By Madonna Vicky Ainembabazi, GivingTuesday Grant Writer
David McCullough reminds us that “history is a guide to navigation in perilous times.”
As I made my way to the Serena Kigali Hotel for the 9th East Africa Philanthropy Conference, I found myself reflecting not just on the journey that had led us to Kigali’s crisp urban air, but on the longer journey of civil society. How did we get here?
Civil society was once indistinguishable from community. It lived in cooperatives like Banyankore Kweterana or the Ghana Marketing Association, in women’s groups like the Women’s National Coalition, in student associations and more. It was relational, relatable, and right next door. But somewhere along the way, NGO-ization gentrified civil society’s original landscape. It transformed what used to be a local and people-powered civic space into a gated community of professionalized, donor-driven institutions that fenced off the everyday people who originally constituted civil society. An exclusive tier of actors crafted language and gained legitimacy to translate the needs of society to a donor audience which determined development agendas and institutional survival. All the while, communities—and often local civil society—were relegated to the status of beneficiaries to whom development and empowerment were dispensed. The foundation of this new order of civil society was more capital, less community.
Over time and more visibly in recent years, shifting geopolitical, economic and social forces have destabilized the capital that sustained a civil society model detached from community. The effects are no longer distant or abstract but can be felt at a personal level with individual livelihoods affected and institutional lifespans threatened. If we were in denial before, the proximity of this crisis has shattered the illusion that civil society could thrive without its original constituents; community. The reality of this unraveling shaped the agenda of recently concluded 9th East Africa Philanthropy Conference in Kigali, convened under the theme, Agile Philanthropy: Adapting to Economic, Social and Political Shifts.
The conference theme proposed that philanthropy’s flexibility and responsiveness could mitigate the consequences of the economic, social and political shifts. If we stop at agility, we risk confining philanthropy to the role of financial first aid. These reactive measures, while necessary, are insufficient. Without dealing with the structural conditions that produce and sustain civil society’s vulnerabilities, philanthropy may soon find itself with nothing left to stabilize.
There was general consensus on the need to channel capital directly to communities to support their agency and resilience. Local resource mobilization was also recognized as a crucial alternative in the wake of donor withdrawal. Communities are increasingly seen as key sites for investment and as places where direct funding can stimulate local solutions. Yet this presents a challenge. Positioning communities as investment targets risks attaching expectations of some form of return, whether financial, social, or otherwise. As a result, every dollar given may carry the pressure to generate more not just for the community but for the nonprofit ecosystem. This duality of intentions is a transactional engagement of communities that will wear them out and seed further distrust in nonprofits and philanthropic actors.
To move beyond transactional engagement, philanthropy must invest in infrastructure and capacities that spark positive cycles of engagement and generosity. An investment in infrastructure would catalyze existing cultures of giving and the capacities for people to lead with or without us. Practically speaking, it is high time for philanthropy to:
- Invest in infrastructure at the ecosystem level: The infrastructure civil society needs is neither obscure nor evenly distributed. Civil society needs the technologies (digital and analog) to support transactions of money and time, the training on how to use it and support understanding of what is working, when.
- Fund the broader enabling environment: giving platforms in local languages, networks that train and support non-profit leaders, fiscal hosts for small organisations, research and campaign tools designed for the local context.
- Build the capacity of your grantees: Support your grantees to raise money and mobilise support from their communities. While change is hard and many will say it isn’t possible, there is ample evidence that that is simply not true. Invest in training for fundraising, communications and community organizing and match local giving to incentivize new behaviors.
- Back the data and research to find out what works: Fund research to map the availability and use of fundraising infrastructure, to understand local cultures of giving and to track what works. Programmes like GivingTuesday’s Civic Intent offer examples of how to do this at scale and in partnership with local actors.
These investments are necessary and have a track record of delivering exponential results in terms of local giving and volunteering, especially when prioritizing collective action.
All over Africa, communities are already giving, organizing and sustaining one another through social ties. Investing in infrastructure and capacities means building on existing flows of generosity and connection. These include bonding ties among similar people like alumni associations, mutual aid groups, and migrant collectives that spur diaspora giving, bridging ties that connect different groups like community foundations and regional philanthropy networks, and linking ties that facilitate relationships between grassroots groups and institutions like national nonprofit associations and think tanks which allow communities access resources, influence policy and advocate collectively. Funders can additionally resource collectives, movements and platforms that enable communities to run community and place-based campaigns, online crowdfunding by incentivizing the efforts of local givers with matching funds to amplify what is already happening.
In 2023, remittances to Africa hit $90 billion, transcending official development assistance. Individual giving fuels 65% of African civil society organizations, and the number of high-net-worth Africans grew 4% annually (2019–2023), with many investing in social impact. CAF estimated that growing middle classes would give just over 0.5% of their spending, as much as $319 billion could be raised worldwide to support charities and strengthen organisations that speak up on behalf of society’s most vulnerable. This is a glimpse of what is possible and the resources available to counter the effects of the political, economic and social shifts in Africa. Far more will remain untapped unless philanthropy invests in infrastructure like networks, tools, and spaces that enable giving, volunteering, and collective action.
