Co-authors: David Lim
The COVID-19 pandemic threatened a decade of progress in maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCHN) care in Southeast Asia. AVPN responded by creating a unique pooled fund, bringing together four leading funders to address this critical need. Chevron, Johnson & Johnson Foundation, Quantedge Advancement Initiative, and Vitol Foundation pooled together a total of USD 1 million Fund to improve the access and quality of Maternal, Newborn, Child Health & Nutrition (MNCHN) services. The Fund provides flexible funding to support innovative MNCHN solutions led by 4 non-profit impact organisations in Southeast Asia.
After one year, Spoon Foundation in Vietnam teamed-up with Onesky to make mealtime appealing and safe for children in home-based care through their Mealtime Magic Curriculum programme, reaching around 10,700 children, and building capacity to more than 280 home-based care providers, trainors and early learning centre staff. Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia, implemented their 5-year Saving Babies’ Lives (SBL) programme, empowering more than 1,100 community health workers to improve neonatal healthcare in rural areas, and treating 450 neonates. Yayasan Kusuma Buana (YKB) from Indonesia promoted holistic and data-driven pregnancy care among 1,500 women factory workers, and provided capacity building among 25 health workers. The International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) from the Philippines engaged with the local governments in adopting local policies that support MNCHN services supporting capacity building of more than 130 community healthcare workers, and reaching more than 35,200 children and pregnant women.
The four grantees working in different markets took collaborative, targeted, and holistic approaches to address MNCHN needs, engaging with local communities and governments to achieve long-term impact. This approach may seem very straightforward in the impact space, however, it requires a high level of flexibility in implementing it. As many of the engagements with the communities and key stakeholders like local government are very dynamic in nature, organisations are expected to be agile in navigating them, and, therefore should be trusted with flexible funding and empowered with trust from the donors.
Adopting trust-based giving in our philanthropic funds, we continuously asked ourselves how we can practise this approach better. We actively listened to the grantees and learnt that these impact organisations have a wealth-of-knowledge and on-the-ground expertise that can transform our network of funders’ perspectives on the MNCHN issues. We recognise that it is not a one-way relationship between funders and grantees but a shared and continued journey where both learn how to maximise impact beyond the grant.
To help us understand the impact of the flexible funding on the grantees, we appointed a third-party impact evaluator of our grant and found out some key takeaways that supported our initial assumptions when designing our philanthropic fund:
Flexibility Enhances Organisational Capacity and Programmatic Efficacy
IIRR in the Philippines faced political disruptions. Flexible funding allowed them to pause programmes and adapt, highlighting its benefit for unforeseen challenges. By doing so, IIRR was able to avoid any political sensitivity and risk while keeping committed to delivering impact in the communities post the election. “The flexibility of the grant allowed us to continue implementing programmes at a more appropriate time.” said Emily Monville-Oro, IIRR’s Acting Regional Director and Country Director. “If the funding was restrictive, we would need to follow the timeline and even push for fund utilisations into areas that may not need it the most,“ she continued.
The AVPN team visited IIRR’s on-the-ground works last November to learn how they used flexible funding. The on-site visits helped us build a more solid relationship with our grantees and their communities, which created a sense of openness. We met with the community health workers, who shared how the technical skills training provided by IIRR helped them quickly respond to the health needs of community members, and challenges they faced in encouraging pregnant women to visit the health centres. The flexible funding has allowed IIRR to organise tailored training for health workers on more effective engagement and communications with clients like pregnant women and mothers to get prenatal and postnatal check-ups at the community health centre.
IIRR further built their capacity and confidence in exploring other potential donors to support the scaling up of their intervention. Through the Fundraising Radicals podcast, they highlighted how flexible funding will benefit more impact organisations and how it has helped them in their interventions. To date, IIRR has already achieved more than 100% of its original MNCHN target outcomes. And having strengthened their organisational capacity through flexible funding, the reported target may surpass even post the grant period.
Flexibility Enables System Change
Improving access to quality MNCHN services requires systemic change. YKB addressed both healthcare and worker rights in Indonesia. Their advocacy led to a local policy change, issuing a Regent Regulation No. 116 in 2023 in Purwakarta Regency in West Java protecting pregnant factory workers, which was an unexpected outcome as Purwakarta wasn’t the intended target geography.
For YKB, as a first-timer to receive flexible funding, they raised questions and hints of hesitations on how best to utilise the Fund. However, through various rounds of consultations with the AVPN team, YKB understood that they have the trust from funders and have the flexibility to direct funds to where it is most needed, such as supporting health facilities and building their organisational leadership. As the philanthropic fund manager, AVPN emphasises the concept and usage of flexible funding as a journey across multiple touchpoints to balance the dynamic between grantees, AVPN, and funders.
As reported by our external evaluator, grantees expressed great value and appreciation for trust-inducing practices of frequent touch-points and continuous, responsive, and empowering feedback. Once grantees feel empowered by the trust, they are more focused on creating impact beyond an agreed target and more encouraged to aim for systemic justice. YKB on our last check-in have reported higher reach than their original target on pregnant women and productive age workers.
Trust-based giving with flexible funding empowered grantees and led to systemic changes. To see long-term health improvements, AVPN is launching multi-year funding initiatives.
