Country-Based Pooled Funds: How Local NGOs Apply

When It Matters

Country-based pooled funds collect softly earmarked money from donors and allocate it against priorities that the humanitarian community sets jointly, through a field-driven process.

Why should a local or national NGO care? Some donors are reluctant to fund local actors directly, citing how much risk they are willing to carry, and international organizations end up receiving the money. Pooled funds are one route around that. In 2024, local and national organizations received $329 million straight from the funds, which was 35 percent of everything allocated. Once sub-grants are counted, the total rises to $425 million, or 46 percent.

Access is uneven, though. Gains in the local share have rested mainly on a few funds, and in most years just over half of all funds fell short of the 25 percent threshold set by the 2016 localization target. What you can expect depends heavily on your country.

How It Works

Before you can submit a proposal, you go through four vetting steps, then an allocation. The details of steps 1, 2 and 4 follow one fund's guidance note, so check what your own fund asks for. In order:

Preliminary screening. In that guidance, a mandatory questionnaire checks basic minimum standards: humanitarian experience, adherence to humanitarian principles, a code of conduct, and policies on fraud, conflict of interest and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, plus licensed accounting software. You can fill it in as a self-check even when the fund's eligibility window is closed.
Registration. Register in the partner registration portal and in the coordination office's grants management system. In that guidance, registration asks for your governance or registration document (or a reference letter), organizational chart, annual report, audit report and ethics policy or code of conduct, so have them ready.
Due diligence review. The fund carries out a due diligence review of your organization.
Capacity assessment. In that guidance, the fund team reads your documents, then checks practice through office and project site visits, interviews with staff, donors, partners and cluster leads (sector coordinators), or focus groups. It scores four areas: governance and institutional capacity; program and partnership capacity; operational and financial capacity; and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse.

Eligible partners are then given a high, medium or low risk level, and that level sets the conditions and oversight on any grant.

The humanitarian coordinator, advised by the fund's advisory board, decides whether an allocation uses the standard or the reserve modality (both are explained below). Allocations advance priorities in the humanitarian response plan; they are not meant to fill funding gaps. You write a proposal that addresses the allocation's intent and submit it through the grants management system. A review committee, which includes local and national actors, assesses it.

For a standard allocation, the indicative timeline is 35 to 45 working days to grant signature, then up to 10 working days to first disbursement. The guidance does not say here when the count starts, so ask your coordination office.

Key Components

Two allocation modalities. Standard allocations are larger, for more comprehensive projects open to all eligible partners, with a maximum of 24 months. Reserve allocations are smaller and quicker, can go to pre-selected, well-established partners, and run at most 12 months. These are maximums, not entitlements.
Proxy for one assessment area. A harmonized cash transfer micro-assessment by an agency can stand in for the operational and financial capacity section. You may also ask to be assessed directly.
Exceptions. For life-saving work no one else can do, the coordinator may recommend skipping a prior full assessment, for example a due diligence review before funding and a full assessment later.
Oversight. It depends on three things: your risk level, the project budget and the project duration.
New high-risk partners. If you are rated high risk and receiving funds for the first time, you can apply for one project of at most 12 months until its final reports are approved.
Eligible costs. In 2024 the funds acknowledged that staffing, capacity development and security costs are eligible in project budgets. Program support costs for sub-partners sit inside the whole project's program support cost and should be shared fairly between partner and sub-partners.

Best Practices

Self-assess before the window opens. Run your policies against the screening questionnaire now and fix the gaps, whether that is a missing conflict of interest policy or accounting software without a license.

Keep the portal file complete. Registration asks for several standard documents, so keep them current and in one place.

Use capacity support. Some funds run twinning programs and walk-in clinics, and these have helped local NGOs pass capacity assessments and reach more funding. Trainings also exist: in 2024, 231 sessions reached 1443 NGOs, 297 of them women-led, on proposal writing, project management and financial practices.

Ask about the assessment proxy. If an agency has already micro-assessed you, raise it early. Duplicated assessments across funds, international NGOs and agencies eat time you need for response.

Ask what your international partner owes you. The funds favor partners that commit to engaging national NGOs as sub-grantees, and one regional fund required international partners to submit a capacity-building plan for their local partners. Ask whether your partner has one and what it commits to.

Take a seat where decisions are made. Local and national actors sit on the review committees that assess proposals and decide eligibility.

Common Mistakes

Bending the truth in screening. Inaccurate answers lead to ineligibility at the capacity assessment. Answer plainly, and treat a gap as a to-do item.

Leaving registration documents until the deadline. Registration asks for an audit report and an organizational chart, among other documents. Assemble them during the closed window.

Waiting until the deadline to deal with language. A 2020 NGO brief reported that guidelines and contracts were usually produced only in English. Get them translated or reviewed early.

Treating a first grant as unlimited. A new high-risk partner gets one project, capped at 12 months, until its first final reports are approved. Plan the budget and the follow-on pipeline around that.

Assuming every country works the same. Local access varies by fund. Ask your coordination office and peers what the local share and practice look like.

Accepting sub-grant terms without a fair share of overhead. Local actors often lack negotiating power. A 2020 NGO brief reported that pooled funds gave local NGOs the same 7 percent overhead rate as international NGOs, below a realistic norm of 10 to 15 percent. Ask for an explicit split of program support costs before you sign.

Example

This is an illustration, with invented details. A mid-sized national NGO in a crisis-affected country has always worked as a sub-grantee for international partners. It wants its own pooled fund grant.

While the eligibility window is closed, the finance lead works through the screening questionnaire and finds two gaps: no written conflict of interest policy and an unlicensed accounting package. Both are fixed over a few weeks, and the program team assembles the registration documents into one folder.

When the window opens, the NGO registers in the portal and the grants management system. During the capacity assessment, it offers an agency's harmonized cash transfer micro-assessment from an earlier partnership as the proxy for the operational and financial section. The assessors also visit the office and a project site and talk to staff and a cluster lead.

The result is a high risk level. As a first-time recipient, the NGO knows it can hold only one project, at most 12 months, until its final reports are approved. So it bids for a standard allocation, budgets for staffing and security, and shares the program support costs with its one sub-partner. In this illustration, grant signature comes within the indicative 35 to 45 working days, and money follows in up to 10 more.

Real precedent exists. One country's allocation of $12.9 million exclusively for local and national actors was delivered by 28 organizations, six of them first-time partners. A review found the direct model let national NGOs take an active role in project design.

Accessing country-based pooled funds for local NGOs