Defining the impacts of funding flexibly
While each flexible funding model has unique characteristics, our research uncovered several common features that appear across all models. These are also the core reasons why organisations should be inspired to fund flexibly.
01. Dedicating resources to enable and ensure flexibility produces stronger impact
- Ensuring accessibility in all of its forms requires additional resources. How funders engage with accessibility from the perspective of their grantee partners is fundamental to their identity and values – and it produces a more inclusive impact. Many Direct Champions in particular seek to raise greater awareness of this. For example, ADD International launched the Fairer Funding Campaign to advocate for more and better funding for disability justice.10 As shared by Women’s Fund Asia: inclusion in funding means intentionally building in and resourcing language justice, accessibility, and engagement with partners as a key part of funding partnerships.
Examples include:
- allocating additional funding for travel and hotel options to ensure these are accessible for people with disabilities, and
- budgeting for translation costs (which can be very high) to help overcome language barriers.
- A willingness to deal with practical challenges is crucial. A sign of true commitment to flexible funding is being able to handle practical challenges as they arise. Flexible funders are able to mobilise and get creative to overcome these challenges.
For instance, several funders highlighted the common challenge of transferring money in contexts where banks are heavily scrutinised or where sanctions exist. Creative solutions from flexible funders include:
- asking sister funds to transfer money if they have better access,
- working with fiscal sponsors, or
- taking the risk of using more informal channels – this increases the chance of funds reaching areas where they will have the most impact.
In fragile and conflict settings, flexibility and adaptability also means moving money fast enough to respond to the uncertainty of conflict and humanitarian crises.
- Prioritising care and wellbeing makes a difference. Funding that does not respect the wellbeing of staff, advisors, partners and grantees is not aligned with the values of flexibility. Conversely, funding that does prioritise care and wellbeing is more likely to be impactful and sustainable. Women’s and feminist funds in particular emphasised the importance of care. As described by the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF):
“Changing systems takes time! It can be overwhelming. How can we care for ourselves and also individuals? We ensure that we model that as AWDF, but also provide spaces for partners, especially now in the crisis this year, to talk, to care and to heal.”
02. Accountability is central to flexible funding, and not trusting grantee partners is the true risk
- A false tension between accountability and flexibility. Flexible funders see accountability as fundamental to their work – and it looks different to mainstream funding. For Prospera, it is vital to “address the tension that is created between flexible funding and accountability – that is not the story.”
“Funding can be flexible and we still want to see proof of what people are doing. But it can be told in their own language and perspectives rather than through donor agendas. Women and feminist funds have been doing that work.” Chhavi Doonga, Prospera
- True accountability is to the communities that greater sustainability are intended to benefit. Flexible funders must account to the communities that they ultimately hope to serve. Some funders (particularly in community philanthropy) deploy accountability as the basis for asking their grantee partners to produce a financial report and, at times, receipts. But it is the focus of the reporting that matters, as described by Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF):
“[traditional] funders say: what did my money buy? Not, what are communities doing for themselves? There is no curiosity about how to be additive and respectful of what is already there.”
And as described by Greg Hilditch from Global Greengrants Fund,
“this is about accountability to movements, not to donors, whilst also working to improve the quality of the evidence about our grantee impact.”
- Risk must be recast. All of the flexible funders we spoke to as part of this research agreed on one central point: narratives and conversations that centre risk in flexible funding are missing the point. In other sectors, such as the investment world, risk is seen as good and necessary. As put by ACT Ubumbano,
“development practice needs a shake up – we can’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results. A far more important risk conversation is how to take risks on new ideas and innovations.”
Mama Cash echoed this sentiment:
“The focus on risk is wrong-headed, especially when the groups that we fund are taking risks. Fear of risk is not the real concern – it is that donors are afraid of giving up control.”
03. Accompaniment support elevates collaboration over competition, leading to greater sustainability
- Funding dynamics shift from transactional to relational. As funding relationships involve monetary resources, they can easily become transactional, especially in cases where the funder is removed from the immediate context. ACT Ubumbano phrases this best, noting that: “money is needed to support the struggle, but if it’s the starting point, it becomes problematic.”
“Keep money in the frame, by all means, but we are increasingly finding that a mechanism that enables transformation and emancipation is most important. The word we use is ‘accompaniment’ – funding is an enabler. That features strongly in our expression and descriptions of solidarity.”
