Implications of Time on Donor Behavior and Processes in Relation to Localization

Driven by donor statements and a moral sea change in humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding fields, the concept of localization has taken hold of the international aid industry. As a result, organizations reliant on bilateral and multilateral international aid funding are making the case that they have had long‐term commitments to localization. In some cases, the shift in organizational practice is genuine with new partnership models and financial distribution structures. In other cases, rhetorical flourishes hide a continuation of the norm or unfulfilled commitments to change. Regardless of international aid organizations' genuine commitment levels, the recent focus on localization is shaped and led by donors' incentives and objectives. Yet despite these donor commitments, the question remains: why have international aid funding processes not substantially changed and why is more money not being distributed directly to locally based organizations?

A key reason for the lack of localization progress is a failure to reform donor organization processes that prioritize internal incentives over processes supporting progress toward localization commitments. While many of the processes that entrench donor practices have been well examined, there has been limited introspection into how donors' relationship to time and “timescapes” shapes employees' incentives and reproduces power structures and processes that limit progress on localization. According to Holden, “[t]he concept of timescape refers to the temporal timeframe of institutional processes” (Holden 2016: 407). Timescapes provide insights into a shared conceptual understanding of power and into incentives that define different institutions, policies, and actions (Holden 2016). Understanding how donor organizations' timescapes create structures to which individual preferences respond helps us understand international aid structures, donor decision‐making, and challenges to advancing local funding commitments. A prominent example of time's impact on donor decisions is one‐year project timelines, which result from donors' internal budget requirements, reporting cycles, and incentives to distribute funds within budget allocation periods. Less obvious is how the relationship between time and money as discussed through concepts like efficiency and productivity creates donor reluctance to provide small grants and microgrants.

To address this gap in the literature, this article analyzes the relationship between time and donor operations through four concepts—productivity and efficiency, organizational deadlines, the compounding effect of a decision, and individual interest and attention—and explores how they are operationalized within donor organizations. These four organizational structures and individual behaviors are selected from the authors' first‐hand experiences in the international aid and philanthropic sectors. One of the authors worked in private philanthropy for seven years, while both authors currently work with private, public, and multilateral donors to support localization efforts and the funding of community‐based organizations. This current work, conducted through the Life & Peace Institute (a Swedish‐headquartered international peacebuilding organization), has led to regular discussions with a range of donor organizations about their internal operations and the ways in which various funding processes support and hinder organizational goals. The four concepts identified in this article are consistent factors in the work of the donor organizations with which the authors have engaged, regardless of the type of donor (private, public, or multilateral) or international aid sector.¹ The authors draw on these experiences to reflect on patterns of organizational structures and individual behaviors and better understand how donors' incentives and their relationship to time create barriers to implementing the localization agenda. Applying multidisciplinary research from political science, development studies, sociology, and behavioral science, the authors seek to make connections between diverse and often disparate studies and topics, bring new perspectives and ideas to the conversation, and encourage continued discussion on how to accelerate localization.

Overall, this article argues that a critical barrier to substantial change is related to the concept of time. More specifically, donors' conceptualization of time, or their “timescape,” significantly impacts organizational incentives and individuals' preferences. The timescapes that donors are operating within limit the ability to make changes to donor practices that would support their stated localization goals. Fundamental structural elements of the grantor–grantee relationship respond to donor incentives rather than to grantees' organizational needs and even less to local organizations' needs as most direct grant funding continues to be given to international organizations. Donors' relationship to time and how different temporal dynamics impact donor incentives are critical but overlooked in structuring donors' actions and creating employee incentives that reproduce power dynamics in the international aid system.

The article makes this case by first examining the power dynamics within international aid and how conceptualizations of time strengthen donors' influence over recipients and their ability to shape actions both internally within donor organizations and on recipients. The article then moves to examine the evolving and debated definition and rationale for localization. While localization has become a buzzword, the concept is not new. Humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding organizations have been pursuing localization in one form or another for over two decades (Robillard, Atim, and Maxwell 2021), defining it and its goals in various ways. The second section of the article assesses why—despite an increase in recent donor financial pledges and commitments by international aid organizations to localization—direct funding to local organizations remains below five percent of all international aid (Robillard, Atim, and Maxwell 2021).² The third section looks concretely at four concepts related to time that specifically impact donor operations—productivity and efficiency, organizational deadlines, the compounding effect of a decision, and individual interest and attention. Focusing on how organizations shape individual incentives helps us understand how even the most well‐intentioned person can struggle to advance their values and stated goals. The article concludes by offering alternatives for beginning to address the challenge of timescapes within the international aid system.

The resources available for international and local NGOs are limited, creating enormous demand and competition for funding. Donors' control over such resources is fundamental to their power. Studies of international aid repeatedly highlight how recipients' need for funding and donors' access to funding create asymmetrical donor–recipient relationships. Increasing these power asymmetries are donor practices. Research by Anke Hoeffler, Verity Outram, Roland Paris, and others examines how donor interests shape their aid priorities, sometimes overriding the priorities of the communities they are attempting to support (Paris 2002; Hoeffler and Outram 2008). Others scholars, including Johnathan Crush and Emma Mawdsley, have examined how donor‐driven agendas and practices, such as donor‐imposed conditions on aid recipients, shape donor–grantee power dynamics (Crush 1995; Mawdsley 2012). Lisa Smirl's research shows how donor‐driven agendas, conditionalities, and asymmetrical power relationships impede communities' sense of ownership over their economic, social, and political development. Such conditions include restrictions on how local actors can lead and how they partner with other actors, resulting in limited genuine collaboration between donors and recipients (Smirl 2015).

