At the sharp end of humanitarian response is the final delivery of aid to individuals, families and communities. For people in need, delivery agencies – United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, non-government organisations – are the key element of the humanitarian assistance chain, and quite naturally the recognisable face of international support.
Delivery agencies have managed more than US$36.3 billion of humanitarian aid between 2006 and 2008. Some big NGO alliances mobilise vast resources from private contributors – being individuals, private foundations, or companies and corporations -, and have made more significant contributions to the humanitarian assistance than many individual government donors. This is important but there is much more to delivery agencies than just the volume of money. It is the incredible diversity of delivery agencies that makes a difference. They range from huge organisations working in multiple settings with multisector mandates to single-country organisations with highly focused working areas. They receive, donate and of course deliver, often all at the same time. And they are involved in so much more beyond the direct use of money. They work in advocacy, campaigning, coordination, policy formulation, and more. Their choices of where and when to undertake activities, though in part related to donor funding, are also rooted in their own mandates and priorities, whilst those organisations that raise substantial private contributions have control over substantial flexible funds.
This range of activities, the individual facets of structure or mandate, the variety of roles delivery agencies play, the different contexts within which they choose to work and what they choose to do, all of this matters just as much as US$36.3 billion of aid. For each of these elements determines the path the funding flows down, empowering some to the loss of others, and each choice about who does what determines what a beneficiary might receive.
