The old world of financing for social organizations is fading. And in its place is born a scenario full of challenges for the NGOs in charge of addressing environmental issues, the implementation of the Peace Agreements or the needs of the most needy groups. What has changed very little, for now, is the overwhelming and stormy race to access funds that benefit only a tiny minority of foundations. With two added problems: an important part of the major international sources has prioritized aid to Gaza and Ukraine, and the uncertainty about the economic future has imposed limits on solidarity from the business world.
The global amounts of international cooperation for social projects in Colombia have been decreasing since the pandemic. It is known that in 2023 some 441 million dollars were channeled, a figure that contrasts with the 1,032 million annually received on average between 2018 and 2021 (from 2015 to 2017 the average was 610 million), according to data from the Presidential Agency. of International Cooperation. In 2022 there was a fleeting rebound and the record figure of 1,465 million dollars was reached. That is why the general balance, for some, is nuanced if one takes into account that it is a middle-income country that continues to receive considerable contributions from the solidarity networks of the developed world.
“What happens is that access to these resources has become increasingly competitive and large organizations in the ecosystem have an abysmal advantage when it comes to presenting themselves in the calls,” explains Juan Carlos Lozano, founder of Innpactia, a digital platform. that links civil society actors with potential funders. In fact, Lozano notes that 80% of non-profit entities in Colombia refrain from participating in the calls because they know in advance that it is a waste of time: “I sense that there is a process of deterioration in the legitimacy of this traditional type of spaces. There are Civicus studies that show that the youngest children have a 0% chance of accessing resources.”
Apart from the source of cooperation, the other means of subsidy are donations from individuals, aid from companies and public funds. A trident that carries its own advantages and difficulties. The large slice and the most coveted resources come, perhaps, from foundations such as the Ford Foundation or Open Society, by the American philanthropist of Hungarian origin George Soros. For their part, local companies, which include this aid within their social responsibility tasks, have chosen in recent years to develop their own foundations to better control resources. And the state route, finally, entails some bureaucratic obstacles that tend to be a cause of disaffection among the organizations that make up the also called Third Sector.
Johnatan Clavijo, project manager of the consulting firm Compartamos por Colombia, explains that while the majority of organizations go through all kinds of hardships to keep their operation afloat and fulfill their mission, financiers have tightened the screws in recent times: “ More and more efficiency in results is required of them. Today the objectives have to be very well defined by the foundations, under a scheme that segments the projects and their impact is monitored in detail,” explains Clavijo. An issue that requires a higher management level and limits, once again, thousands of small community organizations that barely survive in problematic contexts.
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It is also, Clavijo adds, a mechanism that affects the margin of autonomy and leaves NGOs tied to the political parameters and approaches outlined by donors. “Measuring the social or environmental impact of a project is not easy,” he continues, “nor is it cheap because it requires conceptual and econometric elements. It takes time and requires building an entire theory of social change around it.” A sum of requirements within the reach of a handful of structured entities with a sophisticated organizational level.
The Colombian Confederation of NGOs estimates that in Colombia there are some 208,230 non-profit organizations. Within this universe there is a web of entities among which, by number, community action boards and sectoral or territorial organizations stand out. They all fall under the umbrella of NGO, an acronym for “non-governmental organization” coined since 1945. The fact is that the Colombian State has a navigation manual for working and disbursing resources to these non-profit entities. But Johnatan Clavijo confirms that the official route has some limitations: “Regulation by law turns social organizations into executors of the State. That’s why I see very high administrative wear and tear and a dynamic that bears very little resemblance to an alliance.”
Mariana Sanz de Santamaría, founder and director of Poderosas Colombia, a young foundation focused on comprehensive sexuality education issues, identifies an underlying problem: “All this has to do with a conception of social work as unpaid work that It should be done on a non-profit basis.” She refers to the Franciscan spirit of Christian charity that remains deeply rooted in Colombia. That is why she is critical of the architecture of subsidies that are designed to leave administrative and management costs in the second or third row: “They give you caps of 7% or 15%, which are almost terms of voluntary work and do not give you tools for grassroots or community organizations to survive.”
Poderosas Colombia was born in 2021. Since then it has reached 10,046 young people and adolescents in 22 communities in eight departments of Colombia who have received training on sexual rights and leadership issues. Despite the commitment, Sanz de Santamaría regrets that the vital horizon for his work is limited to plans of a maximum of one year: “The constant search for resources and the formulation of projects is very exhausting and makes it very difficult to sustain the teams for a long time.” . Issues of international bureaucracy that are not exactly new, but raise questions about the resources to spur the development agenda.
Today the crossroads are finding ways to innovate financing channels and strengthen the participation of small foundations on the board. USAID, the large official US cooperation agency, for example, is accelerating direct contracting with local foundations, without the intermediation of managing entities where the money stops. For next year, it is expected that 25% of these resources, which for Colombia alone reached 230 million dollars in 2022, will be executed without checkpoints along the way.
What is clear is that the old recipe for philanthropy, that of initially disinterested donors, is becoming exhausted and the role of the private sector as a catalyst for problems is already seminal. The outlook for certain international organizations whose power is comparable to that of multinationals, such as Greenpeace, Save the Children or WWF, is clearer. And some have already set up consulting companies and even investment funds to attract more capital flows. Carlos González, who runs Makaia, another technology and innovation platform that builds alliances in the sector, talks about a paradigm shift.
He reiterates the need to think about a “business model” that focuses on social or environmental impact as an investment instrument: “Colombia requires at least three times as many cooperation resources to cover its development needs. And to achieve the goals in humanitarian projects, zero hunger, education for municipalities, the business sector is key in this equation.” A new narrative that is getting closer and closer to the financial world. And with its shortcomings and virtues it seeks to unite the interests of corporate profitability with the fight for social transformations, the critical denunciation of injustices and solidarity with the most vulnerable.
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