The concept of timescapes, which was first developed and coined by Barbara Adam, sheds light on the considerations that create and entrench these widely known and heavily criticized donor practices. Adam views timescapes as the temporal frameworks that shape our experiences and social interactions (Adam 2004). She argues that our understanding of time is shaped by the broader power dynamics within and between societies developed through political, social, and economic relations. Timescapes help us understand how time can be used to shape order and reinforce power. Historical institutionalism has been a key frame for conceptualizing timescapes in political science and international affairs. Paul Pierson argues that the concept of timescapes is inherently “historical because it recognizes that political development must be understood as a process that unfolds over time. It is institutionalist because it stresses that many of the contemporary political implications of these temporal processes are embedded in institutions—whether formal rules, policy structures, or norms” (Pierson 2000: 264–265). In research on political institutions and public policy, the European Union (EU) has been employed as a case study of timescapes (Dyson 2009; Goetz and Meyer‐Sahling 2009; Bulmer 2013). In their research on the EU, Klaus Goetz and Jan‐Hinrik Meyer‐Sahling argue that time in relation to budgeting, “time horizons,” action sequencing, and the speed of both decision‐making and implementation all create institutional incentives that drive individuals' preferences and actions (Goetz and Meyer‐Sahling 2009). In their work on time and peacebuilding interventions, Ryerson Christie and Gilberto Algar‐Faria call the historical institutional approach to the institutional mechanisms and priorities that shape donor practices “Policy Time.” As the EU has international funding mechanisms, it is a good example of how donor organizations' decisions, incentives, and practices “[frame] the time horizon of peacebuilding activities,” which creates a “disjuncture between the timescapes of donors and those of local communities” (Christie and Algar‐Faria 2020: 156). Policy time, situated within the concept of timescapes, highlights how different “decisions privilege the needs of bureaucracies, which in turn structures and limits the pursuit of local peacebuilding initiatives” and “reproduces power relations between donors, states, civil society actors, and communities” (Christie and Algar‐Faria 2020: 163). Relatedly, Christie and Algar‐Faria discuss how Western conceptions of time as linear—one activity happening after another—lead to peacebuilding and development initiatives that assume that once an activity is completed, it no longer exists as a problem. They call this focus on linear progress “Liberal Political Time,” which they assert is “particularly evident in the ways in which donor investments in peacebuilding quickly wane as policymakers and politicians in funding states shift their attentions away from concerns over conflict and towards traditional development projects” following a peace agreement (Christie and Algar‐Faria 2020: 166). Timescapes and subconcepts like policy time and liberal political time allow the disaggregation and inspection of the practices that have entrenched power hierarchies and remain embedded in the international aid system despite awareness and criticism of the practices.

Timescapes reveal how conceptions of time are imposed. Subconcepts of timescapes like policy time and liberal political time show how specific practices, actions, and institutions impose specific conceptions of time onto others. The ability of Global North agencies—like donor institutions and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs)—to continue to impose their conceptions of time on Global South institutions shows how institutionalized conceptions of time reproduce and entrench power dynamics. Examples of donor actions contributing to the reproduction of timescapes are linear project timelines, limited project implementation periods, and annual budget allocations. Each structure time, accountability, and power, requiring international aid recipients to be accountable to their donors over the populations aid recipients hope to support. A stark example of the imposition of power and accountability through timescapes is the requirement by many bilateral and multilateral donor organizations for individual time sheets. Accountability of every staff hour entrenches oversight and accountability power dynamics. Timescapes, policy time, and liberal political time provide the theoretical frameworks for understanding how power dynamics are institutionalized. These embedded practices of power continue despite donors' genuine commitments to implement localization agendas and increase funding to local organizations.

Administrator Samantha Power's October 2022 pronouncement that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) planned to shift 25% of its funding to local organizations is the most recent and visible commitment to localization (Power 2021). Development institutions in other countries, including Norway, have made similar commitments (Norad 2022). The COVID‐19 pandemic, which challenged the status quo regarding the funding and execution of initiatives, has accelerated a push toward implementation of localization from organizations already working on it, and has created a surge in communications and marketing materials by other organizations as they attempt to position for future funding.

The push for implementation of localization is a response to the continued false starts resulting from these pledges and superficial changes in practice that do not truly meet the goals of localization. The localization agenda is primarily driven by two objectives—a desire to increase aid effectiveness and a moral and ethical drive to do the right thing (Lie 2022). The failure of the international aid community to meet its humanitarian, development, and peace objectives led some to reconsider aid practice in hopes of better meeting donor objectives. In this context, localization is promoted as a strategy for improving project outcomes. The rationale that localization will improve aid outcomes responds to critiques previously presented that donor agendas fail to create local empowerment and, therefore, ownership of the project's success. In addition to its utility in achieving aid objectives more successfully, localization has been touted as more cost‐effective (Manis 2018). Proponents have argued that localization has the potential both to achieve more context‐specific and sustainable solutions, and to do so at a lower cost than the current model of INGO funding. However, Manis has argued that “the literature does not provide robust evidence showing how localisation is cost effective” (Lie 2022: 2).

