One of “the reduce management costs” workstream commitments of the Grand Bargain is to decrease the costs of delivering assistance with the use of technology and innovation (commitment 4.1). Reducing management costs will increase the portion of funding used for the direct benefit of affected people. There are various ways to do so, including with mobile technology for needs assessments/post distribution monitoring; digital platforms/mobile devices for financial transactions; communication with affected population via call centers/SMS; sustainable energy and biometrics.

Building on the extensive work of ActionAid and others, this research evidences, and advocates for, an approach to localisation which prioritises the leadership of local women and women-led organisations who have been overlooked, undervalued and under resourced in humanitarian response to date.

The Charter for Change held its annual meeting in Copenhagen on 10-11 December 2019 that gathered 31 local/national NGOs from crisis-affected contexts and 25 international NGOs. The meeting produced a communiqué calling on the Grand Bargain Facilitation Group to put localisation as one of the key themes on the agenda for the GB annual meeting in June 2020. The Charter for Change sets out in the communiqué key ideas for moving the GB localisation agenda forward, including: ● A focus on localisation and participation at the 2020 Grand Bargain annual meeting

These are a few examples of implementation of the Grand Bargain commitments by the Signatories at country level in 2018. The examples have been extracted from the Grand Bargain Annual Independent Report 2019 and are not exhaustive. They have been reported by the Signatories as their contributions to the Grand Bargain efforts.

On 23-25 October 2019, the Grand Bargain (GB) localization workstream organized a “global meeting” in Brussels.

On behalf of the Gender and Cash sub-working group of Cash Workstream of the Grand Bargain, we are pleased to kick of 2020 with a series of webinars on cash and voucher assistance and gender-based-violence. The webinars will focus on the most recent experiences in practice, research and application of guidance on CVA and GBV. We have a great line up of webinars from UNFPA, CARE and the Women’s Refugee Commission will be the first.   The webinars will be held on Thursdays at 8:00 EST/ 14:00 CET/ 15:00 EAT starting from the 16th January 2020 for at least five weeks. 

As committed at the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting on 27 June 2019, WFP is pleased to share their management insights on quality funding. While their reflections and benchmarks are agency specific, they indicate a pathway that other agencies could consider recognising that the current impasse between donor and agency Grand Bargain Signatories needs a more nuanced understanding of the realities, barriers and opportunities to improve the funding of the humanitarian system.

Reducing the incidences, severity and impacts of crises demands a concerted, multi-faceted approach.

The study, conceived as a multi-stakeholder contribution to the Grand Bargain workstream on Enhanced Quality Funding (workstream 7&8 - Increase collaborative humanitarian multi-year planning and funding and reduce the earmarking of donor contribution), provides significant evidence to support the claim that NGOs can do more with predictable and flexible funding and identifies a number of straight-forward recommendations for NGOs, UN agencies and donor partners to implement.

UNHCR hosted and organized the webinar ‘What is the UN Business Innovations Group (BIG) in the Grand Bargain to reduce management cost?’ on November 26th, 2019. Please see the recording here, and the summary note and the presentation below. 

UN Women and the Grand Bargain Friends of Gender Group are pleased to invite you to a global consultation on ‘Promoting a gender transformative humanitarian action agenda through the Grand Bargain commitments’. The one-day workshop will take place in Geneva, Switzerland on 13th of December, 2019. Please find below the concept note for the event. Further logistical details and background reading will be provided over the coming two weeks.

Please see below the roadmap drafted by the Eminent Person's office, the Grand Bargain Facilitation Group and the Grand Bargain Secretariat to visualize the identified collective and individual action points  from the Annual Meeting in June 2019 in Geneva (collective action points are available in the Outcome document). This roadmap attemps to compile and visualize existing Annual Meeting 2019 action points, the Grand Bargain commitments, and the indicators agreed in 2018.

Join an online presentation by the UN Business Innovations Group (BIG) inter-agency team, on business operations strategy, common back offices, and premises, and the global shared service centre. Speaker Dominic Grace, BIG Team Leader Facilitator Hiroko Araki, Dialing information We will be using WebEx Meeting Center. Please follow the instructions to join. Meeting number (access code): 706 653 582 Meeting password: BIG@26Nov19

As we start our tenure as the Facilitation Group 2019-2020, we wanted to share with you some of our upcoming plans and priorities for our collective efforts for a more efficient and effective humanitarian system. First of all, we would like to inform you that the deadline for the submission of self-reports will be 14 February 2020. We will communicate the details as soon as they are available.

Please find below the priority action plan for workstream 7 & 8 (Increase collaborative humanitarian multi-year planning and funding and reduce the earmarking of donor contributions), finalized in November 2019. For more information, don't hesitate to reach out to the Co-convenors (Canada, Sweden, OCHA, UNICEF, ICRC, NRC).

Building on the recommendations made at the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting in June 2019, the co-conveners of the Enhanced Quality Funding workstream, Canada, UNICEF, Sweden, ICRC, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and UN OCHA, organised a one-day workshop in Geneva to agree on practical strategies and solutions in order to accelerate progress against the Grand Bargain multi-year and flexible funding commitments.

Please find below International Rescue Committee (IRC)'s assessment of multi-year humanitarian financing from the main bilateral and multilateral donors.

How are technology and innovation being used for improved aid for people in need as part of the Grand Bargai? Find some examples in the 1-pager below. 

Following the conclusion of the pilot phase of the harmonized reporting template, the 8+3 template has been finalized. The feedback from pilot participants was reviewed and some of the elements of the template were adjusted slightly to improve the usability of the template and the clarity of language.

This is the final summary note from the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting 2019, including identified actions that Signatories will take to move forward with their Grand Bargain commitments.