The organisations that TY is funding seemed to be based out of Western Countries. It seems like you are funding ‘white saviours’ rather than local communities?

We understand that western funders in the past have had a bias towards funding organizations that look and sound like them.

There may be a few reasons for this. It might be because people like to donate to organisations within their networks that they trust, or that western-led organisations are more likely to ‘communicate’ to western donors in a way that makes them feel comfortable and understand their solutions (less of a ‘risk’). And at times, local legislation can make it harder for philanthropy to distribute capital directly to local leaders.

A recent report showed that only 0.4% of all humanitarian aid went towards local and national African organisations. However, we know that this has to change as local solutions created by local leaders are needed to solve complex issues.

We know we have a long way to go to address our own bias. As part of this, we’ll be soon funding African Visionary Fund; a brand new initiative that tackles this problem by finding and vetting high-impact African-led organisations and connecting them to funders like TY.

Within our grant portfolio, while most of our organisations we fund have HQs in Western Countries (usually smaller team, for fundraising purposes), all have HQs in-country where the majority of staff reside and live. As we ensure that organisations are values aligned to TY, this means the partners we back ensure that local leadership and voices are participating in the decision making process across all levels of the organisation; with most programming and implementation decisions led by local teams.