The moral and ethical argument for localization posits that aid should empower recipients and projects should be designed and led by locals rather than outsiders who lack knowledge of local circumstances and experiences. Lie argues that the ethical argument for localization is supported by many factors, including the need to “minimis[e] external trusteeship, donor paternalism, sovereignty concerns and patterns of dependency” (Lie 2022: 3). Others go further and argue that localization can be an emancipatory process that frees Global South populations from the enforcement of values, norms, and processes that are “disconnected from the everyday experiences of communities” (Christie and Algar‐Faria 2020: 159).

As noted, the concept of localization in the field of international development, and more specifically humanitarianism, is not new. Discussions on international aid have focused on shifting power and participation to local actors for over two decades (Robillard, Atim, and Maxwell 2021; Lie 2022). However, the conceptualization of what it means to “localize” has changed significantly over time, and there is no one set definition of “localization” or general agreement on its practices. Original conceptions of localization framed it as the subcontracting of relationships with local organizations that had minimal decision‐making authority. The next iteration of localization focused on INGOs providing “capacity building” for locally based organizations, with the goal of facilitating their capacity to compete for international aid funding (Eade 2007). In some cases, this strategy was successful. The most recent iterations of localization contemplate the direct transfer of funds to local entities rather than intermediaries or subcontractors (Glennie and Rabinowitz 2012) and the implementation of practices that put local actors in the lead (USAID 2023), with the goal of shifting power broadly and recognizing the role of all involved entities (Patel and Van Brabant 2017).

Many INGOs can point to instances of a local organization with which they have partnered—and whose capacity development they have supported—winning internationally competitive grants. These success stories indicate the efficacy of the capacity development approach and a history of shifting power and thus localizing. Some donors, like the EU, have adjusted their funding mechanisms to recognize these changes. For example, in some calls for proposals, the EU will use a “two‐lot” mechanism whereby one lot is reserved explicitly for nationally registered organizations. The EU's two‐lot mechanism recognizes local organizations' disadvantage if they compete directly with INGOs for funding by ensuring a separate competition for nationally registered organizations. However, this implementation of localization has its own challenges as it remains largely inaccessible because of strict financial requirements like multiple years of audits that most national and local organizations do not have and cannot afford. More recently the “capacity building” framework has been criticized for forcing local organizations to recreate INGO structures regardless of their efficacy and efficiency (D'Arcy 2019).³ Discussions around decolonizing international aid point out that supporting local organizations so they may become replicas of INGOs reinforces colonial power dynamics within these organizations. Additionally, despite embracing the capacity‐building partnership model and the fact that many INGOs can promote success stories, most local organizations that have partnered with INGOs remain unable to secure funds independently. Thus, the capacity‐building model has failed to ensure the development of a robust and self‐sustaining civil society in many countries.

Another recent critique is that the capacity‐building partnership model fails to create genuine opportunities for participation, empowerment, and agency for local organizations. The most recent iteration of localization focuses directly on transferring decision‐making and financial power to local organizations. Building on the recent localization commitments as well as movements discussing decolonization and racism like Black Lives Matter, different initiatives and coalitions such as #ShiftthePower, the NEAR Network, BuildUp, and Re‐Imagining the NGO (RINGO) are pushing for direct financing of local organizations, new models of INGO partnership with local organizations, and participatory granting models. In many ways, these movements and networks are challenging the structure of INGOs.

Despite the history of these efforts and their evolution, annual total funding to local organizations has not been above 3.5% of total international assistance, well below pledges like that of USAID to bring total funding to 25% of their total international assistance (Development Initiatives 2022). The limited incremental change in direct funding to local organizations raises the question of how there can be such a strong commitment to localization and high awareness of the challenges of implementing localization, and yet so little change. This points to the systemic barriers to localization that have been discussed here as well as in the literature on international aid, such as donors' domestic political agendas (Estes et al. 2021), perceived risk factors (Green 2018), and reluctance to change power dynamics.

As discussed, concepts like timescapes, policy time, and liberal political time help us identify the practices that embed and recreate power dynamics. These concepts can be deepened by understanding the processes that reinforce the practices themselves. Organizational processes shape individual incentives, behaviors, and beliefs in ways that recreate the processes that timescapes identify as reinforcing larger power structures. This section engages well‐studied behavioral and organizational dynamics with donor practices identified through the authors' experience within, and working with, various types of donors on funding local organizations directly and localization. Understanding how behavior is shaped—specifically within donor organizational structures—in ways that effectively have limited change and process toward stated objectives provides depth to our understanding of timescapes and allows for focused interventions to address these structural sticking points.

The effects of time on behavioral and organizational dynamics are well studied. Organizational incentives like considerations of employee and organizational productivity and efficiency create incentives. Whether externally imposed or internally established, deadlines create pressures and change how individuals make decisions. Once decisions are made, they tend to reinforce themselves, making it challenging to shift course. Time is a critical factor in shifting attention and interest. In this article, the implications of conceptions of time and how they are applied are studied in regard to how they influence organizational priorities and incentives, the decision‐making process, and the preferences of individuals within these organizations. This section looks specifically at how four concepts: productivity and efficiency, organizational deadlines, the compounding effects of a decision, and individual interest and attention are applied within donor organizations.

