4.2 Non-governmental Organization Consortia

NGO consortia are becoming increasingly popular in humanitarian action. Consortia are a special form of collaboration between organizations with the same donor. These organizations come together as partners, operate within a single financial and reporting framework and develop common objectives (Krishnan, 2017, p. 459). The number and composition of the members, the modes of cooperation and the management structures of consortia can vary significantly, even within a single humanitarian context.

The general idea behind the formation of consortia is to reduce duplication of humanitarian services, increase the geographic coverage of interventions and share and complement existing expertise among its members (Macharia, 2016, p. 3). However, the effectiveness of consortia on the delivery of humanitarian action is under-researched. Evidence suggests that they are most successful when partners define common objectives, ensure effective leadership, develop an understanding of capacities, structures and systems within different organizations, demonstrate reliable commitment to their objectives, systematically allocate time to consortium activities, ensure transparent and effective communication, clarify roles and responsibilities, agree on member contributions for external funding, find common approaches to reporting and monitoring, and allow members to change or end activities that are not working (Emergency Capacity Building Project, 2012).

In Cox’s Bazar, disability-focused organizations joined consortia with INGOs and NNGOs to strengthen their capacity on inclusive humanitarian action. Within these projects, the disability-focused organizations provided technical support and capacity-building to other consortia members, which operate in various sectors (for example, health, nutrition, WASH, education, protection) and across different camp areas. While the role of disability-focused organizations varies within partnerships and types of consortia, it typically includes implementing a range of activities, such as: awareness-raising and training sessions on disability inclusion and inclusive humanitarian action; technical support and capacity-building on inclusive programming; and monitoring, evaluation and learning, with a focus on the collection, analysis and use of disaggregated data on persons with disabilities and on the identification of barriers and enablers to inform inclusive programming.