Domestic resource mobilisation (DRM) has been part of the development lexicon for years. What's changed is that it is no longer a nice-to-have line in a strategy document — it is now a formal condition attached to how a growing share of international funding is structured.
Bilateral health compacts signed over the past year explicitly require partner governments and, increasingly, their implementing partners to demonstrate rising co-financing year on year, with donor contributions stepping down on a fixed timeline regardless of whether that capacity has actually been built.
For NGOs and INGOs used to a grant-cycle rhythm — write the proposal, deliver the programme, renew the grant — this is a structurally different demand. It is no longer enough to deliver strong programming and report against a logframe. Funders now want to see a credible, evidenced pathway to reduced dependency: private-sector partnerships, domestic philanthropic engagement, government co-financing, and diversified revenue that doesn't disappear when a single grant cycle ends.
"We are seeing this shift directly in our own work. A current SGC engagement involves mapping the full private-sector and philanthropic funding landscape for an international NGO's Nigeria programme — high-net-worth individuals, local foundations, corporate CSR, and government financing mechanisms — specifically to build the kind of diversified, less donor-dependent funding base that this new environment demands."
Three things we'd tell any organisation starting this work:
- Start the mapping before you need it. Understanding your local funding landscape — who the real prospects are, what motivates them, what access actually looks like — takes months to do properly. Organisations that start this work only after a donor conversation forces the issue are always behind.
- Distinguish between funding sources that require different things from you. A corporate CSR partner, a family foundation, and a government co-financing mechanism each expect a different kind of relationship, different reporting, and a different pitch. Treating “non-traditional funding” as one undifferentiated bucket is the most common mistake we see.
- Build the systems alongside the strategy. A diversification strategy without the grant management, compliance, and reporting systems to support multiple simultaneous funding relationships just creates a different version of the same fragility. This is why we treat funding strategy and organisational systems as one connected practice, not two separate services.
The organisations that adapt well to this shift will not be the ones with the best individual programmes — they will be the ones that treated funding diversification as a core institutional capability years before a donor made it a condition of continued support.