At its core, the multi-year Grand Bargain commitment focuses on responsive humanitarian action. It sets out two separate expectations for multi-year planning and funding: firstly, that it better aligns humanitarian and non-humanitarian programmes, and secondly, that the benefits of multi-year funding are experienced throughout the implementation chain. While these expectations may be shared across Grand Bargain signatories, it remains unclear how they can simultaneously be achieved. They have proven complex as standalone goals, and the interplay between them may hinder combined progress. Four key issues emerged from interviews with donors and aid organisations relating to the scope and limits of multi-year humanitarian funding.

First, by far the largest tension remains in balancing the decision to respond to current unmet needs versus future anticipated ones. Humanitarian response is historically post-factum. A shift from a more immediately reactive approach to a more proactive one, which in part seeks to better address longer-term needs, is bound to intersect with non-humanitarian activities. How far beyond the immediate humanitarian remit multi-year approaches can reach will be defined by a prudent balancing act. In addition, donors’ own structures have implications for the types of grants they can award. For many, their humanitarian departments have the mandate to respond to immediate need and have therefore historically provided short-term funding. This can prevent the alignment of immediate humanitarian outcomes with longer-term development outcomes, due to a lack of clarity as to who holds internal responsibility for addressing longer-term needs in crisis settings. Some donors noted that they are seeking internal synergies to address this. However, aligning priorities driven by immediate need with the commitment to pursue longer-term outcomes remains an outstanding challenge.

From an aid organisation perspective, multi-mandate organisations reported that multi-year humanitarian funding has increasingly supported the alignment of their humanitarian and non-humanitarian programmes (stabilisation, recovery, migration or broader development). For such organisations, strategies at both institutional and country levels will span multiple years and may already include humanitarian and non-humanitarian outcomes. The receipt of multi-year humanitarian funding is reported to enable greater adaptability in the delivery of such strategies and to assist in achieving humanitarian and non-humanitarian outcomes.

Second, humanitarian organisations reported new initiatives through which they have explored links with non-humanitarian organisations. There is a perception that cross-mandate partnerships may tap into already finite humanitarian resources. However, new partnerships may not require humanitarian funds, as is reportedly the case in Jordan and Lebanon, where organisations work with the World Bank to support national governments, or in Syria, where organisations work with the Islamic Development Bank and UN Development Programme.

Third, certain sectors require continuous and long-term investments. Donors and aid organisations agree that investments in certain areas should be sustained beyond annual funding cycles. Such areas may be clusters in their own right, such as protection or education, or cross-cutting sectors, such as gender or the environment. In such instances, predictable, multi-year funding can support responses that take a longer-term view and can better achieve intended outcomes. However, very little sector-specific data was available in relation to multi-year funding and this is an area that requires further analysis.

Finally, it was reported that multi-year UN-coordinated plans have enabled aid organisations to align their own strategies to these overarching plans. However, these multi-year plans are not in place in all protracted crises, and the absence of country-wide multi-year frameworks can prevent the deeper coordination of responses.