Those of us working in the development sector have known, pretty much throughout our careers, that our world is rather uncertain and quite vulnerable to the vagaries of global economics and geopolitics. While we have dealt with different types of struggles at country and regional levels over the years, we have likely not witnessed a universal sectoral shock of the kind we are witnessing now, with the massive shifts in global aid. As I write this, there already have been some big foreign aid policy changes, and there is the worry of more to come.
The Global South, which comprises around 80% of the world’s population, and an even greater share of the world’s poor, is bearing a lot of the impact. Development challenges are inherently complex, often requiring fundamental shifts in systems—structures, behaviors, and mental models. In the Global South, these complexities are magnified by wide variations in culture, language, economic conditions, and ease of doing business both within and between countries. And this is often compounded by typically lesser resources and infrastructure, for a given scale aspiration.
In this setting, impact organisations in the Global South have always sought to maximise impact per dollar—not only by operating with a frugal mindset, but also by partnering to learn faster, and, crucially, collaborating to multiply their impact. Today, in the face of an unprecedented downturn in aid, these multi-stakeholder collaborations could be one of our strongest pathways. They offer a route toward resilience—enabling different actors to pool resources, complement one another’s efforts, and collectively drive population- and systems-level change more efficiently.
Collective impact (CI) is one such framework for structured collaborations. Introduced in 2011, collective impact refers to a “network of community members, organizations, and institutions that advance equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems-level change”.
CI is different from other forms of collaboration where stakeholders come together primarily to learn or to pursue opportunities that align naturally with their individual or ongoing mandates. What makes CI distinct is its initial framing, discipline and structure, built around five key components:
Together, these components create a sound foundation and ongoing infrastructure for addressing long-standing, deep-seated problems in a way that no single organization could do alone. CI is especially well-suited to the Global South, where problems are often multi-dimensional, and where solving them requires nuanced alignment across diverse local actors, each bringing unique strengths, perspectives, and constraints.
Despite its promise, collective impact remains relatively underutilized in the Global South because of several structural and practical hurdles.
One major hurdle is misaligned incentives among potential collaborators. Non-profits and social enterprises may view each other as allies in theory, but in practice, they often compete for limited resources, especially funding. In such an environment, organizations can become protective of their models, data, or donor relationships, making it harder to align around a shared goal or plan of action.
Even when there is more willingness to share, different organizational mandates and theories of change can get in the way of joint work. Take, for instance, a nutrition-focused enterprise and an education nonprofit, both working in rural sub-Saharan Africa. While their missions might intersect—both aiming to improve the lives of children—their programs may be siloed, targeting different outcomes, with separate timelines, funding streams, and metrics. Aligning these efforts into a coherent, shared vision—much less a coordinated set of actions—requires difficult conversations and strategic compromises. This is the heart of arriving at a “common agenda,” but it takes time, facilitation, and often, neutral support that many organizations cannot afford.
This leads to the next issue: the cost and complexity of collaboration itself. CI requires upfront investments in co-creation, and ongoing investments in shared measurement, governance, and facilitation. In resource-constrained settings, organizations are often stretched just delivering on their own programs. It’s hard to prioritize something as long-term and emergent as CI when you’re trying to meet quarterly targets, keep the lights on, and retain funders.
Another potential barrier is the capability needed to coordinate large-scale collaborations. Effective CI efforts require skilled “backbone” teams to coordinate activities, align stakeholders, and sustain momentum. Yet few funders prioritize these enabling roles, and many local organizations lack the internal ability to take them on without support.
Crucially, donor behavior can discourage collaboration. Much of aid funding in the Global South is tied to short-term, output-driven projects, where funders expect clear attribution—specific outcomes linked to inputs made by one grantee. But CI efforts work across actors and systems, where impact is often a result of shared action. It’s often difficult, even counterproductive, to isolate and attribute outcomes to a single organization. Without a shift in how ongoing progress and success is defined and measured, CI remains difficult to pursue.
What can funders do to shift this?
Funders can play a pivotal role in advancing collective impact in the Global South by modeling collaborative behavior and supporting the sector to strengthen networks and pursue structured collaborations. Specifically, funders can enhance the impact of their funding and programs by incorporating these five key considerations into their funding strategies and operations.
