Quality funding: How to reach critical mass, June 2020

Quality funding is a fundamental enabler of many aspects of the Grand Bargain, including localisation, participation, working across the nexus, and enhanced efficiency and effectiveness (ODI, 2019; ODI, 2020). The Grand Bargain has stimulated substantial change in both the provision and our collective understanding of quality humanitarian funding. However, quality funding is spread unevenly across the humanitarian system, certain sticking points and risks, while well identified, have yet to be addressed and the volumes currently provided fall well short of what would be required to drive transformative change. Unlocking a significant increase in the supply of quality funding and ensuring effective distribution and management across the delivery chain of aid organisations therefore is critical to realise the gains envisaged by the architects of the Grand Bargain.

This policy brief identifies opportunities for a radical scale-up in quality funding, including proposing a new concept of quality funding; recommending a series of good practices that should be the focus of scale-up efforts; and identifying critical risks and sticking points which must be addressed to unlock further progress.