Managing Transitions · Matt Thomson

When the funding ends, what actually breaks?

I work out which parts of a programme can transfer to partners within twelve months, and what liability stays behind after handover.

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The GambiaUgandaKenyaTanzaniaTunisia

From the UK INGO Transition Reporting Review 2026

What 23 UK international NGOs actually commit to when they hand work over.

5 of 23

put a figure against money moving to partners.

Six gave a handover timetable separate from their own redundancy process. Four said how anyone would know if the transition worked.

Coded from each organisation's own published documents. Every score traced to a quotation.

Read the study   Or scroll through it

Advisory

Four ways in.

01 Aid-dependency exit designHandover frameworks that move networks off donor grants without breaking delivery. → 02 Outcomes & evidence architectureTurning activity data into longitudinal outcomes a donor can rely on. → 03 Organisational & governance advisoryIndependent evaluation of structures, boards and practitioner-researcher partnerships. → 04 Political economy & localisation analysisRapid governance-risk analysis for fragile and parallel systems. →

Philosophy

Localisation has to mean something, or it's just paperwork.

Too much of what gets called localisation is administrative relocation dressed up as empowerment. The reporting burden moves south. The funding rules and the veto stay exactly where they were. I don't call something local ownership unless the power moved with the paperwork, and I don't treat local actors as passive until a donor grants them some.

Read the longer version

The Engagement

Transition Exposure Review

Two weeks · Fixed fee · No day rate

You are closing an office, consolidating into hubs, or handing a programme to partners. The reduction is planned. The transfer usually is not.

  • Which functions can transfer within twelve months, and which cannot
  • The single points of failure that sit with you: banking, compliance, certification, the donor relationship
  • Residual liability after handover: employment, safeguarding, registration, assets, records
  • What a funder would need to see before accepting the plan
  • A costed sequence

Every organisation is at a different point in this, so the shape of a review gets worked out in a first conversation, not picked off a list. If a review isn't the right thing, I'll say so on the call and you'll have lost half an hour.

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Writing

Recent posts, pulled live from Substack.

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