International organisations gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa for the first Global Summit on Community Philanthropy have voiced frustration with development aid saying its effectiveness at the grassroot is undermined by a top-down approach.

Over 300 delegates representing development partners and grassroots groups said the system perpetuates imbalances in relations between donors and organisations who carry out the work.

The theme of the Summit, organised by the Global Fund for Community Foundations, is Shift The Power (to communities).

According to Jenny Hodgson, the executive director at the Global Fund, non-governmental organisations “have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are because changing them would shift their power.”

“There seems to be global anxiety about aid because there’s less of it and it still hasn’t done what it intended to do,” Ms Hodgson said.

Despite grassroot organisations having strong connections with the communities they work with, only about one per cent of all foreign aid goes directly to the global south. The rest is controlled by internationally-owned development and humanitarian agencies.

“Either the power is with the donor or the NGO- it’s often never on the ground,” said Sibongile Mkhabela, the chief executive officer at Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. “There are many reasons for that; many donors want it that way.”

Mkhabela said that many international NGOs are “creating careers in development but not changing societies.”

These views were echoed by numerous leaders of local organisations, who say that they struggle with an unequal power balance that undermines their work. Because funding restrictions are common, many say their projects are more about checking off donors’ criteria rather than implementing what is desired by communities. As a result, these interventions are less effective.

Degan Ali, the Executive Director of Adeso – a Kenyan-based development and humanitarian NGO that supports communities in Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan – says her organisation is impacted by this power struggle. “They give us money but treat us like sub-contractors. It isn’t a true partnership,” she said. Adeso is funded largely by international NGOs, USAid and the European Commission.

She believes that as a grassroot organisation, Adeso should have more control over resources.

“Currently, decisions about our countries are being made in Geneva and New York and we’re not part of it. How do we decentralise decision making?” Ms Ali asks.

In an effort to do that, Ms Ali founded The Near Network, an organisation that aims to start a global movement to address issues of power imbalances when it comes to advocacy, capacity and financing.

While some organisations are concerned about shifting power from international aid agencies to the grassroot ones, others are focused on how they can shift power to to the marginalised people they serve.

Francis Kiwanga, the executive director at The Foundation for Civil Society said his organisation is interested in changing their approach to grant-making. “We need to avoid the tendency that because we have money, we have the power to dictate what communities need,” Mr Kiwanga said.

The Foundation currently supports 150 grassroot organisations across Tanzania and has written criteria for these groups to access to grants, although they plan to change this.

“What I’m learning is that communities should come and tell you what matters to them and what they want,” Mr Kiwanga says, adding that by dropping the criteria to qualify for grants, The Foundation will give power to communities to control what support they need.