Mapping of Multilateral Organisations' Response to the Current Funding Environment - 2026 Stocktake

The funding crisis that started in 2025 has continued, although the pace of global ODA reductions is expected to slow. Organisations report realised income reductions as well as expectations of further pressure, and several are planning against lower-resource scenarios extending into future funding cycles. OECD projections point to a further decline in 2026 and continued downward pressure beyond it, but at a slower rate than in 2025. Some organisations experienced smaller near-term reductions than initially expected, including through exceptional contributions, reserve use, diversified funding or other buffers, however this reflects temporary mitigation or changes in the composition of funding rather than an improvement in the underlying funding position. The outlook remains uncertain.

Impact remains uneven across different types of multilateral organisations. The most significant consequences are visible among UN entities and other organisations that depend heavily on voluntary or assessed contributions, where lower funding has translated directly into workforce reductions, programme cuts and changes in institutional capacity. Funding pressure is also spreading to global funds and partnerships, principally through smaller future programme envelopes and tighter allocation choices. MDBs have so far experienced the contraction differently: ordinary-capital operations are less directly exposed to annual ODA reductions, while recent replenishments suggest that some concessional windows have been comparatively protected through donor allocation choices and greater leverage. 

The type of funding being reduced is a key determinant of where the impact is felt within organisations. Findings show that reductions in earmarked funding are associated most strongly with programme delivery and technical assistance, while reductions in assessed and flexible core resources are more closely associated with policy, normative, evidence and other institutional functions. Organisations are seeking to mitigate these pressures through donor diversification, philanthropic and private-sector funding, pooled and vertical funds, co-financing and other resource-mobilisation approaches. In some organisations, alternative sources and mechanisms have offset part of the shortfall, but the evidence does not yet show that they can do so consistently or at sufficient scale. They may also provide less flexibility or predictability than the resources they replace.

Short-term cost-cutting measures are increasingly giving way to more structural organisational readjustments. Hiring freezes, expenditure controls and other immediate containment measures remain in use, but organisations are increasingly combining them with workforce restructuring, consolidation or relocation of functions, shared services, digitalisation, changes in programme portfolios and more deliberate prioritisation of organisational roles. In several cases, these measures are changing organisational structures and operating models rather than just reducing expenditure.

The evidence collected for this mapping shows more clearly that funding contraction is reducing programme reach and workforce, but also institutional capabilities, although the cumulative system-wide picture remains incomplete. Organisations are supporting fewer people, countries or activities in some areas; reducing the amount, frequency or quality of support in others; and protecting selected priorities by scaling back technical assistance, evidence, surge capacity, partner support or other enabling functions. Humanitarian organisations are concentrating increasingly scarce resources on the most severe needs, while normative, policy and knowledge functions are also being narrowed in several organisations. However, they still provide only a partial account: the evidence does not capture systematically what activities were never initiated, which programmes were not expanded, what needs went unmet, or the cumulative effect of reductions in institutional and system-wide capacity.

Cost-cutting and organisational adjustment measures are increasingly being packaged as reform implementation. Under UN80, this is most visible in shared and common services, digitalisation, consolidation, relocation and process simplification, many of which pre-date UN80 or were accelerated by financial pressure. Under the Humanitarian Reset, funding constraints are shaping implementation through sharper prioritisation and simpler planning, while progress on broader objectives such as localisation, clearer division of labour and stronger country leadership is more uneven.

The more structural elements of reform have not kept pace with organisational-level adjustments and efficiency measures. Decisions on what organisations protect, reduce or discontinue are increasingly informed by their self-assessed comparative advantage, but they are not yet being made through a system-wide assessment of division of labour or the capacity the multilateral system needs to retain. This is consistent with the slower progress of UN80 Workstream 3 work packages where many proposals on programme and structural realignment remain under development, and with reform of the global health architecture, which is only beginning to address roles, comparative advantage and financing. The result is therefore clearer and sharper prioritisation within individual organisations without a corresponding system-wide redistribution of functions and capacity.

In 2025, MOPAN identified a set of implications to be considered by Member States and Multilateral Organisations as reform discussions moved forward. These remain valid and are reinforced by the 2026 findings. For organisations, the 2025 report called for efficiency and restructuring measures to be aligned with mandate priorities, coordinated with other entities, and designed to protect core policy, knowledge and evaluation functions, while supporting localisation and partnerships. For Member States, it emphasised the need for a shared vision of system-wide coherence, predictable and quality funding, monitoring of the cumulative effects of organisation-level measures, and use of independent evidence to inform the sequencing of reform.

