Partnering with local organisations can be a cost-effective way of enhancing your impact abroad, leveraging existing knowledge of local culture, regulation, and conditions. This article looks at how trustees can ensure their partnership arrangements are effective while mitigating the risks involved.

International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) deliver critical services and support, in areas experiencing deprivation, conflict, or other humanitarian crises, across the globe.

To deliver these services, INGOs may adopt a direct delivery model, work with local partners, or use a blend of these two approaches. For all approaches, it is imperative that trustees and UK operations are able to effectively manage overseas activities and demonstrate this oversight to their stakeholders.

This work demands a certain level of flexibility, as regions experiencing hardship are subject to changing economic and geopolitical conditions. Even within a given region, precisely what forms of aid or initiatives are most needed will never be static, so charities that are not responsive to these changing needs risk misallocating vital and increasingly constrained funding.

The principal benefit of working with local actors, such as Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), is that they can enable this flexibility. Operating on the ground in affected areas, local actors will almost always be more sensitive to developing needs and challenges, and partnering with a local CSO is generally faster and more cost effective than duplicating their set-up work.

There are, however, inherent risks which balance these opportunities, including:

• Misuse of funds by local partners

• Misalignment of priorities

• Failure to deliver on expected outcomes

• Failure to comply with laws or regulations

• Safeguarding incidents

These risks, with a particular emphasis on safeguarding incidents, pose harm to beneficiaries and reputational damage to your organisation, limiting the ability to make a positive impact in the region in the future.

Before selecting your local partner

The first step in managing these risks is undertaking a proportionate level of due diligence to fully understand who you will be partnering with. Due diligence should be multi-faceted, considering financial and operational aspects – evaluating their capacity, strengths and gaps – as well as specific policies and practices relating to key risk areas such as safeguarding.

The FCDO has issued guidance on its own due diligence assessment procedures for safeguarding, required for any organisations working with them. These are extensive but could be useful for assessing your own internal policies and those of your partner organisations.

Due diligence procedures should be standardised and proportional to the risks involved in each relationship, with two-way communication established after onboarding to allow for both monitoring and feedback. Ultimately, a partnership arrangement should be one of mutual trust and shared responsibilities – as local actors are proving to you that they can be a worthy partner, you will be proving the same to them.

Ongoing monitoring and feedback

Beyond due diligence, your organisation should ensure it has effective policies in place to manage the risks involved in partnerships and ensure adequate monitoring. This policy should:

• Ensure the local partners are aware of and able to demonstrate compliance with your own codes of conduct

• Enable continual oversight of each partners activities, detailing what steps will be taken to ensure reporting by partners has substance – for example if there should be any monitoring visits

• Establish procedures for whistleblowing or other feedback

Where working with partners forms a key part of your delivery method, this policy should be complemented by your data protection, safeguarding, anti-bribery and other such policies.

Where there are set backs or incidents, your organisation should endeavour to undertake a thorough analysis to identify the underlying reason of why it occurred or was able to occur. Cutting ties with the offending parties would not generally give assurance that such incidents will not be repeated.

An alternative approach: working via branches

To an extent, working through local offices or branches of your own organisation can help mitigate the risks above. This should not be regarded as a panacea, however, the fact that your local activities are undertaken by a branch does not mitigate the above challenges completely.

Because it is expected that you will be more capable of directing the activities of a branch, you would hold greater responsibility for any failings, with subsequent reputational or legal ramifications. There have been past instances of charities being barred from operating in particular regions entirely, following scandals arising from their local offices.

In this context, working via an overseas branch should be seen more as a tool that can enhance existing procedures than as insulation from the risks of working abroad. It is not unusual to use a mixture of both types of arrangement, depending on your capacity and the unique circumstances facing each area you wish to work in.

Get in touch

If you are concerned about the risks of operating overseas our specialist Charity and Not-for-Profit team is here to help. We offer professional advice tailored to your needs, including audit and assurance services and bespoke training. Please complete the form below and we will be in touch to discuss how we can support you.