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2022-08-01
H&S Davidson Trust;
The International Development sector has already entered a period of major change. Who needs to change most? Major funders in the Global North, International organizations, local and national governments, INGO's – many of whom continue to have colonial attitudes to International Development.Encouragingly, this Survey suggests, on an illustrative sample, that there is strong majority support among funders for significant transfer of decision making from the Global North to local organizations in the Global South. For example, 83% of those interviewed in the Global North, a majority of them funders, agreed with the statement "Too many funders develop strategies & campaigns in offices in Global North, rather than starting on the front line, by understanding local communities in the Global South."The purpose of this Survey, to be enhanced by an organized program to involve the ideas and experiences of those involved in the International Development sector, was twofold: to identify how to raise the impact of International Development, and, in the process, to help H & S Davidson Trust (HSDT) develop a new 10 year strategy.
2022-09-15
Luleå University of Technology;
Small firms are regarded as the backbone of the Swedish economy, driving the creation of jobs, shaping economic growth, and fostering innovation. However, small firms are challenged by rapidly changing markets and competitive conditions where new technologies and digital business models are disrupting the established order. These firms must, therefore, undergo a fundamental transformation and become more efficient, responsive, and agile in order to remain competitive. Digital transformation poses unique challenges to small firms (over and above larger enterprises), due to the liability of smallness (e.g., size and access to resources) and the liability of newness (e.g., legitimacy in the value chain, bargaining power). This behooves small firms to draw on the support of a wide range of external relationships to exploit the benefits of the new digital economy. However, it has been reported that most small firms fail to gain support from the other actors in their ecosystems. Thus, to ensure successful digital transformation in small firms, there is a need to better understand the various influencing roles in the relationships that comprise the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our findings focus on four main types of entrepreneurial ecosystem actors who have the greatest influence on the digital transformation of small firms in Sweden. Funding organizations, large firms, intermediaries, and universities are highlighted as the key actors providing small firms with the necessary resources, knowledge, technological capabilities, legitimacy, and business contacts. Key relation-specific challenges are identified, pointing to the needs and expectations of small firms to gain support from each of these actors. To conclude, recommendations are provided on how policy and industry decision-makers can act to mitigate such challenges. As a result, our contribution seeks to support and accelerate small Swedish firms in their endeavors to undertake digital transformation that is both sustainable and competitive.
2023-02-06
Rockefeller Archive Center;
Inspired by a Brazilian critique of overpopulation concerns emanating from the United States during the early 1950s, this project examines debates about the ethics of population control among staff of the Rockefeller Foundation and Population Council, from the late 1940s through the mid-1970s. The historical episodes highlighted include John D. Rockefeller, 3rd's establishment of the Population Council in 1952; the council's formation of an "ad hoc committee on policy" in the mid-1950s; reaction among population control advocates to the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, after JDR 3rd and Population Council staff had worked to cultivate alliances with Catholic clergy, particularly Jesuits; and discussions surrounding the United Nations population conference and the simultaneous "population tribune" for representatives of non-governmental organizations, both held in Bucharest in 1974. There is brief discussion of the expansion of family planning initiatives within Latin America—often sponsored by the Population Council, the UN, and the Ford Foundation—during these decades. Among the figures discussed most frequently are John D. Rockefeller, 3rd, demographer Frank Notestein, and Population Council President Bernard Berelson. By the mid-1970s, there was a pronounced ideological split regarding population control between Population Council staff and the Vatican, as well as between advocates of population control measures in the industrialized world and representatives of developing nations who reframed concerns about poverty and resource scarcity to highlight other causes of global inequality. Feminist perspectives are largely absent or ignored early in the period analyzed but become much more evident by the 1970s.
2022-11-01
Candid;
Every year, Candid and Human Rights Funders Network's (HRFN's) Advancing Human Rights research reveals insights from the latest, most comprehensive data available for global human rights philanthropy. The goal of this study is to provide long-term evidence to understand gaps, changes, and new possibilities in resourcing human rights. In this year's analysis, the authors track the $4.1 billion that foundations granted in 2019 in support of human rights. This represents a 10% increase from the previous year and points to several hopeful and surprising trends.
2022-11-01
Candid;
Chaque année, la recherche Promotion des droits humains de Candid and Human Rights Funders Network (HRFN) révèle des informations tirées des données les plus récentes et les plus complètes disponibles pour la philanthropie en matière de droits humains dans le monde. Notre objectif est de fournir des preuves à long terme permettant de comprendre les lacunes, les changements et les nouvelles possibilités en matière de financement du secteur des droits humains.
2023-03-16
Rockefeller Archive Center;
The following research is part of my ongoing dissertation project, which examines the planning, design, and construction of university campuses vis-à-vis the intensification of mining and oil extraction in South America between 1945 and 1975. In this report, I offer a brief overview of the technical and financial assistance that the Ford Foundation (FF), the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), and the UN Special Fund (UNSF) gave to one of my case studies, the Universidad de Concepción (UdeC), located in mineral-rich Chile. Multiple holdings at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) reveal that these organizations provided significant aid to the UdeC between 1956 and 1968—a critical period during which the technical and financial assistance programs of the US became entangled with a national developmentalist agenda that tied scientific and engineering education to economic development. The RAC holdings I explore are extremely useful in understanding the geopolitical and economic context that shaped these aid programs, the UdeC's modernization efforts, and the agendas of the multiple actors involved in this process. The textual and visual documents I analyze also underscore the critical role that modern architecture played in all of this as an enabler of the academic reform and the economic transformation of the region, and as a persuasive signifier of "development."
