Delivery agencies
Source: GHA Update, February 2010
Non-government
organisations (NGOs)
United Nations (UN)
International Red
Cross and Red
Crescent Movement
WHAT WE DO
GATHER INFORMATION. CLARIFY DEFINITIONS.
We are gathering information directly from
delivery agencies in order to understand their
different definitions of what constitutes
humanitarian assistance, and their different
organisational structures, mandates and ways of
delivering the aid to those in need.
MAP REPORTING PATTERNS
We are aiming to clarify the interchanging nature
of the income and expenditure categories and to
develop clear and comprehensive definitions that
will allow us to track funding volumes and trends.
ANALYSE DELIVERY PRIORITIES
We are gathering detailed information on financial
flows and analysing the geographic and sector
focus of delivery agencies. We are also looking at
how and where delivery agencies spend their
humanitarian assistance – from both government
and other sources.
PROVIDE ACCESS TO DATA
We are systematically collecting financial data
from a sample of representative delivery agencies
and presenting it in a consistent and accessible
format.
TRACKING THE HUMANITARIAN DOLLAR
At the sharp and most important end of
humanitarian response is the final delivery of aid to
individuals, families and communities. For people in
need, delivery agencies are the key element of the
humanitarian assistance chain, and very often the
only recognisable face of international support.
The humanitarian world is a complex one because
of the very different contexts where assistance is
needed and delivered. It is further complicated by
the complex interrelation of the organisations
delivering aid and dependent on country and
disaster context, as well as the relative strengths of
an organisation and its mandate. These
organisations also have various and changing roles
in both coordination and delivery, where each may
act as a donor, recipient or deliverer of aid, often in
the same context.
We are highlighting the key role of delivery
agencies both as ultimate providers of humanitarian
assistance and as relevant financial contributors to
the humanitarian aid budget.
Collecting timely, comparable data that allows us to
track the humanitarian dollar from donor to recipient
is a challenge!
FAST FACTS
• In 2008, the 22 governments of the
Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and
the European Commission directly disbursed
just under 58% of their humanitarian aid to
multilateral organisations and UN agencies –
we have some unravelling to do in order to find
out exactly how much was then implemented
through NGOs or other partners.
• In 2008, DAC donors spent 23.8% of their
humanitarian aid through NGOs, civil society
and the Red Cross and Red Crescent
Movement ... we need to find out how much of
this was directly implemented and how much
was spent by these ‘recipient’ delivery agencies
through other partners.
• Some of the big NGOs make more significant
contributions than many governments.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), for example,
spent US$496 million on humanitarian
assistance in 2006 – if it were a country that
would have made it the third most generous.
• For every US$10 spent in 2006, US$4 was
spent by NGOs.
GLOBALHUMANITARIANASSISTANCE.ORG

THE DATA CHALLENGE...
The complexity and scale of delivery agency
humanitarian income and expenditure makes
comprehensive representation of the delivery
system difficult. Moreover, different
organisations have different views as to what
constitutes ‘humanitarian’ expenditure.
The UN is made up of many different agencies,
and there are literally thousands of NGOs
around the world. These are diverse
organisations, with different mandates,
capacities, financial systems and reporting
periods. Data has to be sought on an
organisation-by- organisation basis.
All of this diversity has to be translated into a
single comparable understanding of the income
and expenditure of humanitarian delivery in a
given year. Consolidating this into a single
format for meaningful research is complex.
... AND OUR RESPONSE
We have established a methodology that allows
us to deal with some of these data challenges.
We used the methodology to carry out some
initial analysis for 2006 and 2007 and are now
working on gathering data for 2008, 2009 and
2010.
We gather what we know about government
funding through UN agencies and NGOs from
the OECD’s Development Assistance
Committee (DAC) statistics and from UN
OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service (FTS).
Velina Stoianova, Policy Advisor | Keward Court, Jocelyn Drive, Wells, BA5 1DB, UK
Tel +44 (0) 1749 671343 | Fax: +44 (0) 1749 676721 | velina.stoianova@devinit.org
WHAT WE CAN FIND OUT QUITE EASILY: FUNDING THROUGH THE UN AND NGOS FROM THE EUROPEAN
COMMISSION AND THE 23 DONOR GOVERNMENTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE COMMITTEE (DAC)
Statistics published by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) allow us to see how its
members channel the humanitarian component of their official development assistance (ODA). This data
is published in the December following the year of expenditure.
WHAT WE CAN FIND OUT LESS EASILY #1: FUNDING THROUGH THE UN AND NGOS FROM OTHER DONOR
GOVERNMENTS
Analysis of UN OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service (FTS) allows us to see how other (‘non-DAC’)
government donors channel their humanitarian expenditure. Reporting to the FTS is voluntary – so we
may not be capturing the totality of their expenditure. (The data captured by the FTS and the DAC is not
comparable without many caveats.)
WHAT WE CAN FIND OUT LESS EASILY #2: PRVIVATE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UN AND NGOS
There is no central source of information on how much non-governmental funding goes to the UN and
NGOs around the world for humanitarian purposes. The only way to do this is to approach agencies
directly and to ask them for this information.
WHAT WE CAN FIND OUT LESS EASILY #3: EXPENDITURE BY THE UN AND NGOS ON ‘HUMANITARIAN’
ACTIVITIES
There is no central source of information on how much UN agencies and NGOs spend on humanitarian
delivery, as well as where they spend that money. The only way to do this is to approach agencies
directly and to ask them for this information.
We try to complement the documented picture
of government funding to the UN and NGOs by
finding out about private contributions – and
how this money is then spent – based on a
study set of 19 of the largest and most well
known individual NGOs, coalitions and
groupings of national societies, which comprises
114 organisations raising funds in 23 countries.
GHA Update, February 2010
April 2010