KENYA: From the Roots Up, Now is the Time to Shift the Power

Leonida Odongo shares the challenges grassroots organizations face in a funding system that prioritizes rules over impact.

Where is justice when your practice is a barrier to the marginalized and those living in vulnerable situations?

The Weight of Rejection

“We regret to inform you that your proposal did not go to the second stage. We received a lot of proposals and worthy causes, but unfortunately, yours was not among them. This does not mean that we don’t acknowledge the great work you are doing. Please keep checking our website for upcoming opportunities.”

I’ve received several emails like this, and the feeling is far from pleasant — especially on a Monday morning when it has the power to ruin your entire week. For any program officer or fundraiser, this is one of the most dreaded messages to receive. After spending hours, days, or even months researching, writing, and burning the midnight oil, it all ends in a rejection.

Barriers to Entry for Small Organizations

For small or up-and-coming organizations trying to get their footing in the development sector, fundraising, staffing, and organizational development are major challenges. The trend has always been to fund large or already established organizations while new ones are often left behind. Funders also look for organizations that have structures in place.

Many small organizations engage in great work with a high impact. Still, because they lack structures, they do not have the most current financial statements and have not documented their work in glossy papers or updated their website. These organizations may not be on X, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, but the transformation they are carrying out at the grassroots, where the real problems are, is enormous.

Misaligned Expectations and Unrealistic Timelines

Many development partners come to organizations with already framed mindsets, bringing pre-conceived objectives, projects, and activities without truly understanding the local context or the community's priorities. As a result, sometimes organizations write proposals that are misaligned with the funder's expectations. When funders issue calls for proposals, these organizations often miss out because their work doesn’t match the funder’s criteria. The sad reality is, how do you align to something that you have no prior information about? This is like going on a journey to an unknown destination.

The rigorous process organizations must go through to secure funding is another difficulty. When funders announce a call for proposals, small, newly formed, grassroots, or community-based organizations often respond to the best of their ability — or that of their lean teams. They often receive a regret letter, which rarely includes the reasons for rejection. This lack of feedback makes it difficult to learn from the experience and avoid the same mistakes in the future.

The Feedback Gap

The typical response is often, "We are unable to provide reasons why your proposal was not selected for this round of funding" or "We received many applications." For some development organizations, the call may be public, but they may already know who they plan to fund. Responding to such proposals can be a time-consuming exercise with little to no results.  You might be lucky to receive a letter of regret, but sometimes, you don’t get any response.

The process of sifting through proposals and sending feedback takes anywhere from months to a year. Sometimes, you end up writing a proposal and forgetting about it because of a lack of feedback. If only funders could tell you the proposal's outcome within the first two to three weeks, this could save many staff and organizations the anxiety of a long wait. 

I once wrote not one, not two, but countless concept notes and proposals. I was optimistic that I had done the research properly, only to get feedback six months later that our proposal did not get through.

Unethical Practices and Exploitation

Then, there is the notorious group for which you write a proposal or concept. They receive it and do not give any feedback, even acknowledgment of receipt, only for you to learn about a similar project being implemented. This is unfortunate but the reality for many. Once they receive your proposal, some funders go as far as publishing the proposal on their website. Why publish a proposal on your website that you never funded? One organization once did this to a proposal I had written, and I sent them an email demanding the proposal to be pulled down from their website because they never funded me. Why should they showcase my proposal on their website?

Urgency Versus Bureaucracy

When small organizations settle to write proposals, they do this with the hope that they will get funded to carry out activities. Most of the activities done by small organizations are often impactful to many people and can be a lifeline for many households. Can you tell a rumbling stomach to wait? Can you tell families unable to pay school fees to wait? Can you tell a woman needing an urgent response to gender-based violence to wait? 

These are issues that need to be handled immediately. Yet by the time you write a concept, it gets accepted, and you write the full proposal, how many mothers have been disinherited from their land? How many children have dropped out of school? How many household members have gone to sleep hungry?

Imagine for a moment how waiting for a donor to respond or communicate the outcome of a proposal would affect the hopes of women, children, and communities.

Resource Gaps in Marginalized Areas

The requirements put forward by some organizations during calls for proposals are another nightmare. Some insist that you have to have an online account, which is difficult to fill out. Sometimes, as an organization, you don’t have Wi-Fi and depend on tethering from your phone to the laptop to get internet, or you don’t even have a laptop and have to go to a cyber café. The organization is based in the village where the nearest place with electricity is the shopping center, where you have to walk for an hour or two without. Imagine the agony of writing a proposal in such a situation.