Time underlies our understanding of work, productivity, and efficiency. A standard definition of productivity is “the amount of work an individual or group accomplishes within a certain amount of time” (Indeed 2022). Organizations increasingly measure their employees on levels of productivity. Key performance indicators incentivize employees' actions by setting goals and objectives that tap into individual desires for success, growth, and professional advancement. While performance indicators might not specifically reference time, a consideration of time is integral to the focus on accomplishment and efficiency. Underlying time's relationship to productivity and efficiency is a concept of value. Higher output in a shorter time is expected to create more value (Tangen 2002).

As previously noted, donor concerns about the cost‐effectiveness of aid interventions can motivate the adoption of the localization agenda. The idea that donor institutions should be cost‐effective, efficient, and results‐oriented goes back to the beginning of organized philanthropic institutions in the United States, such as those founded by John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie (Katz 2005; Guilhot 2007).⁴ Similarly, government granting, whether to subnational entities or public or private institutions such as universities and nonprofit organizations, has long focused on cost‐effectiveness and efficiency, which have been factors in USAID's project evaluations since the agency was founded (Scott 1952). The importance of cost‐effectiveness and efficiency is communicated to grantees through the idea of maximizing impact, which is a value calculation often associated with increasing outputs and reducing unit cost per output.

One way that donors measure efficiency is by examining their cost per grant—the amount spent on personnel and administration per grant. Many philanthropic institutions realize that the costs of proposal review and grant administration can be greater than the amount of the grant. For example, a US‐based philanthropic institution may spend over $20,000 in staff time, administrative costs, and other expenses related to due diligence and review processes. This leads some philanthropies to conclude that it is not cost‐effective or efficient to give grants that are less than the costs they incur in reviewing and administering the grant (in this example, $20,000). This is an inherent challenge to localization, as localization requires the direct provision of funds to local organizations, which often request small grants—commonly defined as less than $60,000.⁵ Thus, donors' focus on cost‐effectiveness can greatly limit the number of local organizations able to access funding (see Forum of Regional Associates of Grantmakers 2007). Organizations with smaller budgets are removed from consideration if a philanthropic institution decides it is not “worth it” to fund a grant that is less than their grant‐related costs. In conversations with the authors around third‐party funding, a prominent bilateral donor frankly stated that it would never provide $5,000 grants, even if such amount was all that was needed to achieve a local organization's objectives.

Administrative costs are sunk costs; they cannot be recovered in the future. In most cases, the philanthropic model is the same regardless of the amount of the grant. Therefore, an application for $1,000,000 has the same administrative costs as an application for $20,000. Additionally, few philanthropic institutions pay staff based on the number of grants made. Staff and administrative costs are constant and will be paid whether the organization makes many smaller grants, a combination of smaller and larger grants, or only larger ones. In rational economics theory, the bygone principle states that sunk costs are irrelevant to future decisions. However, behavioral economics has shown that sunk costs can influence decision‐making (Haita‐Falah 2017). The sunk‐cost fallacy holds that people's future decision‐making is influenced by their past investments, whether those be time, effort, money, emotion, or otherwise (Haita‐Falah 2017). A decision not to make a $5,000 grant is based on sunk costs and conceptions of time and value. Rather than evaluating the merit of the application or grant, decisions regarding whether to issue a grant are determined by sunk costs. It is ironic that approving more and smaller grants can be considered “not worth it” by philanthropic and bilateral donor staff. However, there is an alternative way to measure productivity in grantmaking: the more grants that can be implemented in a period of time, the greater is a person's productivity. In this equation, assuming the person gets a fixed annual salary without a bonus structure—as is the case with many U.S. private foundations and government agencies—by doing more grants, the person would effectively reduce the administrative costs per grant. However, the argument is regularly made that making more grants stretches staff capacity and reduces staff time on other tasks such as grantee selection, funder coordination, and grantee support and networking (Porter and Kramer 1999). Another argument is that staff are working near capacity and making more grants would reduce their work effectiveness. Each of these arguments is based on the concept of time and not on meeting the needs of those who seek grants, and there is little consideration of restructuring to create an internal system that truly achieves the objectives of the localization agenda. Rarely institutionalized in writing, the authors have spoken with multiple organizations that have indicated internal directives to do “fewer and larger” grants. While some staff might decide to push against this directive, they face more disincentives than incentives. Ultimately, this creates a challenge for many small and emerging organizations, particularly in the Global South. In many cases, a grant of $5,000 can go a long way in supporting people's activities and livelihoods. However, due to the timescapes of donor agencies, there is limited availability of small grants.

Time constraints and deadlines have significant impacts on decision‐making. The relationship between time and decision‐making changes preferences, constrains the ability to evaluate options, and leads to rapid judgments that people would not make without time pressure (Rachlin 1989). Ariely and Zakay (2001) discuss how time impacts our decision‐making using the relatable example of deciding whether to have dessert. In their example, a person says that they will not eat dessert (perhaps for health reasons). However, as the time comes to order dessert, one's understanding of the reward (something tasty) associated with dessert goes up, resulting in people regularly changing their preference and choosing to have dessert despite previously saying that they did not want dessert.

