Responding Under Pressure: Lessons from MOPAN Assessments on Organisational Adaptation to Reform and Funding Constraints

The evidence extracted from the MOPAN assessments and studies considered in this review suggests the critical question is not whether MOs adapt, but whether adaptation is determined by strategic design or emerges through attrition, with several instances of organisational adaptation falling between these two approaches and becoming more attritional when implementation remains under-resourced. This distinction is particularly relevant in 2026, as ambitious reform agendas, such as the Humanitarian Reset and the New Humanitarian Compact, are being pursued in times of pronounced uncertainty over future funding levels and the availability of sufficient core resources to adequately implement them.

Adaptation by design is characterised by deliberate strategic choices, sufficient resources for implementation, meaningful transfers of authority, and clear roles and responsibilities within individual MOs and across the system.

    Strategic steering

• Funding and reform pressure can lead to beneficial change and improvements in MO effectiveness when MO leadership, with the support of governing bodies, makes explicit choices about priorities, trade-offs, and which capabilities to protect.

• Prioritisation and restructuring are most coherent when the operating model follows mandate and strategy, rather than available projectised income.

   

  Adequate resourcing

• Several of the adaptations considered in the MOPAN assessments required both transition/design-specific resources and continuous supporting resources. Digitalisation and the shift to cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and innovations in programming, including preparedness, anticipatory action, accountability to affected populations, and effective local partnerships only deliver durable gains when MOs are able to finance staff, training, maintenance, and country-level implementation.

• Flexible and predictable funding, combined with steering and support from governing bodies, gives MOs room to invest in these adaptations for the long term.

   

  Substantive transfer of power 

• Decentralisation and localisation improve responsiveness only when decision-making authority and sufficient resources move together. Delegating implementation or budget reductions without commensurate support transfers responsibility rather than power.

   

  Clarity of roles and responsibilities

• Internally, clarity of roles across the HQ, regional, and country levels reduces duplication and ambiguity. 

• Externally, clarity of roles and complementarities within the UN system and across the HDP Nexus, based on each MO’s comparative advantage, improves division of labour. 

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.

• Abrupt or uncertain cuts compress decision time and favour immediate expenditure reduction over strategic prioritisation. Country offices may be left to ration programmes and staffing without consistent organisation-wide guidance.

• MOPAN evidence shows that workforce reduction, coupled with decentralisation to low-cost locations, is the most readily available cost-saving measure. While such short-term budget adjustments may generate immediate fiscal savings, they also risk undermining institutional memory, reducing oversight, constraining programme delivery, and weakening an MO’s capacity to effectively implement and deliver its strategy (Mapping of MO’s Response to the Current Funding Environment, 2025, p. 23).

   

  Structural hollowing out

• Workforce reductions, especially among field-based and less secure staff with temporary contracts, can reverse decentralisation and erode technical expertise, institutional memory, staff wellbeing, oversight and surge capacity. Under-resourced reforms then widen the gap between commitments made at the corporate level and operational practice in the field.

   

  Devolution without empowerment

• Seven organisations in MOPAN’s 2025 mapping of the impact of funding cuts reported reduced resources channelled to local actors (Mapping of MO’s Response to the Current Funding Environment, 2025, p. 21). Adaptation by attrition can shift, delivery, risk, and difficult choices downwards at the country and local level without transferring resources or influence. The result may be a smaller system that is not more coherent, accountable or locally led, and is less able to implement the reforms that were meant to improve it.

The considerations below draw on this review’s conclusions to suggest practical actions for MOs, MOPAN members, and other stakeholders in support of the priorities of the Humanitarian Reset under conditions of marked resource uncertainty.

Define: prioritisation as a collective and strategic endeavour

For MOs 

• Establish a system to measure the impact of hyper-prioritisation, including its effectiveness in prioritising life-saving assistance, but also any trade-off or negative consequence stemming from the de-prioritisation of longer-term objectives;

• Identify the capabilities that must be protected and give country offices clear guidance and escalation routes for implementing cuts in programming and country level staff. 

For MOPAN members and other stakeholders 

• Provide, where possible, predictability with regards to funding decisions and communicate prospective funding contractions early to enable MOs to plan, prioritise, and manage workforce adjustments.

Deliver: protect fair and effective programming practices 

For MOs 

• Ensure the operational capacity needed for cash assistance, anticipatory action, and accountability to affected populations is not disproportionately reduced when available resources contract.

For MOPAN members and other stakeholders

• Realign funding incentives with reform objectives, for instance by providing appropriate funding for rapid response and anticipatory action as well as for accountability to affected people

• Ensure funding reductions preserve programming capacities and expertise on cash assistance, anticipatory action, and accountability to affected populations built over several years.

Devolve: transfer power and resources, not only implementation responsibilities and risks

For MOs

• Pursue localisation objectives in restructuring and efficiency-related decisions, for example by applying the principle of subsidiarity more systematically and consulting local actors on proposed measures; 

• Ensure that direct funding and institutional-cost recovery for local partners is not disproportionately affected by cuts; 

• Where possible, transfer meaningful decision-making authority to national and local partners, while clarifying risk sharing and duty of care.

For MOPAN members and other stakeholders 

• When making large contributions to UN entities, require transparent onward-funding arrangements, fair overheads, and meaningful local participation in governance of funded programmes. 

Defend: safeguard people and sustain trust

For MOs

• Protect PSEAH, anti-fraud, aid-diversion, data-protection, investigation and accountability capacities and mechanisms when implementing budget cuts;

• Apply proportionate, risk-based controls, and promptly communicate serious incidents to governing bodies, donors, partners and affected people.

For MOPAN members and other stakeholders

• Fund safeguarding and oversight as essential delivery costs.

Enablers: build collective operational capacity

For MOs 

• Clarify complementarity of roles, division of labour and transition points between humanitarian, development – including MDBs - and peace actors - particularly in protracted crises – based on comparative advantage.

• MDBs: Develop appropriate crisis and fragility strategies and frameworks and use dedicated instruments to sustain national systems and essential services, strengthen nationally owned early warning and analysis capacities, and finance preparedness, anticipatory action, resilience, and recovery.

• Expand shared services and mutual recognition and present full life-cycle business case to secure donor support and internal buy in. 

MOPAN members and other stakeholders

• Require multilateral organisations to clearly articulate their comparative advantage in crisis anticipation, prevention, response and recovery in relation to other actors; align funding with comparative advantages. 

• Protect shared services and integrated procurement and supply chains from agency-level cuts. 

• Use governing bodies to support mutual recognition and system-wide uptake of shared services, coordinated procurement, and integrated supply chains. 

The findings of this review of MOPAN evidence provide a starting point for considering how multilateral effectiveness may evolve as the humanitarian system responds to a more constrained and ever-changing operating environment. The next two outputs of the MOPAN Insight Study take this analysis forward by examining both the immediate organisational response to current pressures and the longer-term implications for the roles of MOs play within the system. 

The second output will focus on the 2025 funding contraction and the following reform initiatives. It examines how these pressures are affecting MOs operating in humanitarian crises, how organisations are adapting, and the choices and trade-offs involved. In doing so, it considers not only changes within individual organisations, but also their implications for the performance of the humanitarian system.

The third output will shift the perspective from organisational adaptation to comparative advantage across the humanitarian system. It will identify core functions that need to be performed for the needs of people in crisis to be met and will consider how MOs are positioned to perform these functions. This will provide a basis for reflecting on where MOs add distinctive value and how roles and responsibilities across the system might evolve as resources become more constrained.