Attachments
Executive summary
Humanitarian crises create a precarious environment for those affected, requiring rapid and effective action. At the same time, limited funding and resources force humanitarian organizations to explore new ways of operating. The many organizations involved must therefore work together and coordinate their efforts in order to optimize the disaster response according to the assessed needs. Such coordination represents the cornerstone of an effective response, but it must be well-planned and efficiently executed to make the best possible use of scarce resources.
In the dynamic landscape of the humanitarian sector, coordination takes various forms of joint initiatives, ranging from common services to collaborative partnerships that enable multiple organizations to pool their available resources for improving their supply chains. Over the past two decades, some humanitarian organizations that have gained expertise in supply chain management have expanded into service provision, offering a range of common services in procurement, transport, and warehousing to other humanitarian organizations. In the meantime, different initiatives have also emerged to facilitate collaborative partnerships and alliances among organizations, enabling them to work with each other in pooling their resources together. Most of these initiatives aim to increase pooling informally through the voluntary participation of organizations in collaborative partnerships and alliances. Nevertheless, a recent initiative named hulo requires a commitment from organizations for formal engagement within a cooperative framework. Within this cooperative, hulo fosters alignment among member organizations, enabling them to capitalize on their collective economies of scale and combined bargaining power within the supply chain.
Resource pooling among organizations poses significant practical challenges, mainly due to the need for greater inter-organizational integration of supply chain activities. Consequently, this report first identifies the resources most accessible to pooling and examines the barriers linked to such resource pooling. Furthermore, employing hulo as an illustrative case study, the report explores the influence of actors—including donor agencies and the private sector—within the humanitarian ecosystem on the trend towards resource pooling among humanitarian organizations. The insights presented in this report are based on a survey of 57 experts from entities involved in joint initiatives for supply chains. The survey results were then discussed by 14 supply chain professionals representing various organizations, donor agencies, and the private sector; and this report presents their opinions on the survey findings.
This report indicates that although humanitarian organizations have not consistently adopted resource pooling practices, they are more inclined to pool transportation and warehousing resources. Conversely, the pooling of procurement resources and administrative capacities, such as staff and office space, is markedly rarer. Correspondingly, several barriers have impeded the widespread adoption of resource pooling. These barriers include challenges to ensuring the feasibility of pooling resources among multiple organizations, compliance with donor requirements, the misalignment of internal protocols that hinder cross-organizational collaboration, fear of losing control over resources, a lack of trust, dependence on personal relationships, the lack of baseline data for impact measurement, and an emphasis on cost-efficiency as a sole benefit of resource pooling—all of which require time and a behavioral change to be resolved.
According to our research, a clearer definition of different roles of actors involved and their strategic focus and mandate is needed. Furthermore, the community has to gain a better understanding of the ecosystem behavior and mechanisms, and the impact of resource pooling. For example, donor agencies started to increasingly advocate for and support resource pooling. Subsequently, they may consider revising grant structures to offer funding mechanisms that are more flexible, reduce duplication and reward potential efficiency gains (e.g., by allowing organizations to re-invest cost savings to further strengthen their supply chain capacities). Humanitarian organizations and their joint initiatives on the other side have to identify their core competencies, sharpen their strategic focus, develop sustainable business models, and put more emphasis on how they can complement each other. Lastly, the private sector has to be better integrated not only through their Corporate Social Responsibility but also in commercial terms. Joint initiatives bear tremendous potential to engage with suppliers if multiple requests can be consolidated.
In conclusion, this report emphasizes the importance of strategic alignment among humanitarian organizations, donor agencies, and the private sector regarding resource pooling. However, it is important to note that coordination involves various types of joint efforts, including common services and resource pooling. For example, the cooperative framework offered by hulo is one, albeit new approach, among others that aims to facilitate the pooling of resources among humanitarian organizations. From this perspective, humanitarian organizations have a range of joint initiatives to engage with based on their needs assessment in order to improve their supply chains. Therefore, gaining a comprehensive understanding of these joint initiatives is crucial for discerning how each one addresses the distinct operational needs of humanitarian organizations. This understanding will also highlight the potential future risk of different joint initiatives duplicating their business models and competing as they expand. This report emphasizes that key actors in the humanitarian ecosystem must engage in regular dialogue and consultations to effectively support each joint initiative when it proves beneficial.