Even as humanitarian budgets have contracted, many donors remain committed to supporting locally led humanitarian action. Intermediary organizations, which manage donor funding and redistribute it to other, often local, actors, are central to any shift toward a more locally led response.
The Share Trust’s research across six countries with significant humanitarian needs—Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, and Yemen—explores how funders can channel more funding through local intermediaries and how international intermediaries can support localization goals. Across these contexts, this body of research maps the landscape of local intermediaries, identifies international intermediaries devolving resources and decision-making power to local levels, assesses the comparative advantages of different categories of intermediaries, and examines barriers to local funding, decision making, and capacity strengthening.
This synthesis report distills key takeaways across the six countries and situates comparative advantages within wider goals and constraints that shape donor behavior. It then sets out a framework to help donors embed a localization lens into their selection of an intermediary partner, and offers concrete steps that donors, international intermediaries, and local intermediaries can take to address some of the persistent barriers to progress.
This study is part of The Share Trust’s series of work on intermediary models for locally led action.
