A government entity can have skilled staff, adequate budgets, and a clear mandate — and still fail to deliver. Capacity gaps are real, but they are rarely the only constraint. What determines whether existing capacity turns into results is the surrounding architecture: whether incentives reward performance, whether accountability is built into how a system works, and whether institutional design holds over time. For funders who want to invest in an impact that will reach population scale, that is where the contribution can be more catalytic.
This was the through-line of the Global Philanthropy Forum’s “Governing in Flux” Connect Call, where Avnish Gungadurdoss, CEO and Co-Founder of Instiglio and Ana Cristina Avilés, Director at Instiglio, joined Ana Patricia Muñoz, Executive Director of International Budget Partnership to continue the conversations held at the Forum’s 2026 Global Philanthropy Leaders’ Summit on accelerating delivery and forging new partnerships in a changing global landscape.
Strengthen systems, don’t replace them
Governments hold the mandate, the reach, and the resources to deliver public goods at scale. No parallel structure funded by philanthropy can replicate that. The opportunity for funders is therefore not to build alternatives for the government, but to strengthen the conditions already in place that let public systems perform, understanding that those conditions must be tied to incentives and accountability, rather than technical capacity alone.
Four implications for funders seeking government-owned impact at scale
1. Fund inside government systems, not around them. Public systems already hold the infrastructure, workforce, and budgets that population-level impact requires. The higher-return question for funders is not how to build an alternative model and later hand it over, but how to improve performance within the systems that already run at scale.
2. Treat accountability as a design input, not an add-on. Systems fail when incentives are not aligned with outcomes. Accountability works through institutional ownership, political commitment, and feedback loops as much as through the incentives themselves, and embedding it while a system is being designed is far more durable than retrofitting it later.
3. Invest in the accountability ecosystem, not only in government-facing programs. Transparency and responsiveness do not emerge on their own. Civil society organizations generate evidence, elevate lived experience, and create pressure for reform. Funders seeking durable change should resource that ecosystem alongside their work with public institutions.
4. Fund alignment, not isolated fixes. Governance outcomes are shaped by how incentives and institutions interact over time, not by discrete problems of efficiency or corruption. Durable reform depends on aligning internal leadership, external accountability, and system design at once; a higher bar and a different funding posture than backing a single intervention.
Looking ahead
The Global Philanthropy Forum has compiled the Summit session and the Connect Call into its first GPF Insight Edition, “Working with Governments: Philanthropy’s Role in Building Public Impact,” with session recordings, a synthesis of the dialogue, and curated resources for funders.
For funders ready to act on the four implications above, we invite you to dive into our latest report with Spring Impact and LGT Venture Philanthropy, “Scaling with Government: Government’s Perspective on What Nonprofits and Funders Need to Do Differently“. This publication takes a look at how public decision-makers actually adopt and scale solutions, and what that means for how philanthropy designs, funds, and partners. Stay tuned for our coming content.
Our gratitude to the Global Philanthropy Forum for the invitation, to the International Budget Partnership, Afrobarometer, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and Devex for sustaining spaces for these conversations, and to every leader who joined the call.
