NGO Funding: Scarcity Isn't the Problem. Deployment Is.

The September 15 SID-US panel, “Beyond Aid: The Future of Corporate Engagement in International Development,” spent most of its time on well-worn topics: shrinking ODA, tight budgets, and political uncertainty. The discussion’s sharpest point came when an audience member reframed the issue as one of deployment, not shortage. Even so, the panel kept circling back to scarcity. Yet the sector's real problem is not insufficient money; it is the absence of the institutions needed to put that money to work effectively.

That challenge was taken up directly in the exchange that followed. Moderators pressed corporate participants on whether they had explored arrangements in which NGOs would create returns that affect a company’s bottom line, rather than merely producing project-level results. They also asked whether NGOs actually have the financial systems required to handle such capital. Josh Mandell, Lead Client Partner at IBM Consulting, answered carefully and said he wasn't sure he fully understood the question. He pointed to IBM’s choice, made roughly a decade ago, to deal straight with governments and, in his words, “essentially cut out the intermediary,” with USAID previously acting as the conduit. Mandell said the rationale was efficiency, but he was unsure whether that strategy had changed since then. [1]

His hesitant reply exposed a deeper assumption in the sector. When IBM made that decision about ten years ago, it did not treat NGOs as partners capable of generating returns. Rather, NGOs were viewed, on his account, as intermediaries to be bypassed. Even now, many corporate-NGO collaborations still lack the mechanisms needed for productive engagement. Capital usually moves toward structures that can absorb it, spend it, and account for it effectively.

No panelist pointed to a partnership that put profit directly onto a corporation’s balance sheet. The closest case is Project Last Mile, which shows how a partnership can produce measurable returns, though social rather than financial ones. In cooperation with the Global Fund, the Gates Foundation, USAID, and PEPFAR, the initiative links Coca-Cola’s supply-chain and marketing capabilities to African health systems. The Global Environment and Technology Foundation runs the program, and Yale’s Global Health Leadership Initiative conducts its evaluation. Before PLM begins in a country, it requires alignment among Coca-Cola’s business strengths, an anchor donor's priorities, and the host government's aims. It also models delivery costs. In Mozambique, PLM compared two distribution networks: the existing one cost $1.72 per kilometer, while the redesigned version cost $1.22 per kilometer, producing projected savings of $535,593. [3] The Global Fund’s report presents this as a return on investment for donor partners, not as revenue for Coca-Cola, on top of the billions already spent on medicines and vaccines. [2]

Joe Tayag, Program and Strategy Lead for Project Last Mile, added several unpublished details. He said PLM prepares a business case before it supports a ministry of health, looking for at least two dollars in value for every dollar spent, and sometimes aiming for $2.80 to $3.00. The emphasis is on value relative to cost, not on profit for Coca-Cola. Tayag also said PLM turns down funding when there is no responsible exit plan, and that it maps departures in detail so ministries are not left with costs they cannot sustain. These are practitioner observations rather than formal policy, but they show PLM’s method: partnerships are treated like investments with modeled returns and defined exit strategies, even when the return stays inside the health system. [1] By comparison, most corporate-NGO engagement still treats partnership as a donation with a logo.

BRAC offers a comparable model in which surplus stays inside the organization. That approach began with its first enterprise: a printing press launched in 1978 to keep profits in service of the mission. In its first year, the press brought in $17,400, and by 2007 it was earning $340,000. BRAC’s enterprise rules require every business to produce surplus so development work can continue and dependence on donors can be reduced. [6] BRAC stands apart because of its scale and its five decades of experience, with surplus coming from internal enterprises rather than corporate partnerships. According to Stanford Social Innovation Review and BRAC’s 2025 UK Parliament testimony, 80 percent of BRAC’s $485 million budget in 2009 came from its own enterprises. [4][5] BRAC has no shareholders; in its words, surplus is “reinvested or invested in BRAC’s social development programs.” [5] Stanford Social Innovation Review reports that donors “only like to fund things that have already been tested.” [4] BRAC used enterprise income to back untested ideas, including the oral rehydration pilot that reached 14 million of Bangladesh’s 19 million households over ten years. Intentional revenue design built the innovation budget no grant officer would ever sign.

The sheer scale of available wealth complicates any simple scarcity narrative. Global personal wealth is about $518 trillion, based on my count from UBS’s 2026 Global Wealth Report, which covers 56 markets and more than 92 percent of global wealth. [7] The 2026 Fortune Global 500 companies together reported $3.39 trillion in profit for fiscal 2025, the highest total on record. [8] These figures do not show capital sitting ready for immediate deployment, but they do reveal the size of the resource pool.

The binding constraint is not the supply of money. The sector lacks organizations with the financial architecture to receive capital that expects a return. Project Last Mile does this through corporate partnerships, generating social returns. BRAC does it through its own balance sheet. None of this makes grants obsolete — advocacy, emergency response, and work with populations that cannot generate a financial return still need grant funding. I’m okay with grants. I’m not okay with grant dependency. Grants fund what someone has already tested. Architecture funds everything else. The sector's next key challenge out of this crisis isn't how much money remains. It is about who has built the infrastructure to convince the holders of that $518 trillion, or that $3.39 trillion, to deploy it in surplus-generating projects.

Endnotes

1. SID-US panel, "Beyond Aid: The Future of Corporate Engagement in International Development," September 15, 2026 (transcript available upon request; event page: https://sid-us.org/civicrm-event/815) — all quotes from Josh Mandell and Joe Tayag, and the audience's scarcity-to-deployment reframe.

2. Global Fund, "Partnering for Health" (2022): https://www.theglobalfund.org/media/11957/privatesector_projectlastmile-partneringforhealth_report_en.pdf — PLM partners, "Engage and Align" criteria, donor-ROI language.

3. Project Last Mile Compendium 2010–2020: https://www.projectlastmile.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/PLM_Compendium-2010-2020_06.04.20-FINAL.pdf — Mozambique cost modeling ($1.72/km vs. $1.22/km; $535,593 projected savings).

4. Kim Jonker, "In the Black with BRAC," Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2009: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/in_the_black_with_brac — printing press figures, 80% of $485M budget, oral rehydration reach, "only like to fund things that have already been tested."

5. Asif Saleh (BRAC Executive Director), written evidence to the UK International Development Committee, 2025: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/141397/default/ — "no shareholders, so any surplus revenue is reinvested"; 80% budget corroboration.

6. BRAC, "Overview: BRAC Enterprises and Investments": https://www.brac.net/brac-enterprises/item/877-overview — surplus as an explicit enterprise criterion.

7. UBS, Global Wealth Report 2026 (17th ed.), June 30, 2026: https://www.ubs.com/content/dam/assets/wm/static/gwr/global-wealth-report-en-2026.pdf — global personal wealth by band, covering 56 markets and over 92% of global wealth; the $518 trillion figure is the author's own summation of UBS's reported bands, not a UBS headline figure.

8. Fortune, "Fortune Global 500" (2026): https://fortune.com/global500/2026/ — $3.39 trillion aggregate profit figure, fiscal year 2025.