Pooled funding – where several donors and foundations contribute funds to a central pot – can reduce the burden on small, local organisations who might otherwise have to use vital resources filling in multiple grant applications and writing reports for numerous different donors. In this post, Synchronicity Earth CEO Catherine Bryan explains how a pooled funding approach is helping one of our partners working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to protect species diversity and support local communities.
Mbou Mon Tour (MMT) is a community organisation working to protect the forest-savanna habitat of bonobos and improve livelihoods and food security in Mai Ndombe Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It has a small permanent staff and relies heavily on committed volunteers from the villages where it works. The work of organisations such as MMT is vital in the Congo Basin, both to conserve its stunning biodiversity, but also to protect and improve the livelihoods of local communities. Nevertheless, as a small, local organisation MMT does not have the resources or profile to attract and coordinate international funders, so the question is:
How can such a small – but vital – organisation attract the funding it needs and stay focused on its work without the burden of writing countless applications and reports for multiple donors?
This is where a pooled funding approach comes in.
How pooled funding works
All our programmes take a ‘pooled’ funding approach. Each donation to a programme is managed alongside other donations, allowing funding to be allocated more strategically to our partner grantees. Our Congo Basin programme specifically sets out to build the capacity and impact of local organisations, so the last thing we want to do is place a heavy administrative burden on them. Our experience has shown that a pooled funding approach is a ‘win-win’ for both grantee and donor. For the grantee, it means less time spent fundraising and completing paperwork; and done well it also means more opportunity to collaborate and learn from other grantees. For the donor, it offers an opportunity to learn about and fund grantees in areas previously inaccessible to them: not all donors or indeed foundations have the capacity to research a region themselves, identify good partners or conduct due diligence, let alone build long-term relationships with grantees.