2021-10-19
West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI);
This report presents the findings from a qualitative empirical research undertaken by the West Africa Civil Society Institute and Global Fund for Community Philanthropy aimed at understanding localisation agenda and shift the power as mechanisms to strengthen power and resource flow to local and local civil society organisations (CSOs) working in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. The report also seeks to develop a better understanding of how African CSOs including philanthropic organisations understand localisation agenda and shift the power, and to support growing efforts to build a future of increased localised humanitarian action and a balanced power where there is equal opportunities and well-balanced resource between donors and CSOs in the humanitarian aid system. The report further examines the role of African philanthropic organisations and the added value and challenges of pooled or intermediary funding mechanisms in promoting the localisation agenda and shift the power.This report draws on data from semi-structured interviews conducted with sixteen participants who are experts and professionals working within the development and humanitarian aid sectors. The participants were drawn from CSOs including philanthropic organisations at three geographical levels: Global, Africa and West Africa.
2021-09-17
Center for International Policy;
The current U.S. national security paradigm robs us of economic resources, corrupts our political system,endangers our lives, and offends our most fundamental moral values.It perpetuates a system that discriminates against, disempowers, disrespects, dehumanizes, and brutalizes Black and brown people and other communities of color. It is an extension of systemic white supremacy at home that relies upon the threat and use of force abroad.Continuing the U.S. quest for global military domination harms not only the people of other countries and the earth we share, but the vast majority of Americans. The Racism-Militarism Paradigm, moreover, harms all of our social, political, and economic institutions, including our democratic institutions, thus weakening our entire society.To peacefully and democratically dismantle this paradigm, we must offer a compelling alternative vision of the U.S. role in the world.
2021-07-20
Candid;
In the wake of recent events – a pandemic, worldwide protests, new elections – 2018 may feel like a world away. As we look at the 2018 data, it's important to understand that many of the human rights issues we currently face grew out of this context. Even responses to COVID-19 cannot be divorced from the foundational issues that shape how governments, social movements, and funders address – or compound – human rights abuses. Writing in a year of so much global unrest, we see this report as a baseline and an offering, a trajectory of the trends that helps identify places where philanthropy can better meet the needs of human rights movements around the world.
2020-01-30
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation;
While the world has made huge economic gains over the past 50 years, this progress has been highly uneven. This is particularly acute in the agriculture sector, with many of the 500 million smallholder farmers around the world living on meager incomes and facing high levels of economic insecurity.Despite some recent innovations and advances in including smallholders as market players, there have been few cases where truly widespread, market-level, transformative change towards inclusion has been achieved.In this report, we explore the role of different kinds of capital in bending the arc of agricultural market development towards inclusive growth. We pay particular attention to how impact-focused players deploying capital that is flexible in terms of risk-return expectations can best deploy it in order to catalyze large-scale transformations towards inclusion.
2020-10-20
Funder and Evaluator Affinity Network;
Working together, foundations and evaluators can contribute to global transformation necessary to address the world's most pressing problems.Funders and evaluators based primarily in the US and Canada have been collaborating on shared priorities through the Funder and Evaluator Affinity Network (FEAN) since 2017. The goal of FEAN is to change the relationship between funders and evaluators from a transactional one to a partnership, shifting the field of philanthropic evaluation to become fairer, more equitable, and more effective. In 2019, the conversation expanded to consider issues of interest to FEAN members working in the international arena.The vision inspiring this paper is one in which North American foundations and evaluators can make significant contributions to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as allies with people across the globe whose lives are most closely impacted by pressing challenges including climate change, migration, pandemics, growing authoritarianism, disparities and instabilities, and the depletion of critical resources.The recommendations outlined in this paper are a starting point, an invitation to both reflection and action. We explore how foundations and evaluators can nurture and grow a robust, inclusive ecosystem of what we are calling evaluation for global transformation (EGT). Such an ecosystem is necessary to co-create the paths by which funders and evaluators can catalyze innovative thinking and undertake coordinated action with others in support of global transformation.The working paper takes a critical look at the current state of EGT and what it will take to position evaluation to advance effective, equitable and sustainable global transformation efforts. It begins with defining global transformation and its importance, describing the ways in which global development is evolving, and the growing role that philanthropy is playing within this arena.Next, it lays out an analysis of the current state of evaluation and resulting recommendations, building from conversations that took place among members of the Funder and Evaluator Affinity Network during 2019.
2020-03-01
China Africa Research Initiative, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University;
The African continent's threat spectrum compasses all the risks, from criminal to political violence,that public and private Chinese companies are going toexperience throughout the Belt & Road Initiative. From Libya to South Sudan, China has witnessed how severely limitingthe sole reliance on economic development to promotesecurity and sustainable development can be. As such,security is an increasingly important priority, especially for Chinese companies operating in politically volatile areas. Compared to their American or Russian peers, Chinese private security companies (PSCs) are latecomers to the African security sector and their services are unrelated to the provision of military services or the delivery of military equipment. At present, China's PSCs are still evolving from local security enterprises operating in low risk environments in Mainland China into international companies able to maneuver abroad in high-risk areas. Africa is the litmus test for Chinese PSCs, with tasks including assets protection from riots, theft, or terrorism to maritime anti-piracy missions.Therefore, local best practices and lessons that Beijing cane xtract from Cape Town to Cairo are not only of paramount importance for the Chinese African cooperation mechanism but also for a broader collaboration with local and international stakeholders.
