The Data Your NGO Is Sitting on Could Fund Your Next Program

What stayed with me after talking with Shannon Hasel wasn't anything about drilling or infrastructure. Shannon leads Water for South Sudan. The conversation went on for about an hour. Near the end, almost passing, she said something I keep coming back to.

"Hope is not a capital strategy."

Shannon spent a decade in global aid before joining WFSS about 10 months ago. The organization has run boreholes across South Sudan for more than twenty years, and, under local leadership, it has moved from delivering isolated projects toward a more permanent system. "I often say that we're building water municipalities in a country that doesn't have those," she told me. "And that evolution is really shaping

how we think about both our strategy and how our work is financed."

None of that history offered much guidance when funding got unstable. Philanthropy fell short. What two decades in the field did produce — quietly, without anyone putting a price on it — was a different kind of record entirely.

From scarcity mindset to "hidden assets"

The USAID cuts are real, and the damage is specific: contracts gone, jobs gone, faith-based hospital networks and rural WASH implementers asking a question many have never had to answer. What do we have that someone would pay for?

Most respond by chasing the same shrinking pool of grants — merging, retrenching, waiting. The better question is how to grow the pie rather than fight over what's left.

The framework I laid out in my Devex op-ed runs five steps: shift mindset, map assets, design partnerships, choose monetization models, and set up governance and metrics. Step two — asset mapping — is where most NGOs figure out how much they've been giving away for free. The exercise is simple: list every dataset, method, relationship, and tool your organization controls, then add one column. Who would pay for this, and why?

What WFSS revealed when I ran the framework

Shannon described where WFSS is heading without much decoration: "Looking at different models of partnerships, thinking differently about contracts, exploring fee-for-service models." When I applied the asset-mapping step to WFSS, what came back wasn't a consulting pitch. It was an inventory of things they already have that buyers are actively looking for.

Start with the data. Over twenty-plus years in one of the world's most information-scarce operating environments, WFSS has accumulated community-level records on water point performance, maintenance histories, failure rates, school attendance, women's time savings, and waterborne disease incidence. Not estimated, not modeled — observed. That kind of longitudinal, site-specific record is exactly what insurers building outcome-based products and development finance institutions need. They're currently paying to approximate it. WFSS has the real thing.

Then there's the operational knowledge. Shannon's board is already framing it: "What's the fee-for-service model that allows infrastructure operators like us to support the government in South Sudan, other NGOs, entities, or private capital companies — and what does that expertise and capacity look like as a service?" That's not aspirational. It's a description of an asset. A fully South Sudanese team, established supply chain relationships, community governance protocols built over two decades in a fragile state — this is hard to replicate quickly, and it draws consistent interest from state agencies, multilaterals, and private investors who need credible local capacity.

The assets were already there. What's new is the decision to price them.

The models already exist in the field.

You don't have to invent anything. Organizations are already doing this — you have to be willing to look outside the standard funding cycle.

Whitten & Roy Partnership (WRP) is a socially-minded consulting firm whose business is built on one thing: a proven methodology for converting conversations into decisions. They don't sell a product — they sell a way of selling. Their work with PSI Ethiopia's Transform WASH program shows what happens when a development organization treats its methodology as something worth charging for. Sanitation product sales jumped nearly 60% in a single month after the intervention; total sales in the first twelve months surpassed the combined total of the previous three years; and by mid-2022, monthly volumes exceeded 5,100 units. WRP's DQ Sales® methodology is now being institutionalized through Ethiopia's Ministry of Labor and Skills. It became a licensed, scalable asset embedded in a national system.

Scott Roy, who has built WRP for nearly two decades, is direct about what's been missing. Development organizations have always been selling — behavior change, sanitation adoption, new agricultural practices — but they never learned to name it, price it, or manage it as income. It's a point Scott has made publicly — including at TechChange's Pivot for Impact program — and one the sector is only now being forced to take seriously.

The governance question you can't skip

Finding buyers is the easy part to get excited about. The harder work is governance — and you can't skip it.

For WFSS, that means deciding what community data can be packaged and sold, under what consent conditions, and with what protections for the people whose trust makes any of it possible. It also means being clear about how service-fee income is reinvested in the mission. Those aren't details to sort out later. Investors and corporates co-designing ventures with NGOs aren't motivated by goodwill. They're paying for legitimacy, local knowledge, and access — and all of that depends on the governance holding. If the governance fails, the asset fails.

In the profit-and-purpose approach I've developed, governance isn't a brake on earning revenue — it's what makes the revenue credible. The board needs to approve a mandate specifying which forms of earned income are acceptable before the first term sheet gets drafted.

What comes next

On April 14, I'm bringing together 20–25 C-suite leaders from NGOs, impact investors, and corporate partners at InterAction's headquarters in Washington, D.C. One of three breakout tracks is dedicated to this: how NGOs monetize their services, intellectual property, and operational assets to build revenue that doesn't depend on the next grant cycle.

Not inspiration. Specific frameworks, real case studies, and people who've already made the transition. The models are in the field. The assets are in your filing cabinets and your field reports. The track is designed to get specific about what you do on Monday.

If you're navigating this in your organization and want to compare notes, reach out directly or follow the conversation at #BeyondGrants.

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