Sometimes, the call for proposals demands that you have documents that are not easy for some organizations to access. Some organizations are not formally registered, but funders demand that organizations be funded previously to show their capacity to handle money. Others demand that you have a bank account and audit financial accounts for the last three years, whereas in some cases, you must have physical structures such as an office and functional financial systems. Some even go as far as asking for online financial systems such as QuickBooks. 

You are required to have all these documents, and yet you have never secured any funding, and your account since inception reads zero. The money you have been using to run a few activities here and there comes from the pockets of group members who have foregone some of their basic necessities to contribute towards the group. Woe unto you. If a donor comes for due diligence and finds you don't have an office, you will be automatically disqualified.

Exclusion by Design

I know of many organizations that are not registered and doing great work. One, for example, has a tree in a church compound in Machakos – a semi-arid region. This group of women is expected to compete for the same funding as large organizations with multi-storied offices and staff protected from the scorching sun by the hum of a fan.

For the women meeting under a tree who do not have funding to pay for rent, the rainy season means their office expires, and they must wait for some other appropriate time to meet. How on earth do you ask for a registration certificate for a women's group that meets in a windowless, mud-floored room? How do you ask such a group for their annual report for the last three years? When Nduko, the chairwoman of the group, cannot even write her name, how can she write about the challenges facing the local women and the best strategies that can address these challenges?

The demand put forward by funders sometimes makes people give up. For example, some online forms are lengthy and must be filled out from start to finish, or you risk the entire proposal disappearing. Woe unto you when you forget the password and struggle before you can return your document and continue with the application.

There is another category of funders who cannot fund an organization they are unaware of. They bluntly communicate on their website they do not accept unsolicited applications. Fundraising is competitive and difficult for organizations in the Global South. As a funder, you close your doors, citing unsolicited applications, and yet on your website, you indicate you fight for social justice. Where is justice when your practice is a barrier to the marginalized and those living in vulnerable situations?

#ShiftThePower: A Call for Change

In an ideal situation, real #ShiftingthePower would entail funders being less rigorous in their calls for proposals. Consider that not all organizations have audited accounts and annual reports. In some organizations, members do not know how to read and write.

There should be both online and offline applications. Not all places have access to internet connectivity and electricity. In some parts of Africa, we only see electricity in the shopping centers, and our phones – popularly known as Katululu – do not even have basic WhatsApp.

Respecting Local Knowledge

Allow people to write proposals in the best way they can. Many proposals demand the use of English, French, or Spanish. In rural villages, people do not even speak Kiswahili, the national language.

Have in place systems that accommodate diversity. Make fundraising less complex. Funders should not just fund large, already-established organizations. Make deliberate efforts to go to communities where the most marginalized are, talk to them, and hear their views. The locals have solutions to most problems they go through.

Tailor calls for proposals in collaboration with communities and not a top-down approach, which contributes to further oppression of an already vulnerable group. Respect for local realities is key. Let communities have a voice and decision-making power. Respect their knowledge and input, and collaborate with the community. You will see the best proposals developed – proposals that respond to needs.

In many communities, poverty unfortunately has a female face. Many women, due to various challenges, are unable to run their organizations effectively. This is one reason why more support should shift to the grassroots: This is where the bulk of the transformative work is happening and where the real problems are.

Time to Act: The Power of Grassroots Transformation

From a personal perspective, #ShiftThePower means changing from the savior mentality to collaboration with communities so that the most muted voices and the poorest have their voices heard. It is about putting the last first. It is about respecting local realities and not having a preconceived mindset on how a project should work. It is about respecting the inputs of grassroots people, and lastly, shifting the power is about changing the top-down practice to meaningful participation of project participants.

The power that needs to be shifted in the development sector is in funds, resources, practices, skills, and mindsets. The shift from large organizations being the only ones funded and small organizations being erased from the funding landscape. Shifting the power means respecting the humble beginnings of organizations and nurturing them to realize social justice. Shifting the power is also about funders coming to the ground to learn from funding recipients and understand their terrain and the challenges they face.

#ShiftThePower is also about allocating more funding to Global South organizations, particularly women-led grassroots organizations or women and youth-focused organizations. It is about responding to all the letters of inquiry. It is about how philosopher Mao Tse Tsung put it: “Go to the People.” 

There is no better time to#ShiftThePower than now when the world suffers from poly-crises.

STORY AWARDS

This story was published as part of World Pulse Story Awards and the #ShiftThePower campaign, a collaboration between World Pulse's Research and Evaluation Group and the Co-Design Collaborative at the University of Arizona. This campaign called on women to share their insights and recommendations related to shifting power. Learn more and read the report.