rigid guidelines and strict instructions only inhibit flexibility, and therefore effectiveness.
The Start Fund, Migration Emergency Response Fund (MERF), Start Fund Bangladesh (SFB) and Start Fund COVID-19 have facilitated flexibility in the face of unpredictable situations. These funding mechanisms allow a more agile response, so that activities can be adapted to better fit the needs of affected communities.
The tiered due diligence framework being piloted by Start Network provides direct funding of smaller local organisations and Start Fund allows expansion into an anticipation window, which facilitates early action. Neither of which would be possible without flexibility.
WHAT WE KNOW
Since 2017, 68% of Start Fund projects have changed at least one activity to better address the needs of the community.
90% of stakeholders surveyed agreed that the Start Fund had impacted on the availability of more flexible funding in humanitarian action.*
CASE STUDY: ARC Replica
Three significant challenges face humanitarian organisations today when responding to disasters: the lack of available funding for sustained responses to protracted crises; a lack of flexible funding to develop new, innovative approaches to humanitarian disaster response beyond traditional reactionary frameworks; and the universal need for rapidly accessible funding for timely and effective emergency responses.
In 2018, Start Network purchased a ‘parametric’ insurance policy through African Risk Capacity, alongside the government of Senegal, which would pay out if a drought hit. In 2019, the pre-agreed threshold was met and Start Network received the largest ever funding allocation to civil society for early humanitarian action.
WHAT OTHERS SAY ABOUT START NETWORK
Flexibility gives more space for community consultations
The flexibility of the Start Fund gives us more space to have meaningful dialogue with the community so that we can support what they really need. — Ja Nu (Metta Development Foundation, Myanmar)
Improved disaster preparedness
Many organisations come in when a crisis happens, but Start Network jumps in before then, and even if the crisis is not as bad as projected, actors are better prepared because they had those funds to use in a more flexible way. — Mel Phadtare (Global Chaos Map Team, Anglia Ruskin University and FOREWARN member)
Modelled agility and adaptiveness
The Start Fund is really effective in how agile it is, and has taught the humanitarian sector it doesn’t have to work with these long funding streams, which are completely inflexible, where somebody will spend months writing a proposal and negotiating it, and it will take three or four months, at least, to access the money. — Emily Hockenhull (Action Against Hunger, UK)
Project adapted to community needs in The Philippines
The project was [later] adapted to the specific needs of the local communities. Hygiene promotion was one of the gaps identified by the health cluster that led the local authority, the Provincial Health Office, to request all WASH actors to include and intensify their hygiene promotion campaign alongside distributing hygiene items. This way, sanitation and hygiene-related illnesses were prevented, especially for the thousands of affected individuals living in evacuation camps and in open spaces. — Olivier Koch-Mathian (ACTED, Philippines [Alert 378, Earthquake])
Enabled funders to confidently support more local and national NGOs
TechSoup’s partnership with Start Network to create a more nuanced, risk-based approach to due diligence is a response to two key barriers to localisation and the democratisation of aid and philanthropy: access and risk. The tiered due diligence framework seeks to reduce time spent by NGOs on compliance and due diligence and enable funders to confidently support more local and national NGOs. — Caroline Burrage (TechSoup, USA)
Demonstrated that a flexibility is a more effective response
During our implementation of a COVID-19 response in Barguna district, a Nor Wester tornado hit the area. The Start Fund Bangladesh mechanism allowed flexibility to adapt our response to the immediate needs of the affected community. Budget assigned for distribution of PPE to nurses and doctors was instead used to provide immediate cash relief to 115 severely affected households. — Duke Ivn Amin (JAGO NARI, Bangladesh)
Read more about the value and learning around being flexible:
Flexibility in Unpredictable Situations
COVID-19: What can we learn from responding to previous disease outbreaks in low-income countries?
Migration-sensitive or migration-specific? Exploring funding approaches for mixed migration
Footnotes
*From a sample of 60 members and 28 non-members interviewed in 2020 who had interacted with the Start Fund and felt able to answer this question.
