Outcome report - Progress Acceleration Workshop: Enhanced Quality Funding through Reduced Earmarking, Multi-Year Planning and Funding

Building on the recommendations made at the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting in June 2019, the co-conveners of the Enhanced Quality Funding workstream, Canada, UNICEF, Sweden, ICRC, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and UN OCHA, organised a one-day workshop in Geneva to agree on practical strategies and solutions in order to accelerate progress against the Grand Bargain multi-year and flexible funding commitments. On 19 September 2019, more than 50 attendees (58) participated in a full day of discussions that included presentations on two studies commissioned by the Co-conveners to frame discussions.

Over the course of this workshop, workshop attendees participated in breakout discussions on the following topics:

Donor representatives discussed the hard constraints, barriers, and opportunities for further progress to increasing multi-year funding and progressively reducing earmarking.

Separate breakout groups consisting of UN agencies, field representatives, NGOs, ICRC, and IFRC discussed the barriers for first-level recipients to passing on or cascading quality funding to implementing partners.

Three mixed breakout groups discussed:
o Definitional issues in reporting multi-year and flexible funding;
o The current status and workstream opportunities to advance multi-year planning; and
o Opportunities to increase quality funding outside of the steps envisaged in the commitments.