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Today: Who gets US pooled fund cash, local aid promises in an era of cuts, and what Save the Children really wants you to know.
On the radar |
That $2 billion in US cash to be sluiced through UN pooled funds continues to disrupt. The collective funding buckets known as country-based pooled funds were billed as tools to localise aid, but that storyline no longer fits. US cash is going almost entirely to big international agencies in select countries, and this domination – it represents some 87% of total funding at the moment – distorts the math.
We know the cash is destined for responses in only 18 countries, that most of it will flow through big aid agencies, and that they’ll be under high-pressure, six-month timelines to deliver. Who gets the money? We took a look at some of the numbers for a best guess. The table below compiles data from allocation strategies, which included lists of pre-selected or vetted UN agencies and NGOs – a reason why many with eyes on the country-level discussions described the allocations as predetermined. The final allocations may have changed in some cases, but we’re using these initial figures for comparability. You may notice some familiar names:
A few bullet points:
- The numbers include data from 11 of 18 funds, representing $1.28 billion – or about two thirds of the US cash allotted to country-based pooled funds. Check the notes in the table for additional caveats.
- The usual suspects dominate: 98% of funding was slated for UN agencies and international NGOs. Only 2% was destined for local organisations. This included potential allocations in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Sudan, where the percentage of local funding ranged from 4% to 12%.
- Save the Children was in line to receive some $40 million – the second-highest total in this INGO cohort. That’s already equivalent to what Save says it took from UN pooled funds in years past. The average INGO listed here was tapped to receive $12 million.
- Catholic Relief Services and World Vision (ranked 4th and 5th among INGOs) are arguably punching above their weight class compared to their general funding levels. Does this suggest a particular tilt to the US allocations?
More on Save the Children |
Save the Children really, really wants you to know that its pooled fund policy hasn’t changed.
This week, The New Humanitarian published a piece by ODI Global’s Dustin Barter, which criticised Save for taking millions in pooled cash, months after declaring it would start withdrawing from the CBPFs. “We need to be honest with ourselves,” he says. “The humanitarian sector is in crisis, but reform can’t progress if virtue signalling is prolific.”
There was immediate pushback from Save the Children. The (federation-wide) policy to withdraw from pooled funds has not budged, the organisation says: The plan was always a “phased” approach to withdrawing (a staffer shared details on this). Media relations staff have twice (so far) asked The New Humanitarian for a correction, saying the piece incorrectly suggested a policy change. We don’t believe that’s warranted.
More bullet points:
- Save’s focus is on the policy, rather than its choices and actions. It may be a smart move, comms-wise: Focus on the non-discussion of whether a policy has changed. Ignore the elephant sitting bashfully in the shallow end of the pool, straining under the weight of what might be at least $40 million in new US cash.
- Parts of the written policy are clear, as long as Save continues to publicly flesh out the specifics (see more below). The NGO’s choices and actions on pooled funds seem equally clear. To date, these include:
- Announcing it will “progressively withdraw” from CBPFs starting in January 2026.
- Standing in line to potentially take progressively more money from CBPFs in early 2026 than it did in previous years.
- Publishing an advocacy briefing that echoes many of the common arguments and recommendations on pooled fund inequity and governance, including those often made by local humanitarian leaders who attend pooled-fund working group meetings.
- Time will tell whether Save’s policy catch-up on pooled funds is more than words on paper. For now, Save the Children’s choices and actions on pooled funds, like its policy, seem to be unchanged.
- A repeat takeaway: If US funding dominates, then it’s hard to sell country-based pooled funds as a lever of localisation, whether you’re OCHA or Save the Children. The international humanitarian system may have to find more genuine ways to meet their localisation commitments. If only there was some sort of roadmap on how to do it, backed by years of discussion and consensus.
- BTW: Save the Children has been promoting its own fund, called the children’s emergency fund, as a lever for shifting power (it’s there in the December blog post that announced the definitely-not-changed CBPF policy, and peppered over current talking points). Save’s stats show that the fund gave 16% of its money to “local partner organisations” in 2024 – less than what the UN’s country-based funds gave (before US distortions).
Local aid virtue signalling undermines reforms
A big NGO promised to leave UN pooled funds for local aid groups. It’s in line to receive millions, along with other international agencies.
Acronymage |
TJO: Did you miss the brief surge in humanitarian job listings last month? OCHA posted ads for what appeared to be 17 separate positions to shepherd its suddenly bustling pooled funds. The temporary job openings were funded until the end of the year. They were initially listed for a period of seven days.
