How might we ensure that those most direct­ly affect­ed are in the dri­ver’s seat of INGO pol­i­cy and prac­tice and are not instru­men­talised in the inter­ests of per­pet­u­at­ing top-down mod­els of char­i­ty?

Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Grant­mak­ing (PGM) is a dynam­ic approach to grant-mak­ing that seeks to strength­en local civ­il soci­ety, pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion between part­ners in the Major­i­ty World and Minor­i­ty World, and pri­ori­tise com­mu­ni­ty inter­ests. For inter­na­tion­al NGOs and fun­ders, this involves ced­ing pow­er and con­trol over deci­sion-mak­ing to the con­stituents they aim to serve.

The RINGO inno­va­tion — South meets North in Pow­er Shift: A Frame­work for Effec­tive Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Grant­mak­ing — test­ed how to dis­rupt pow­er rela­tions between INGOs in the Minor­i­ty World and CSOs and com­mu­ni­ties in the Major­i­ty World so that PGM process­es between them can be trans­for­ma­tive.