Since our founding, Counterpart has operated under the fundamental belief in the right and agency of all people to drive their own destinies. We firmly believe that creating local ownership and strengthening problem-solving capabilities at the local level is the only way to create real, lasting change.
In 2022, Counterpart established the Local Partner Funding Metric to demonstrate our commitment to locally led development, allowing us to monitor and track Counterpart’s distribution of funds to local partners for development impact purposes. With this funding, communities can enact local solutions to development challenges and strengthen their internal capacities, an integral component to “civic architecture”—a model to drive global change by connecting local and international organizations.
Counterpart’s USAID-funded Rights and Dignity project, in partnership with Partners El Salvador, collaborated with the Center for Training and Promotion of Democracy to help representatives from 26 Salvadoran organizations strengthen communications skills, build their personal brands, and develop advocacy strategies.
We can now report that in the last three years we have dispersed more than $23 million to 290 local partners in 17 countries. In the 2024 fiscal year, Counterpart disbursed a record high of $11.8 million to local partners, which represents 30% of its total direct project cost.
Take for example, the strong relationship we’ve cultivated with Partners El Salvador, a local implementing partner on the USAID-funded Rights and Dignity project.
“The partnership between Partners El Salvador with Counterpart International has allowed the transfer of knowledge in two mutually benefitting ways: first, [we] shared knowledge of local context and the integration of transversal approaches, and second, Counterpart has provided management expertise with large USAID-funded projects,” said Noemy Molina, gender and social inclusion specialist for Partners El Salvador. “This relationship has fostered an alliance based on learning, collaboration, and a respect as we work together on approaches that leverage and sustain civil society initiatives.” 
In Guatemala, we provide funding to many community-led cooperatives that provide agricultural loans and infrastructure investments through our USDA-funded Food for Progress project. In Timor-Leste, we fund local NGOs such as Many Hands One Nation, an organization that works with marginalized youth and people with disabilities, through our USAID-funded NGO Advocacy for Good Governance project. These are just a few of the many examples of how we work with our local partners.
Counterpart’s global metric for local partner funding, and its underlying dataset, includes the name of the partner, funding amount, donor, technical focus area, and the funding’s social impact purpose. It empowers our teams with reliable data that enables us to hold ourselves accountable to our mission, focus program resources on strengthening local partnerships, maximize cost effectiveness, and communicate impact. This approach also works to enhance aid accountability through strong collaboration with local partners.
In the context of this metric, a local partner is defined by Counterpart as an organization, association, company, or other entity that spends funds provided by Counterpart during the fiscal year for the purpose of achieving a program’s technical objectives. This includes grants, subcontracts, and other agreement types. To be eligible, the partner’s headquarters must be in the country or region in which the work is performed, or the partner is locally registered with management autonomy if it is an affiliate of a global organization.
Of the 290 local partners we’ve funded since the LPFM was established:
- 16% have received disbursements valued at more than $100,000
- 67% have received disbursements valued between $10,000 and $100,000
- 17% have received disbursements valued less than $10,000
“At Counterpart, we don’t just talk about the need for more localization, we’ve practiced locally led development as a core part of our mission since our founding in 1965,” said Julien Manyong, director of strategy and operations. “The Local Partner Funding Metric showcases how we’re dispersing these funds and how we’re committed to giving local communities the resources to shape the future they seek.”
