In December 2016, the Global Fund for Community Foundations used #ShiftThePower to promote its Global Summit on Community Philanthropy in Johannesburg, South Africa.
At the time, the grassroots grantmaker hoped that its two-day event would foster serious conversations about the question of power in international development.
What started as a simple hashtag nearly 10 years ago has grown into an international movement and prompted some charities to consider where their decisions are made and attempt to move away from top-down frameworks.
For those charities that are transforming their structures, shifting power goes beyond geographical changes. It requires a change in mindset, building genuine, more equitable partnerships and bringing stakeholders on board.
Leadership outside the UK
Nairobi-based Alice Oyaro joined Transform Trade, which partners with producers to fight for a fairer trade system, in September 2022 as director of international programmes, policy and partnerships.
In May 2024, following the departure of the charity’s long-serving chief executive, she was appointed interim CEO and took on the position permanently a year later.
Oyaro – the first person in the charity’s history to take the helm from outside the UK – says her appointment reflects an evolution in how Transform Trade understands effective leadership for a globally distributed team.
“Staff were already accustomed to working across geographies, and the transition has been a natural progression of Transform Trade’s development as an international organisation with globally rooted expertise,” she says.
Transform Trade has staff based in the UK and registered offices in Kenya, Tanzania, India and Bangladesh. Of the seven leadership team members, four are based in the global south.
Oyaro says decentralising and shifting power have had a tangible impact on her charity, its partners and the producers it serves, including the ability to respond quickly to situations on the ground.
She cites a recent conversation with a roadside florist, which highlighted the impact of the ongoing war on small producers.
That discussion fed into a leadership team conversation, helping Transform Trade amplify producer voices through partner engagement and media coverage.
“Having the flexibility to hire from across regions also gives us access to a rich, diverse pool of talent, which strengthens our organisation and the work we do,” Oyaro says.
“It brings perspectives shaped by the contexts where our partners operate, which is essential for making our work truly producer-centred.
“Whether it’s supporting farmers in Bangladesh or advocating on UK trade legislation, our focus is always on what producers need.”
Oyaro argues that by trusting and investing in producers’ plans, “we help build stronger, independent organisations”, an approach that also shapes her charity internally.
“Our work becomes more collaborative, reflective and informed by the people we serve.”
Unlocking agency
For Oyaro, shifting power means recognising that the people her charity seeks to support hold deep knowledge, solutions and networks.
“It calls on organisations like ours to be more intentional about when to step forward and step back and create the conditions for others to shape priorities, strategies and solutions,” she says.
“Shifting power is about unlocking agency. It recognises that communities aren’t passive beneficiaries but active economic actors with expertise, networks and the ability to drive their development trajectories.”
She says Transform Trade has moved from being a project implementer to playing an enabling role as a facilitator, advocate and grantmaker in recent years.
“We recognise that shifting power starts with behaviours and mindsets, being willing to listen, challenge our assumptions and remain open to learning from partners and communities.
“It also requires consistency between what we advocate externally and how we operate internally, including through our commitments on equity, inclusion and shared accountability.”
This has meant strengthening approaches such as participatory grantmaking, which allows the producers and workers Transform Trade works with to define their priorities.
It also ensures that insights from the charity’s partners in Africa, Asia and elsewhere shape its advocacy work in the UK and internationally.
“We see these processes themselves as part of the impact, because they contribute to stronger agency and more sustainable change,” Oyaro says.
‘It’s for us to tell our stories’
Set up by UK Christian dairy farmers in 1988, Ripple Effect’s country programmes have always been managed by staff in Africa.
But when the charity – which empowers families in rural Africa to grow more food, earn a living and break the cycle of poverty – started developing its current strategy in 2020, it decided to make a stronger shift.
It created a vision called “Africa forward together”, pledged to be an African-led INGO by 2030 and established a hub in Nairobi to provide leadership and coordination for its work in six countries on the continent.
Last month, Ripple Effect appointed Nairobi-based Joseph Wang’endo as its global director of income generation and engagement, meaning that half of its senior leadership and most of its comms teams are now based in Africa.
Wang’endo says he was recruited because of his familiarity with the challenges facing Africa, experience and expertise in resource mobilisation and ability to bring partners on board at a global level.
“We say fundraising is about telling our stories, and there are no better people to tell our stories than us, who are on the continent,” he says.
“It’s for us to tell our stories because we understand our challenges, issues and opportunities.”
Wang’endo says that because the charity works in Africa, it must build capacity “to transfer the leadership to continent-based experts”.
“Partners want to see as well that the leadership is based on the continent, especially where you’re trying to address the issues of the continent.
“There has to be a balance, but most of the roles have to be transferred to the continent as a show of confidence that what we started and are doing is sustainably carried out. If there is no transfer of roles, it may indicate that the sustainability model isn’t working well.”
UK-based CEO Paul Stuart, who joined Ripple Effect in 2013 and was promoted to his current role in 2016, has visited African farming communities with whom his organisation works.
Recalling a visit to Burundi, Stuart says the country’s director gets to see work there “day in, day out”, something he will never have.
“There’s no way I could have that knowledge,” he says.
“In this particular region, they’d feel someone from the capital wouldn’t understand. To have success in that region, people who deliver the work have to come from that region.