As a deadline approaches, people are more apt to make decisions that more easily result in a reward (or, even more powerful, that avoid a negative interaction) rather than make decisions based on previously stated preferences (Higgins 1997; Briley and Wyer Jr. 2002). With donors, this presents itself as grant decisions that complete a task and thus achieve key performance indicators and result in positive performance rather than following a previously stated preference connected to principles of localization that require more time or are considered harder and not necessarily incentivized by organizations. In most cases, donors increasingly are incentivized to spend their allocated budgets as deadlines near. As the end of the fiscal year approaches, there is a time pressure to “use it or lose it.”⁶ In essence, as is the case across industries, past spending history is used to justify future spending history. The logic is that if you do not spend all allocated funds in one year, you do not need the same allocated funds the following year. Under this pressure to spend, it is easier to pick well‐known organizations or ones that most recently have been brought to one's attention. This is related to the recency effect, which is that people remember information and events more recently presented to them, and to the availability heuristic, which is when we overly rely on information that quickly comes to mind. As the deadline approaches, if the previous work has not been done on due diligence and other required tasks, the donor reverts to more accessible choices that come immediately to mind. In the international aid sector, large organizations are more visible than local and community‐based groups (due to marketing campaigns, social media presence, etc.), increasing the probability that donors will think of large organizations rather than groups that are small and less well‐known. Moreover, without the time or incentive to undertake the more challenging due diligence processes required to approve grants for smaller organizations or those without significant financial accounting histories, donors revert to well‐known and restrictive policies like requiring multiple‐year audits to mitigate the risk of financial misconduct by a grantee.

The effect of deadlines on limiting choice is also connected to how funds are distributed. Program officers at these institutions often realize, as the year‐end approaches, that they must ensure funds are spent. As a result, it is common to see a flurry of calls for concept notes in November by donors whose fiscal year closes at the end of December. This advantages organizations that can quickly respond to such calls. Organizations able to respond are usually INGOs or for‐profit institutions with development staff that also usually have headquarters or offices in the Global North. Local organizations with smaller budgets and staff are unable to respond to these last‐minute calls. This leads to donors funding INGOS and for‐profits in the Global North even though their localization commitments may focus on the Global South.

The effects of deadlines and related pressures are long‐lasting. Individuals' decisions often are followed by a process called “preference consolidation” or “post‐decision consolidation”—when people double down on their decisions by using previous decisions as a basis for future decisions (Hoeffler and Ariely 1999). This is even more prevalent when the decision‐making process involves a difficult trade‐off. As a consequence of preference consolidation, decisions are reinforced through subsequent decisions that lead to consolidated attitudes supporting earlier decisions, however arbitrary they may be. In explaining this behavioral dynamic, Ariely and Zakay state that “the next time [individuals] encounter a similar situation, the outcome of the past decisions will be used as a signal of their own preferences” (Ariely and Zakay 2001: 193).

The manner in which donor–grantee interactions unfold after a grant decision is made further contributes to preference consolidation. In good donor practices, donors and grantees establish relationships that allow donors to understand grantees' programming better, support monitoring and evaluation, and provide connections and opportunities. These relationships further establish proximity that eases access and communication and increases grantees' understanding of donor organizations, enabling them to prepare better for end‐of‐the‐year calls for concepts and other funding opportunities.

In the face of these time and incentive challenges to localization, donors have funded INGOs as intermediaries who sub‐grant to local organizations. While this supports local organizations' access to financing, INGOs—rather than local groups—usually maintain relationships with, and access to, donor organizations. Additionally, many restrictive and time‐bound policies continue to be imposed by donor organizations on INGOs, which pass them on to local organizations. For example, financial risk becomes the responsibility of the INGO. However, many INGOs have minimal financial reserves and limited risk tolerance for financial misconduct. Therefore, to minimize their own risk and meet donor requirements, INGOs impose onerous due diligence and financial conditions on local organizations and—notwithstanding the lack of direct involvement by donor organizations—limits are imposed on the types of local organizations that can receive sub‐grants. Moreover, INGOs rarely are incentivized or instructed by donors to take risks and provide small grants to local or community‐based organizations, thus limiting their and the donors' implementation of localization principles. Both authors have been explicitly or implicitly advised by donors that providing microgrants to community‐based organizations might not be worth the risk. These financial restrictions partly motivated the “capacity building” phase of localization previously discussed.

Many donor organizations also have embraced grantee feedback requesting longer partnerships between donors and grantees and sustained funding, which commonly are considered good donor practices but are not necessarily principles of localization. While in some cases donor organizations have developed longer grant timelines, others have adopted a “renewal” model that gives preference for funding to current grantees over organizations that have not yet received grants. While this type of model has many benefits and plays a role in reducing the starvation cycle of NGOs (Lecy and Searing 2015), when combined with the effects of preference consolidation, deadlines limiting choice, and INGOs' continuing relationships with donors, it can entrench INGOs into donor budgets and reduce opportunities for new grantees, especially local or community‐based organizations, thus limiting the implementation of localization.

