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A recent Brookings Institution publication, Locally Driven Development: Overcoming the Obstacles, identifies the creation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation in 2004 as a major turning point in the U.S. investment in locally led development. In this model, countries themselves request funding and drive their own development agendas. Later, under Administrator Rajiv Shah, USAID in the early 2010’s set a target of 30 percent of funding to go directly to partner governments and local organizations. This trend continued with Administrator Mark Green and USAID’s Journey to Self-Reliance. Currently, under Administrator Samantha Power, USAID is targeting 25 percent of assistance for local partners and, by 2030, that 50 percent of programming be co-designed and led by local communities. Most large bilateral donors and many private foundations have also supported localization, as evidenced by their endorsement of USAID’s December 2022 official Statement on Supporting Locally Led Development.

USAID’s targets for locally led development are driving substantial support for local organizational capacity-building. This not only includes program support but also training materials, workshops, and coaching to help thriving local organizations to do business with the U.S. government. Helping local organizations to strengthen their operational systems, financial tracking systems, and human-resource management are important strategies for longer-term local leadership and success. To date the primary thrust of its capacity building and technical support to civil society organizations (CSOs) is to prepare them to receive and manage USAID funds directly for USAID-designed projects.

Although USAID’s goal of localization is laudable and support for capacity-building has been strong, we argue that there is another dimension to locally led development that deserves more attention. This is the structural, legal, and political environments in which local development organizations operate. Host country governments obviously play a leading role in locally led development, in in most cases, CSOs do as well. They often serve as the voices of local communities or provide essential services that otherwise would not be available from governments or the private sector. CSOs are often the vanguard for innovation and scaling of development projects.

Host country governments also play as important a role in setting the tone for civil society as they do for businesses. They can promote the growth of civil society organizations in public discourse, policies, regulations, and programs. They can ease registration procedures, reporting, and tracking. They can offer government grants and promote funding from internal and international sources. They can also promote access to bank loans and support favorable repayment options.

There are a variety of reasons why are some governments more supportive of CSOs than others. For example, suspicion of CSOs’ power to criticize governments or compete with them in messaging or services might induce some governments to minimize or restrict CSO growth and development. Others may simply not prioritize CSO development or may not have the experience, person-power, or legal infrastructure to support a formal CSO sector.

At the other end of the spectrum are countries that have robust civil society sectors and treat CSOs as full development partners. In Thailand, for example, strong cooperation between the government and the Thai NGO Population and Community Development Association (PDA) for more than four decades has brought about remarkable progress in the areas of family planning, maternal and child health, and HIV/AIDs reduction. At its peak, PDA assisted the government in providing family planning and community development services to one-third of the country.

In another example from neighboring Cambodia, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MOEYS) is currently the largest donor of the Kampuchea Action to Promote Education (KAPE), Cambodia’s largest local NGO in the education sector. Through this relationship, KAPE is delivering technical services directly to government high schools to create innovative models of governance and instruction, including their flagship New Generation Schools (NGS) program. Not only is the NGS program locally funded, but it is also co-designed and implemented by KAPE and the MOEYS.

USAID and other bilateral donors focus on their own numerical goals for channeling USAID funding to local entities. But these cases demonstrate that what ultimately ensures sustainability for CSOs is a diverse base of funders and clients comprising local private and government sources. In addition, the locus of design and implementation is situated at the country level rather than being driven or influenced by external agencies.

With growing efforts to support locally led development that includes host country governments as well as civil society, there is a tremendous opportunity to work with governments to grow and improve the health of local civil society organizations. The following are three strategies for promoting impactful and viable CSOs:

1. Identify criteria for a healthy CSO sector. What does a health CSO sector look like? Perhaps we can take cues from the business research community. The Economist, for example, produces an annual report called Assessing the Best Countries for Doing Business in which it ranks the business environments of 82 countries based on 91 criteria. We could develop similar criteria for countries’ civil society sectors (perhaps though, with a smaller number of criteria!). We also imagine that there would be substantial overlap between the health of business and civil society operating environments in countries and that we could draw from The Economist’s research and other primary sources to build the civil society index.

2. Make the case. It would also be helpful to conduct research and write case studies about the efficacy of healthy civil society sectors. How can strong CSOs help countries with their economic and social development? What are the benefits? How can governments organize their CSO support to minimize the potential risks and negative outcomes? Results of this research could then be used to advocate with governments for enabling CSO policy prescriptions and reforms.

3. Develop resources and activities. We could also develop plans, maps, guidance, templates, and other resources for governments that are interested in civil society support activities and reform. These could be rooted in successes from other countries and recommendations from CSO leaders based on their own organizational experiences. These are some of the questions that we are trying to answer in Doab Development’s Social Sector Master Class interviews.

Do you have experience in helping countries to strengthen their civil society sectors? Recommendations for resources that could help this development? Please join the conversation and let us know what you think.