“It’s a case of us as an organisation trying to live it. Whichever way you slice and dice us, we try and be authentic all the way through on that.”
Credibility from lived experience
In 2021, global disability rights charity ADD International’s trustees developed a strategy based on sharing power and resources with the disability movement, activists and organisations with whom the charity works.
As part of that shift, which responded to a growing awareness of injustice in the INGO sector, they moved to a co-leadership model.
In May 2022, disability activist and leader Fredrick Ouko joined the charity to co-lead it with Mary Ann Clements.
Ouko, who is disabled and based in Kenya, says the decision stemmed from a feeling that the charity was no longer responding to the needs it was set up to address in 1985.
“We’d become more like a big-time contractor, doing everything, everywhere and establishing a couple of officers here and there,” he says.
“Some questions began to arise within the board: ‘Are we doing the things we should be doing for which we were established? Do we have enough representation of disabled people on our board?’”
Ouko says having lived experience of his charity’s cause gives him credibility and authenticity, with people more likely to engage with, listen to and trust him.
He thinks that lived, as opposed to merely professional, experience gives his organisation the expertise it needs to solve the issues it faces.
“It ensures that for any pound you get, people will follow and believe that it goes to the right problems. Of course, there are always many problems, but at least in this instance, you’ll have narrowed them down to the priorities.”
Alongside increasing the number of its trustees with a disability, ADD International also became a participatory grantmaker.
The charity piloted its new grantmaking approach in Tanzania, whereby young disability justice activists came together to agree on the process and formed a panel.
Ouko says: “Forming a panel is expensive and takes time, but we’re willing to go that length because it’s the only way we live that vision of being participatory and allowing people to feed into how and when our decisions are formed from the perspective of those who are going to benefit from this support.
“We know that it’s going to be costly in the beginning, but over time, the impact is going to overshadow that cost.”
Challenges of decentralisation
While many charities have seen benefits from decentralisation, they have also faced challenges and a need for patience as some new approaches take time to implement.
As a global organisation, Transform Trade has had to navigate the realities of working across cultures, time zones and professional norms.
Oyaro says building a sense of shared purpose across an international team requires “conscious investment in communication, trust and organisational culture”.
“Even small differences in professional norms or communication styles can create misunderstandings,” she says.
“We’re continually learning how to build ‘one Transform Trade’ while recognising that context shapes how people contribute and collaborate.”
On a personal level, one hurdle she has experienced is that shifting power often requires changing deeply embedded assumptions about where authority sits.
As interim leader, she recalls a meeting with a funder where there was some confusion about who the CEO was, with the expectation that a UK-based person would hold the role.
“While the point was quickly clarified, the moment illustrated how leadership of UK-headquartered organisations is still often implicitly associated with being UK-based, and often with particular profiles of leadership.
“Experiences like this aren’t unusual across the sector. Many leaders from the global south describe similar situations.
“These moments are rarely intentional, but they highlight how longstanding patterns continue to shape perceptions of expertise and authority.”
For Ouko, it can be difficult to be taken seriously, especially when people accuse his charity of copycatting other organisations’ decolonisation efforts.
“Then, they say the centre still holds power, instead of those decentralised posts, until they come to interface with you and see that you mean it,” he says.
“For us, there isn’t a specific place we call ‘headquarters’ now. It also takes time internally to leave that because it’s a progression.
“You’re changing what people were used to. Now, it’s more about discussing and power equilibrium. You want to ask people: ‘What’s the best way to go? What’s the best time to meet? When do you think we should have this?’
He points out that it also takes time for people to feel comfortable participating actively because they are still unsure as to whether they can challenge their leader.
“When things are decentralised, you have the benefit of having different perspectives.
“People are leading both from their lived experience and catchment areas and are bringing that to work.
“It also improves the decisions you want to make as an organisation, even though the believability may still take some time.”
Clear case for shifting power
Charities that have shifted power report that locally led approaches are not only more effective but also more sustainable.
As someone who has worked in the development sector for over two decades, Oyaro has seen a shift from doing things for communities to doing things with them.
“Experience consistently shows that when local actors shape priorities and solutions, the outcomes are more relevant, resilient and sustainable because they build on existing knowledge, relationships and assets,” she says.
She argues that the case for shifting the power has become more pressing in the current context of government aid cuts and constrained funding.
“If progress depends primarily on external resources and external direction, it becomes fragile.
“Strengthening local leadership, agency and resource mobilisation helps ensure that change efforts are more durable and less vulnerable to shifts in donor priorities.”
For Wang’endo, it is incumbent on Africa-based people to lead on resolving their issues.
He says that while resources tend to come from the west, it does not mean there are no resources available on the African continent to implement the work that is needed.
“Ripple Effect’s country directors are being challenged to come up with ways of raising resources locally and domestically that address the issues.
“For the longest time, when we were looking at fundraising and resource mobilisation, Africa was one big black mark.
“Resource mobilisation and fundraising happen on the continent, but differently. There was always a space for sharing sources amongst ourselves. Now, that’s becoming more structured with technology.”
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to shifting the power, Stuart advises that organisations think about where they are coming from and always put their mission front and foremost.
He says: “We’re always learning. Whenever you make a shift, you make mistakes on the way, but we’re trying to do the right thing.”