Attention and interest are intimately interlinked with time. The phrase “time flies when you are having fun” expresses the idea that low interest reduces temporal awareness and heightened interest increases attention spans (the lengths of time something can hold one's attention) (Brown 2008). Interest in, and attention to, a task instead of thinking about time is the critical factor. Scott W. Brown notes that our subjective experiences of interest reduce attention on time and place it on the subject. Alternatively, waning interest reduces attention on the subject and places it on time. The placement of interest on time leads to perceptions of time slowing down and the feeling that time is dragging.

Slower perceptions of time are related to the watched pot phenomenon. The common saying that “a watched pot never boils” refers to the subjective perception that attention on the passage of time inaccurately increases one's sense of temporal length (Frankenhaeuser 1959). An experiment was conducted in which subjects were, in fact, asked to watch a pot of water boil (Cahoon and Edmonds 1980); the subjects “overestimated the interval compared with the control group. Time for the experimental group appeared to move more slowly” (Brown 2008: 115).

Donors regularly assess the impact of projects. However, the timelines for impact rarely are developed based on the realities of the pace of change within communities. Timelines are often based on grant lengths that have more to do with donor financial processes than realities on the ground, the time constraints of staff, and donors' reporting requirements to legislatures and boards. These timelines for impact are reinforced in both philanthropic and government donor organizations because of their accountability structures. Aid agencies like USAID are required to report to the United States Congress regularly, creating an organizational imperative to show how they have spent money and have progressed in their work. Active philanthropic boards that meet quarterly or annually create the same imperative. These institutions—whether the U.S. government (encompassing USAID) or a philanthropic organization—regularly are discussed in aggregate terms, as if monolithic in their structures, policies, preferences, and implementation. However, the application of timescapes to institutions like the European Union further shows how these organizations are complex and stratified (Holden 2016), and how through temporal dimensions like reporting, power is established and distributed through a “chain,” for example, from a board exercising oversight, to programmatic staff, to a grantee, to a sub‐grantee, and so on.

Pressures to prove impact exacerbate these feelings (Austin et al. 2009). Focusing on monitoring and evaluating long‐term problems can present a picture of limited change or a lack of impact even after years of programming and funding. However, many donor priorities like governance, human rights, violence reduction, and even disease eradication have proven to be ongoing and persistent challenges requiring decades of commitment. Attention to quarterly reporting showing limited progress is related more to donor attention and desires for impact than the realities of the time it takes to address some of these donor priority areas. Combined, the monitoring and evaluation systems and regular proposal review timelines (including “renewal” models) increase attention to the concept of time. Attention on time, particularly in situations where a person might not see significant progress, can contribute to the feeling of donor fatigue.

Related to the phenomenon of donor fatigue is the diminishing of attention and interest over time. As individuals' attention and interest wain or “fatigue” over time, so do donors' interest in and attention to specific topics, causes, institutions, or initiatives. This is due to several factors, including compassion fatigue and other psychological phenomena, a desire to move on to the next task once one is completed (as explained by the concept of liberal political time), and organizational demands with time‐bound progress expectations. Issues like compassion fatigue, which is a consequence of feeling unable to provide appropriate support (Austin et al. 2009), can be exacerbated by feelings of a lack of progress toward physically and psychologically stressful issues (Bride, Radey, and Figley 2007). Feelings of being overwhelmed and unable to make an impact are vital parts of compassion fatigue and donor fatigue (Barnes 2006).

Donor fatigue, like time pressure, appears to reduce one's willingness to explore alternatives and consider multiple options. Waning or changing personal interests can also reduce attention from donors, which is what the more colloquial use of donor fatigue in international aid circles refers to. This has been seen prominently in the changing thematic focus of donors. As there is a shift in priorities from a policy perspective, for example, donors shift their funding priorities. Incentives for impact in a specified period are entrenched by democratic government turnover, some organizations' decisions to institute time‐bound positions, and individual career decisions. Elections and changes in government bring in new leadership and appointed positions. Even in government agencies primarily staffed by career personnel, leadership changes can lead to sweeping priority changes. Some philanthropic institutions like the Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation have instituted an eight‐year limit on employment. This is a noble feature that creates opportunities for new ideas and new people to be given the power inherent in donor organizations. However, it also creates a position deadline and can incentivize seeking out impact during one's term and, thus, how funds are both given out and spent. For example, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States and terrorist attacks in Europe like the Madrid train station bombings, preventing and countering violent extremism received substantial support from United States and European governments but has been reduced as new administrations' priorities arise. The same can be said for the increased focus on humanitarian versus peacebuilding work. For example, there has been a shift away from prioritizing traditional peacebuilding work toward giving more priority to the emergency humanitarian response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Recent excitement and focus on localization can potentially succumb to the same change in priorities and interests.

Changing behavior toward financing local organizations requires understanding how organizational practices based on specific conceptualizations of time entrench and reinforce practices creating friction to change. These practices that make up policy time and liberal political time reinforce the international aid power dynamics by prioritizing Western donor timescapes. There are examples, however, of different social processes and organizational changes that can reduce friction or change individual incentives. This section proposes four potential solutions to promoting localization based on the authors' experiences and what they have observed to be successful in adjusting focus and incentives and in effecting behavioral change: (1) global compacts and performance indicators; (2) changes to internal deadline structures; (3) changing internal organizational measurement and key performance indicators; and (4) using intermediary organizations.

