An Outside Perspective on Improving Your Access to Funding

What do you do if you’re a successful NGO who wants to attract more funding from the US?

Do you go at it alone, knowing you have the foundation of solid policies and the experience of multiple funding partners? Or do you bring in a consultant to help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses?

If you’re Trócaire, an Irish NGO focused on human rights and justice in 20 countries around the world, you call on Humentum.

“Are we ready and how do we get ready for accepting U.S. funding or accessing U.S. funding? That was the work we wanted help with,” said Nannerl Herriott, global partnership and funding manager for Trócaire.

After going through their procurement process, they chose Humentum from among several other entities. One reason was their expertise in funding, specifically USAID experience. Another was prior experience. “We had done a very interesting piece of work with Humentum on due diligence passporting for local partners. Because that had gone so well, and they were particularly well-placed in this area of expertise, they were on our list of people to work with.”

More of the Same versus a New Perspective

As an NGO looking to improve your access to funding, you can find many resources. USAID itself provides a readiness assessment, for example. So why not do your own assessment, especially if you’re a larger NGO like Trócaire?

“Unless you can find a way internally to get a new perspective, you get more of the same. You’re the same people in the same organization doing things the same way,” said Ms. Herriott.

For example, one of the recommendations was about language. “We’re using Trócaire language, whereas the person who’s going to be reviewing our applications or our reports is going to be using their own donor language,” said Ms. Herriott.
Trócaire policies are called “partnership policies” and US funding uses the term “sub-recipient policies.” Very simple to change, but something you might not see from the inside of an organization.

3 Ways to Maximize the Value

Once you’ve decided to use an outside resource, how can you increase the value of your investment? Here are three ways Trócaire maximized the value of Humentum’s consultancy:

• Direct the expertise where it’s most needed: be clear about your strengths and weaknesses.

“If you’re going to do this kind of piece of work, rather than be generic about it, really think about your own organization,” said Ms. Herriott. “And if you’ve got weaknesses, clearly identify those so that you get recommendations that are specific and help move you forward in the areas that you’re most concerned about.”
For example, Trócaire has many policies, so they knew that policy creation wasn’t an issue. But making the policies more manageable was. Some of Humentum’s recommendations focused on how to streamline and bring policies, processes, and procedures together to make them more accessible and concise.

• Involve senior leadership at key points.

Trócaire had a steering committee of senior level people to direct the initiative without being involved day-to-day. And at the conclusion, “senior people within Trócaire (director level) were there, and there was clear buy-in to the recommendations. The steering group read the report before the final meeting with Humentum,” said Ms. Herriott.

• Think ahead to resource the recommended action items.

At the conclusion of the project, Humentum provided prioritized recommendations. Given that the work involved looking at all systems, particularly compliance and financial, the action items were comprehensive (top line plus spreadsheets with detailed recommendations). Of course, not all those items are part of someone’s job.

“It’s a proper piece of work to action the recommendations, involving teams across the organization, with a person to oversee it all,” said Ms. Herriott, “plus leads and timelines, etc. In some cases where there’s an individual policy, the individual person who’s the lead for that policy can pick that up. (The finance team will be designated to pick up the finance recommendations, for example.)”

The key is to plan in advance how to act on the output.

“I do think it will be a lot of work, but we’ll definitely reap the benefits from it,”  said Ms. Herriott.

If you’re interested in learning how to improve your access to funding, let’s talk!

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