Model collaborative behavior. Funders should start by understanding the broader system—identifying existing initiatives, key actors, and gaps—to determine how they can best contribute, whether as implementers, facilitators, or conveners. They should also align with other funders working toward similar goals, even if they have differing mandates or theories of change, as co-funding or coordinating efforts can reduce duplication and amplify impact. By modeling collaboration—through open communication, shared learning, and aligned strategies—funders help create an enabling environment for collective action.
Encourage and incentivize collaboration among grantees. Funders should make it clear to their grantees that collaboration is valued—not just in principle but in practice—by rewarding joint proposals, shared outcomes, and cross-sector learning. They can encourage grantees to seek co-funding, identify and align with complementary actors in the system, and to work toward a common agenda.
Fund the process of collaboration. Building the trust, relationships, and coordination required for CI takes time. Funders should allow for longer timelines and provide flexible funding that enables grantees to invest in partnership-building, joint planning, and managing collective mission alignment or drift—not just on-ground implementation.
Support collective outcomes and shared measurement. Instead of requiring each grantee to isolate and attribute outcomes, funders should support shared measurement systems that track the collective impact of all partners, while also understanding and tracking an individual grantee’s progress and contributions. This approach would keep organizations focused on shared goals and long-term systems change, rather than relatively shorter-term, individual outputs.
Invest in backbone capacity. CI efforts need a dedicated, skilled backbone team to facilitate collaboration, align activities, manage data and communication, and sustain momentum. Funders should proactively identify and fund a professional backbone organization or team—this could be one of the CI members or an external organization.
While there are relatively few well-known collective impact initiatives in the Global South, the three examples below offer helpful visualizations for funders interested in supporting and scaling CI approaches in these contexts.
In Tanzania, the Tanga Yetu programme brings together a wide range of actors to address urbanization-related challenges affecting youth in the city of Tanga. The initiative spans multiple thematic areas—education, health, economic empowerment, and technology—and works to create a city-wide ecosystem that supports youth well-being. Its success lies in aligning diverse stakeholders around a shared population-level goal and enabling coordinated action across traditionally siloed domains.
In India, the Saamuhika Shakti initiative in Bengaluru exemplifies the complexity and ambition of CI. Launched in 2019, it aims to enable informal waste pickers to lead more secure and dignified lives. The initiative combines efforts to improve working conditions, provide WASH services, enhance children’s education, and build societal respect for waste pickers—all delivered by different partners operating at various levels of the system. These actors may not naturally collaborate, especially to support informal waste pickers, but have chosen to align around a shared vision and pursue mutually reinforcing activities. In combination, they address structural practices, relational dynamics and mental models.
And in the Philippines, the Move As One Coalition, anchored by the WeSolve Foundation, has convened more than 100 organizations and 70,000 individuals to improve urban mobility. This broad-based coalition has influenced national investment in public transport, helped upgrade over 1,200 km of bike lanes, and improved pay and conditions for over 88,000 transport workers—showcasing the power of coordinated citizen-led action.
Each of these examples illustrates how CI can be tailored to local realities, bringing together unlikely partners to drive systems-level change. They also highlight the importance of clear agendas, diverse coalitions, and strong facilitation to hold collective efforts together—lessons funders and implementers alike can build on.
Most collective impact initiatives continue to be concentrated in the Global North—even though the need for coordinated, systems-level work is more urgent across countries in the Global South. We would argue that collective impact is not just helpful, but essential—especially as aid cuts tighten budgets further. Further, collective impact actually works best when it builds from what already exists, honouring current efforts and amplifying impact, rather than creating new solutions from scratch.
Funders have a real opportunity to make a difference. By using their relationships, resources, and convening power, they can encourage authentic collaboration grounded in a common agenda. They can support mutually reinforcing activities rather than competing efforts, and back shared measurement of collective outcomes, to create the conditions for sustained, meaningful systems-level impact. In doing so, funders can help unlock the full potential of collective impact as a tool for transformative change in the Global South.
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