Why Global Minority Partners Must Fund the Engine, Not Just the Mission
In a conference room in Juba, a national staff member presents a set of thoughtful, practical recommendations for a community development project. The ideas are rooted in lived experience and deep understanding of the local context. The response in the room is polite but quiet. People nod. Notes are taken. Nothing changes.
Three months later, a Western consultant presents the exact same ideas, word for word. This time, the room fills with excitement. The recommendations are praised as “strategic” and “innovative.” Decisions are made immediately.
This story, shared in the foreword of my book The Engine Behind the Mission, is not an isolated incident. It reflects a deeper and more uncomfortable truth at the heart of international development, local knowledge is often undervalued, while external expertise is rewarded, simply because of where it comes from.
For foundations, international NGOs (INGOs), and development agencies based in the Global Minority, this is not just a story about unfairness. It is a call to rethink what solidarity truly means.
The Trap of Borrowed Blueprints
For decades, many well-meaning Global Minority partners have unintentionally pushed organisations in the Global Majority across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific to look and operate the same way.
We ask our partners to adopt our financial systems, our human resource policies, our governance structures, and our planning tools. We expect logical frameworks, rigid indicators, and quarterly reports designed far away from the realities on the ground. These systems are often presented as “global best practice.”
But best practice for who?
In development language, this pressure has a name, organisational isomorphism. In simple terms, it means forcing organisations to copy one dominant model, even when that model does not fit their environment.
These are what I call “borrowed blueprints.” They are designed for control, comparison, and replication not for deep change. Imagine forcing a desert flower to grow in a rainforest using a foreign map. It might survive for a while, but it will never truly thrive.
When we treat local organisations like franchises that must follow a global template, we weaken the very systems we claim to support. Real impact does not come from copying structures. It comes from rootedness from organisations growing in their own cultural, historical, and social soil.
The Case for Organisational Sovereignty
“Capacity building” has become one of the most common phrases in development. Yet too often, it is used to justify imposing Western management models on organisations in the Global Majority.
We say we are “strengthening capacity,” but what we often mean is, be more like us.
This is why I argue for a different idea, Organisational Sovereignty.
Organisational Sovereignty is the right of an organisation to decide for itself how it is structured, how it governs, how it learns, and how it measures success, without being forced into external models that do not reflect its reality.
When donors insist on rigid hierarchies, imported job titles, or donor-designed indicators, they take away this sovereignty. They turn partners into implementers rather than leaders. They reduce creativity, adaptability, and ownership.
True partnership is not about transferring systems. It is about creating space, space for organisations to design from their own values, traditions, and ways of working.
A New Toolkit for Global Minority Allies
If Global Minority partners are serious about moving from compliance to solidarity, we must be willing to fund and accept different ways of organising and measuring success.
In The Engine Behind the Mission, I introduce several tools inspired by Global Majority realities and wisdom traditions:
- The Four Directions Dashboard (FDD): This is a values-based alternative to the Balanced Scorecard. It measures success not only through finances, but also through community trust, learning, relationships, and long-term resilience.
- The Harmony Wheel (HW): An evolution of the classic 7S Framework, this tool places emphasis on leadership energy, shared purpose, and the “soul of the collective,” rather than only efficiency and control.
- The Organisational Drumbeat (OD): Instead of rigid bureaucracy, this framework focuses on rhythm, alignment, and flow, recognising that organisations, like communities, function best when their internal pace makes sense to their context.
These tools challenge us, as donors and allies, to listen carefully when partners say their structures, rituals, or systems do not look like ours. Different does not mean weak. Often, it means more alive.
Most importantly, they remind us to fund the engine room, finance, HR, leadership development, and internal learning, not as “overhead,” but as the critical systems that make impact possible.
The Call to Humility
The development landscape is changing. Funding is more uncertain. Communities in the Global Majority are demanding real power, not symbolic inclusion. Old models of control are no longer working.
In this moment, Global Minority actors face a choice.
We can continue to protect our control, our templates, and our comfort. Or we can choose humility, recognising that resilience, sustainability, and transformation cannot be engineered from a distance.
The Engine Behind the Mission is ultimately a reminder that lasting change does not come from perfect reports or imported systems. It grows from purpose, values, and ownership.
Perhaps the most powerful act of solidarity is not to lead, design, or prescribe, but to step back, listen deeply, and support partners as they build the engines that will drive their own futures.
A Reflection for Global Minority Leaders
Are you funding a partner’s mission while quietly starving their engine?
It may be time to move beyond narrow monitoring and evaluation, and toward relational accountability.
It may be time to stop being the architect and start being the soil.
The Engine Behind the Mission: Re-imagining Non-Profit Operating Models in the Global Majority by Charles Kojo Vandyck is available globally on Amazon in both Kindle (eBook) and Paperback formats.
The book is also available in Ghana, with local access options for readers, practitioners, and institutions.
Get in Touch with the Author
Readers, organisations, and partners interested in conversations, bulk orders, learning sessions, or speaking engagements can contact the author directly:
WhatsApp / Call: +233 264 128 605
