Abstract

This article highlights difficulties that humanitarian organizations encounter juggling the expectations of their own organization and the donor community. Drawing on World Vision Canada’s (an NGO) case, we found that aligning their work to local priorities of beneficiaries, collaborating locally and gender mainstreaming are still wishes. Soliciting and reporting on funds within single project-based logical models is challenging. Also, a growing move towards General Budget Support (GBS) to increase national governments’ control over aid threatens their religious agenda. For effective aid uses, this article encourages developing Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs) to guide development efforts and slowly adopting GBS while utilizing program-based funding approaches, actors’ comparative advantage and gender sensitive staff.

Key words: International aid effectiveness, humanitarian organizations, World Vision Canada, NGOs, poverty reduction.