Accompaniment allows funders to move beyond transactional grantmaking to fund relationships based on mutual accountability and solidarity.11 For flexible funding to meaningfully transform the sector, both grantee partners and funders need to centre the human element. This, as many shared, requires funders to actively put themselves in the shoes of grantees, anticipating the barriers they face such as language barriers, accessibility for people living with disabilities, and the needs of marginalised groups.
- Accompaniment helps grantee partners navigate the largely untransformed funding landscape. While flexible funding is undoubtedly making a difference, the broader funding landscape remains rigid, risk averse, and compliance heavy. Accompaniment helps to bridge this gap by offering practical guidance and institutional support, helping grantees to navigate the often intimidating structures and processes of traditional philanthropy that haven’t yet caught up to flexible funding. As CIVICUS relates, this kind of accompaniment “would set our grantees up for receiving further funding and being able to manage these in terms of donor expectations.” AWDF shares a similar sentiment, noting that accompaniment is also aimed at long-term sustainability:
“Community-based organisations (CBOs) and NGOs should not just rely on us for the lifetime of their organisations. We’re also thinking about sustainability, about broadening the work and the impact that they make. They need resources from elsewhere so we provide non-financial accompaniment; this includes capacity strengthening; this can include financial management, digital safety and security, leadership and governance, communication and documenting their work.”
- Accompaniment can be a tool for practical support. As grantee partners and funders have grown used to working within and around rigid structures, accompaniment enables both to ease into alternative forms of partnership. Often, grantee partners require some time to adjust to alternative ways of working – this could take weeks, months or years, depending on the context. As rightly explained by Mama Cash:
“We have an accompaniment process so we know what their needs are – they’d have self- identified the things they need strengthened in governance, financial management, collective care for their groups, and this takes vulnerability and openness for partners to speak about.”
Through continued dialogue, check-ins and support, funders are better able to anticipate grantee partner needs and recognise their strengths, which may not always show up in programmatic reporting. As part of their accompaniment, FRIDA shares that they support partners to tell the best story about their work:
“We know they did a lot through email or call updates but it’s not always reflected in the report[…]. So we talk with our team and agree on ways to support them [with writing reports].”
Accompaniment makes grantmaking more responsive and reduces the burden on both sides.
04. Unfair funding legacies can be mitigated by fostering equal and mutually respectful relationships between grantee partners and funders
- Traditional funding has left legacies of fear. Even as the discourse and practice of flexible funding grows, the bulk of funding remains concentrated in top-down processes and structures.12 The effects of mainstream funding remain deeply entrenched in both grantee partner and funder practices. This legacy has, over time, bred fear, leading to what Hive in Pakistan describe as:
“an exaggerated sense of success, where problems are hidden rather than addressed.”
NEAR shared a similar observation, noting that:
“The system has trained our civil society to perform certainty, to downplay complexity, because donors need simplicity.”
Across the models, funders and grantee partners emphasised the need to normalise failure and to leave room for learning and adaptation.
- The project mindset is still prevalent, but can be shifted. The legacy of traditional funding means grantee partners have often had to adapt to its structures and processes. It takes time and mutual ‘unlearning’ to shift this as funders embrace flexible funding. CIVICUS, for instance, shared that even though their Solidarity Fund is fully flexible, and:
“Even though it is explicit that [members] can apply for core funds, not a lot of organisations do. So many of us are in a project mindset – a mindshift change is needed.”
Years of navigating rigid, top-down funding relationships have left many grantee partners sceptical of flexible funding claims. The two worlds often collide for grantee partners as the traditional, dominant funding system comes up against flexible, trust-based funding. There is a need, therefore, to build in time for rebuilding trust in funders. When that trust is built, new types of relationships can flourish.
10 ADD International. (2025). Fairer Funding for Organisations of Persons with Disabilities. Available at: https://add.org.uk/fairer-funding/
11 Peace Direct (2023). Transforming Partnerships in International Coop-eration A practical resource for civil society, donors, INGOs and interme-diaries. [online] Peace Direct. Available at: https://www.peacedirect.org/content/uploads/2023/10/Peace-Direct-Transforming-Partnerships-Re-port-English.pdf [Accessed: 08 August 2025].
12 #SHIFTTHEPOWER Movement/Peace Direct. (2024) Too Southern To Be Funded: The Funding Bias Against the Global South. Available at: https://www.peacedirect.org/too-southern-to-be-funded/ [Accessed: 14 July 2025].