Several global compacts focus on reforming the international aid system and advancing localization, including the Pledge for Change, Grand Bargain, and the Charter for Change. Similarly, there are like‐minded groups like #ShiftthePower, BuildUp, and The RINGO Project. Compacts are voluntary agreements committing organizations to change their internal systems, measurements, and practices; they increasingly have been utilized in attempts to change norms and behavior through multiple mechanisms. First, simply signing on to a compact creates an increased sense of commitment, even for those that already believe in the cause (Werner et al. 1995). Making written commitments to actions is proven to increase active participation and, in some cases, can even induce further positive attitude shifts in favor of the commitment to action (Werner et al. 1995). Second, social pressure is established by joining a group, which effectively occurs when signing onto a compact (Lim and Tsutsui 2012). The group has committed to a series of norms through the framework, and intragroup social pressure is highly persuasive in upholding the commitments. Additionally, competition between organizations within the compact can influence behavior through publicity and public perceptions (Cress, McPherson, and Rotolo 1997). Therefore, the third mechanism of the compact, publicity and public sharing of organizational measurements, can lead to competition between the organizations and fear of public “naming and shaming.”

The UN Global Compact is one of the most studied international voluntary agreements. Research on the UN Global Compact's implementation shows that signing on resulted in organizational behavioral change (Kell 2013). At the same time, the voluntary nature of compacts without any enforcement mechanisms leads one to expect that some organizations will simply try to get reputational benefits from the compact without genuine behavioral change. While this does occur, and many compacts have had limited success, the UN Global Compact shows that compacts can effectively increase the probability of organizational behavior change because of how they engage commitment, social pressures, competition, and fear of negative public perceptions.

As noted above, localization already has several compacts primarily focused on INGO signatories. Additionally, bilateral public donors have arrangements that make similar commitments (including ones like the Grand Bargain they also sign on to).⁷ Skepticism about the arrangements can arise from the number of commitments made and the lack of progress up to this point. Making further strides to enforce the commitments through intragroup and public pressures, such as external monitors, may help advance participation and engagement. For example, the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee has recommendations for civil society cooperation and humanitarian assistance. It uses the mechanisms outlined here to foster compliance and behavioral change. While there is fodder for skepticism, voluntary agreements and compacts have been proven to induce organizational change and norm diffusion. Increasing signatories is one strategy to create greater buy‐in and social pressures. Additionally, utilizing already established forums can help reinforce the dynamics supporting commitment.

Timescapes is a concept that shows how understandings of time are solidified through power dynamics and their implementation in practice. Creating and adjusting norms, as is one of the goals of compacts, is one way to start addressing the entrenched conceptions around which power is structured. Additionally, the compacts aim to address the practices that fall under policy time. Addressing the behavioral dynamics discussed here that reinforce power through policy time can help create opportunities to change structures with limited change. However, compacts and voluntary agreements need to be wary of monitoring and unrealistic implementation timelines associated with the liberal politics time concept. Over‐monitoring and expecting immediate results without corresponding progress can create disillusionment and frustration with the compacts.

Internal end‐of‐year spending deadlines change behavior by leading donors to address the incentives of spending all allocated funds rather than prioritizing local organizations. Time constraints created by the deadlines lead individuals at donor organizations to make easier decisions that are often skewed by the availability heuristic and the recency effect. Individuals will choose those groups that they can think of, are familiar with, and with whom they believe it will be easiest to finalize requirements in the remaining time before the deadline. Removing deadlines is unrealistic, and the deadlines at organizations are often required for other processes to work appropriately. However, deadlines can also be the antidote. Making a precommitment can be an effective way of ensuring tasks are completed in advance. Precommitment is a planning process of making commitments to action in advance of the action beginning. Studies on decision‐making show that people are willing to pay extra to adhere to a process or strategy that helps them remove “vices” or maintain a desired behavior (Ariely and Wertenbroch 2002). Making precommitments and setting penalties, or incentives, that align with agreed‐upon goals, like funding more local organizations, before the process begins can effectively change the effects of the current organizational deadline structures on decision‐making.

Research on these precommitment strategies shows that people are willing to pay more up‐front to make these commitments. In the case of organizations, this can mean spending additional time and resources at the beginning of a process, even if that makes the whole process more costly. Additionally, studies have shown that self‐imposed penalties are effective, particularly when combined with external penalties and social pressures; such studies make a case for attempting participatory commitment and penalty setting within an organizational context (Ariely and Wertenbroch 2002). That people are willing to apply control mechanisms on their behavior at the beginning of a process can be an effective tool for organizations to use to fight against the biases that creep up as deadlines approach. Combined with intragroup social pressures, establishing intra‐organizational participatory processes for creating group precommitments can help to change internal incentives and align behaviors with localization rather than recreating time traps that lead to traditional operations. The multiple effects that deadlines have on organizational practices are a primary cause of the structural challenges discussed throughout this article. Addressing the challenge of deadlines and how it impacts staff incentives and decision‐making has the potential to adjust policy time practices.