End quote |
Abdurahman Sharif, Save the Children’s senior humanitarian affairs director, spoke to us about the NGO’s pooled fund plans and responded to some of the criticisms. Here’s more from our chat, which has been shortened for clarity:
The New Humanitarian: You’re continuing to receive funding from country-based pooled funds. What’s the reasoning behind this?
Abdurahman Sharif: Our decision to withdraw fully is by the end of 2027. So we’re not withdrawing immediately. It’s a phased approach within two years. So, standard allocations by the end of this year, 2026, we pull out. And then by the end of 2027, we pull out from the reserve allocation. That said, there might be situations where for life-saving situations, we may be asked to step in, if there are no actors present. The reason why it can’t be immediate is because there are real risks that need to be carefully managed. We have ongoing country-based pool funds programmes that must not be disrupted. There are life-saving services that need to continue without gaps…
We said from the start that this was meant to be a phased approach. And really, it’s deliberate. It’s also to let our country teams, give them time to adapt, support a structured shift of resources and relationships towards local actors. So we want to use that period to advocate for local actors to have access to that funding, for the processes for them to be eased. And that also ensures that our exit really opens up space for local actors rather than simply leaving a gap behind.
The New Humanitarian: The December statement said that the phased-out approach would start in January 2026. What did you begin phasing out in 2026?
Sharif: Basically, it’s creating the steps, preparing our country offices, analysing what projects they have in hand, who could take them over in terms of other organisations and needs, and laying out also what we say, how we’d be a provider of last resorts in case the need is there. But I think there is a programme also to start some work around advocacy and trying to also encourage OCHA and the pool funds mechanisms to look at how they can ease processes for local actors. There is also support to where we have presence in humanitarian country teams, engagement with different actors to make that happen…
It’s really critical to advocate for the improvements in country-based pooled fund governance, accessibility, and risk-sharing. But also, it’s getting our country offices – giving them time to be able to adapt if they have country-based pooled funds they manage not to abruptly stop the services. Say you’re supporting 50 health centres that are critical in life-saving, it is not about stopping those immediately, but looking at alternatives: to other agencies, local actors that could take over, or gradually putting in place mechanisms for the services not to be disrupted, even through other funding means.
The New Humanitarian: Some of the advocacy steps, it feels like those things are already underway. The pooled fund working group has been talking about this, there are leaders who have been pushing the same things. Why is advocacy such a big part of a phase-out: Do you need to spend three months on that?
Sharif: I’m sure you’re aware that the discussion on localisation is not new – that it’s been 10 years in the works. That since then there’s been a lot of advocacy, and since then also challenging criticism, that not enough has happened since. So I think that what is missing from the conversation is an organisation to step up and make decisions – walk the talk on what we’ve been advocating for. That’s the kind of thing that Save wants to do.
The New Humanitarian: I think everyone would agree that it’s a bad idea to just stop programming. But UN pooled funds represented a very small percentage of funding to Save. The new allocations that Save seems to be taking [in 2026] are roughly the same, I think, as what what you’ve taken before. So, why did Save need to be involved in this year’s allocations? Why does the money to run these programmes have to come from these country-based pool funds?
Sharif: The principal point is to maintain life-saving services… I cannot comment on individual decisions or single decisions that come in terms of speed, in terms of amounts that need to be spent. Sometimes there are consortiums and sometimes consortiums are given projects to implement as a group. So there are many dynamics at play, but the initial and most important is to maintain life-saving services.
The New Humanitarian: The majority of the UN pooled funding seems to be going to international agencies. And so a lot of local actors are pretty disappointed… When we come to Save – I understand that it’s complicated and there are many reasons why things work the way they do – but essentially Save the Children will still be taking millions in funding from country-based pooled funds. It feels like not a lot of progress. How do you see it?
Sharif: First of all, we’ll have to judge at the end of the year what the numbers tell us. But where I don’t disagree with you is that yes, NGOs continue to take in most of the money. And that is why we – one of the largest NGOs, Save the Children – took that decision and are pushing others to do the same. As I said, look at the World Humanitarian Summit. Ten years ago, we made some of these commitments. It’s not yesterday. It is not last week. What is missing is action, right? We have all the best ideas, some really great ideas on how to move the conversation forward, but we haven’t moved it forward.
When you have a situation like what happened in the past two years of aid cuts challenging the system, we need to look at the system differently. And I think it’s important to have those questions. It’s important to have local actors continuing to challenge NGOs and not give up on that. And we are listening… We would have loved things to move faster. But it’s going in that direction.
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