#ShiftThePower was never about sharing the pie, it’s about baking a new pie

This blog also appears in Alliance magazine.

Eshban Kwesiga, GFCF

If you are a funder who sees their role as only moving money, or only cutting the pie into pieces for others, then this blog is not for you. If you are a person interested in organizing, regardless of being based in the Global North or South, then you are the one I am writing to. I read a blog by Mary Ann Clements questioning whether #ShiftThePower is still a meaningful call to action. My immediate response was “we still need a serious power analysis.” Mary Ann is right that organizations must be honest about the positional power they still hold. Yet her proposed answer, that sharing power should come before shifting it, deserves interrogation. Sequencing it that way can allow funders to keep hold of power while sounding humble about doing so. I want to offer a different answer, one that does not sanitize what this movement was always about.

First, let’s revisit: what is #ShiftThePower? The hashtag first appeared in 2016 at the Global Summit on Community Philanthropy hosted by the GFCF. It grew out of a movement of organizations mobilizing local resources, because they recognized money was the tool foreign donors had used to hold “power over” communities and to dismiss local ways of doing. Mary Ann asks, “shifting power from who to whom?” The struggle to raise local resources in the (political not geographical) Global South was and is still a long term strategy to shift power away from international development donors and back to communities.

As #ShiftThePower gained momentum, alongside other movements such as #MeToo, #CharitySoWhite and #BlackLivesMatter, the hashtag began to mean different things to different people. #ShiftThePower is like a fabric with many threads, but for this blog, I will pull on the thread that shows how money has been used as a tool of power over communities.

If we accept the premise that donor money is a tool for “power over”, then communities in the political Global South must continue the protracted struggle to mobilize local resources. This allows us to come to the table with our own money, and with power to negotiate as true partners. This work is not about replacing international money with local money, but rather, expanding the pool of resources available to do development work. No one funder has pockets deep enough to solve the world’s problems with foreign money alone. Even the Gates Foundation had to ask other billionaires to chip in.

Why is it necessary to mobilize local resources? Raising money is generally difficult regardless of whether one is in the North or South, but in the Global South international funding is even more difficult. Yet it has captured our imagination as the only legitimate source of funding. So, when international donors say “jump”, we only ask “how high?” The failure to secure international funding leaves many feeling personally inadequate, when in truth it’s the failure of a competitive system that concentrates power and resources in a few organizations. We are like hungry kids exhausted from begging donors for a larger slice of the pie, so mobilizing local money is not about dividing the pie; it is about expanding it by adding local resources. Or better yet, baking a new pie. In this way, we seek to flatten the power dynamic caused by a dogmatic belief that international aid money is the only game in town.

“For anyone wondering what to do: invest in the mobilization and growth of local resources so we all don’t have to return to the same small groups of international donors like a powerless Oliver Twist with a bowl.”

When I read the claim that #ShiftThePower has led to “paralysis and indecision”, I was struck because the answer has always been simple. For anyone wondering what to do: invest in the mobilization and growth of local resources so we all don’t have to return to the same small groups of international donors like a powerless Oliver Twist with a bowl.

Previous attempts to share power, such as localization, sought to increase the number of fish available to feed us. However, it did not go as far as supporting local organizations to fish in their own waters. “Sharing power” may sound inviting but that kind of polite framing has always been politely ignored by those who hold the power, and has gone into one ear, and out the other. It has left the political Global South voices exhausted from appealing to the donors’ mercy. If #ShiftThePower now sounds hollow to some, perhaps it’s because this sector has a big appetite for quick fixes and the next buzzword, forever craving its next “fix” as if there is no unfinished work.

Mary Ann is right when she says that political education must never shy away from nuance and complexity. In the spirit of nuance, #ShiftThePower was never about transferring power from elite entities in London or New York to other local elites in Nairobi or Johannesburg. It is about transferring power back to communities, growing local money and becoming active co-funders of their own struggles and dreams. And yes, Northern allies have a role to play, especially in using international money to help raise local money. It takes money to make money.

“Meanwhile, communities blending local resources are already paving a different path that does not centre international funders. People are ‘getting on with it’, building and experimenting with and without ‘donor permission.'”

Meanwhile, communities blending local resources are already paving a different path that does not centre international funders. People are “getting on with it”, building and experimenting with and without “donor permission.” A new system is quietly emerging like a backyard garden with many flowers. Some of those emergent experiments feel risky. Some happen beyond the gaze of international development actors, but they have always been here, and they are expanding our imagination. They are showing us what is Possible Now.

This movement might seem abstract to some, but not to those of us who have seen people around the world mobilize local resources for development work. Frantz Fanon told us that “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, and either fulfill it or betray it.” I hope this generation of development actors can see it as part of their mission to organize towards mobilizing local money. A cocktail of community philanthropy – local companies that fund development issues – trade union contributions – international philanthropy (because there is a role for it to play) – and digital crowdfunding – and in-kind community donations – and mutual aid – and a wide spectrum of other forms of local resources, each rooted in their own context, have quietly democratized development finance. This is already a moving train. Those who ignore it will someday wake up to find they have become relics that refused to imagine a world where power and money did not come from a few organizations.

By: Eshban Kwesiga, GFCF Knowledge Weaving and Influencing Manager