Like global compacts and the organizational performance metrics they entail, and like self‐imposed commitments and penalties, organizations can change incentives through personal performance metrics. One strategy to create change is to align personal performance metrics with organizational commitments to global compacts; another is to reinforce self‐imposed commitments through the key performance indicator process; and another is to focus on a mix of short‐term key performance indicators and long‐term performance indicators.

Key performance indicators are most often developed to be reviewed after a year. This process can be adjusted so that individuals are given long‐term goals and the shorter‐term key performance indicators directly align with expected progressive steps toward those goals. Individual organizations have developed localization performance measurement frameworks,⁸ and each of the compacts previously listed has indicators and measurement standards. Aligning organizational performance indicators with team and individual performance indicators can ensure that incentives are aligned across the organization.

Connected to this, there is a need to rethink the incentive structure for staff in both private and public donor institutions. Focusing narrowly on the concepts of productivity and efficiency reinforces power dynamics. Instead, identifying other success metrics and different efficiency forms can change incentives. Additionally, changing performance metrics to focus on the communities that funding is supposed to support rather than organizationally focused goals can help shift the focus, create new norms, and change power dynamics, which will create conditions to implement localization principles. For example, one might look at the ease, accessibility, and efficiency of the grant process from the recipient's perspective as a new measure of success. If incentives were aligned with providing funding that allows local organizations to respond to needs in their communities efficiently, this would result in a system vastly different from the status quo, one in which steps could be taken to address the dominant timescapes present in donor–grantee relations.

Organizational change is a long‐term process, and ultimately, some organizations are not suited for specific tasks while others are. Within the international aid system, donor organizations are not always best placed to provide direct grants to local organizations. As noted in this article, some organizations are highly aware of their positionality and how their organizational priorities and structures are inflexible as to adjusting risk requirements, the monetary size of grants, or taking on additional due diligence processes. This aligns with the view that donor organizations are designed to fulfill the incentives of the organizations, which does not necessarily situate them well to support local organizations.

Organizations that have identified this inflexibility but want to support local organizations can focus on using intermediaries, or organizations that are better set up to provide direct support to local organizations (Peace Direct 2023). Intermediaries are organizations that have connections to both the donor and local organizations and have systems in place to coordinate with both. Many organizations already participating in the global compacts and networks listed previously would fall into this category. By being one step removed from the donor organization, intermediary organizations can work with the donors to develop sub‐granting funding models that are more conducive to the needs and priorities of local organizations without having to go through the process of donor organizational change. This practice is already commonly used across the international aid industry (albeit not with comparably sizeable amounts of funding) and for academic scholarships and fellowships. Given international aid organizations' commitments and their lack of progress, working with intermediaries in the short term while implementing organizational change can help advance the localization agenda and local organization funding while understanding the long‐term process required for organizational change.

However, sub‐granting institutions can face many of the same challenges as donor organizations. Intermediaries are not immune to the challenges presented throughout this article. However, their structures, incentives, and connections do create different dynamics. Donor organizations can further support intermediary practices by helping to push INGOs to innovate in their practices and pilot new models of sub‐granting that better meet the needs of local organizations. Support for pilot processes can inform donor organizational change. One way to support these good practices is for donor organizations to engage with intermediary organizations that have signed on to global compacts and already have begun the process of adopting the measurement and engagement strategies set by the compacts. Donors can create participation incentives, which, in various industries, have been shown to increase signatories and compliance with voluntary agreements (Dawson and Segerson 2008).

The growing pressure that the localization movement is placing upon the international aid system has highlighted the inherent challenges within this system to adapt practices that lead to genuine change beyond rhetorical commitment. A critical barrier to address is time. Donors' timescapes, whether through concepts of productivity and efficiency, deadlines and their implications on decision‐making, or donor fatigue, are all related to structures and incentives created by their institutions' time priorities. At its most extreme, concentration on time has entrenched power dynamics resulting in an aid system focused on short‐term grants that deliver quantitatively measurable results (as defined by the donor) as quickly as possible. This occurs even though it is well understood that industries like peacebuilding and development are long‐term processes built on community cohesion and engagement.

The international aid system has proven unable to make significant changes to its fundamental structure over multiple decades. The limited increases in direct funding from donors to local organizations are emblematic of this. Creating real change will require changing structures and incentives. This article is written based on personal experiences and ongoing engagement with various types of donors. What is clear is that belief is not enough. Even when individuals have a deep buy‐in to supporting local organizations, when time pressures change incentives, people's behaviors change. Considering time as a driving factor of the structures that realign incentives away from changes like increased funding to local organizations is essential to understanding how to create internal organizational reforms and where to target initiatives and recommendations that will position institutions to deliver upon localization commitments.

The solutions presented here offer options that organizations might consider implementing internally or advocating for. The solutions provide ideas that can help organizations for whom the relationship to time presented here resonates and who perceive that such relationship to time may be related to structural limitations within their organization. However, ultimately, the discussion throughout this article is based on experience working in and with organizations focused on increasing funding to local organizations in more reliable, accessible, and efficient ways. By presenting the implications of donors' relationship to time, we hope not to provide settled facts, but to expand the focus within the international aid field on how behavior is shaped by organizational understandings of time and how that entrenches and reproduces power dynamics. Ultimately, we hope to influence a research agenda to interrogate better how donor organizational structures effectively limit or completely stall progress toward public commitments like localization.