The 2026 stocktake provides a clearer picture of how funding reductions are affecting organisational capacity and how adaptation is interacting with wider reform agendas. The implications below therefore build on the 2025 recommendations, focusing on the additional actions now needed from Member States and governing bodies, and from multilateral organisation management, as restructuring and system-wide reform move forward.

For multilateral organisations

• Base restructuring on the capabilities needed to deliver the organisation’s mandate and comparative advantage. Workforce, footprint and programme decisions should identify which functions need to be protected and where another actor is demonstrably better placed to deliver. This extends the 2025 recommendation to align restructuring with mandate priorities by requiring organisations to consider their role in relation to the wider system.
• Consider the systemic impact  of reducing or withdrawing from activities. Before reducing or exiting a function or location, organisations should assess how the change may affect the work of other actors, overall coverage and essential system functions. Such changes should be planned in dialogue with multilateral, national, local and non-governmental partners to minimise disruption and avoid compounding reductions elsewhere..
• Demonstrate whether adaptation measures are delivering the intended reform result. Management should monitor not only savings from restructuring, relocation, digitalisation or shared services, but also effects on service quality, expertise, country support and organisational capability.

For MOPAN members and other governors and donors

• Establish what capacity and reach remain in the system before taking further structural decisions. The evidence now shows reductions in programme coverage, technical expertise, normative functions, crisis-response capacity and country presence, but there is no consolidated picture of these changes across the system. Member States and other members of governing bodies should require organisations and system-wide reform processes to map what has been reduced or discontinued, where capacity remains, and where several organisations may be withdrawing from the same functions or locations. This should inform the next phase of UN80 structural and programme realignment and other system-wide reform processes.
• Accelerate rationalisation based on comparative advantage, while protecting the core functions the system still needs. Further consolidation should be based on a system-wide assessment of comparative advantage rather than separate organisation-level cuts. UN80 structural changes and programmatic realignments provide an opportunity to move from individual prioritisation towards clearer decisions about which organisations should lead, support, share or exit particular functions. Similar analysis will be needed as reform of the global health architecture develops. Rationalisation should identify the capabilities that need to be preserved across the system.
• Align funding type with the core functions expected to be sustained. Targeted or one-off contributions can help prevent the closure of individual programmes, but they do not replace flexible and predictable resources that allow organisations to maintain core expertise, evidence, normative functions, crisis-response capacity and other institutional capabilities. Funding decisions should therefore consider both the volume and type of resources provided, particularly where Member States expect organisations to remain resilient while restructuring.
• Assess reform against its intended objectives, not simply the measures implemented. The 2026 evidence shows the closest alignment between organisational adaptation measures and reform shared and common services, digitalisation and consolidation under UN80, and hyper-prioritisation and simplification under the Humanitarian Reset. Member States should assess whether these measures actually reduce duplication, preserve service quality and capability, strengthen localisation or clarify roles, as relevant to the broader reform objectives. Cost savings, smaller structures or narrower programmes should not in themselves be treated as evidence of successful reform.

Adaptation by attrition is characterised by reactive contraction under unpredictable resource constraints, in which immediate cost reduction takes precedence over strategic prioritisation, eroding capabilities, transferring risks downwards to the local and country level, and weakening reform implementation. Short-term and tightly earmarked funding can reinforce these dynamics by limiting MO’s ability to reallocate resources, protect core capabilities, and finance organisational change over time.

The 2026 stocktake provides a stronger evidence base on how multilateral organisations are adapting to sustained financial constraint, but several questions require continued monitoring. Some effects can only be understood through longitudinal analysis rather than a single stocktake.

Further analysis could examine what activities were never initiated, expanded or scaled because resources were unavailable, alongside reductions that are directly observable; whether workforce restructuring, relocation and changes in geographic presence affect service quality, technical capacity and institutional knowledge over time; whether reported efficiency gains remain positive once transition, restructuring and investment costs are taken into account; and whether functions or geographies vacated by one organisation are absorbed elsewhere or contribute to cumulative gaps in system coverage and capacity.