Oct 31, 2026
4 min read
Development organisations in Guyana are being urged to plan beyond their next grant by building new partnerships, finding sustainable sources of income and demonstrating lasting results.
Zaki Raheem, Senior Director of Programmes at the Miller Center for Global Impact, made the call during the Greater Guyana Initiative’s Stakeholder Forum, where participants discussed development investments and opportunities for sustainable, inclusive growth.
Raheem outlined three priorities for organisations seeking to keep their projects running after initial funding ends: investing in partnerships, exploring new business models and making their impact credible. He encouraged organisations to look beyond familiar networks and consider partners that could help them expand their reach, access expertise and sustain essential services.
Meeting a grant’s immediate requirements, he explained, should go hand in hand with planning for the organisation’s longer-term future. That could mean working with what he described as “unusual suspects”, entities not immediately recognised as potential collaborators.
“Maybe those that you hadn't thought could be a strong partner, or you hadn't actually thought was within your value chain or your community immediately. But some new types of relationships could be built.”
Raheem illustrated this through an agritech incubator programme in Ghana that initially received a one-off grant. Partnerships with universities, law firms, management consultants and commercial farms subsequently helped expand its work. According to Raheem, it grew into the largest agritech incubator in West Africa, training 65,000 young people and launching more than 100 start-ups.
His second priority was for organisations to explore business models that could generate income and cover operating costs, reducing dependence on grants. He said this applies to non-governmental organisations, private businesses and projects established through time-bound funding. Each must understand who benefits from its services, who might pay for those services and how its work can continue.
Raheem shared an example from Namibia, where a civil society organisation used a sanitation grant to provide low-cost, waterless toilets to rural and marginalised communities. As the project progressed, the organisation explored leasing toilets to schools and working with municipalities to establish a revenue stream. It also began renting toilets for events.Raheem said the additional income allowed the organisation to break even and continue serving communities in need.
He urged organisations to assess what arrangements could keep their services available over the next five to 15 years. Depending on the project, these could include public funding, corporate support, service contracts, earned revenue and grants.
His third priority focused on demonstrating credible impact, particularly when seeking new funding or partnerships. Raheem cautioned that counting participants or sharing photographs does not, by itself, establish whether a project has made a lasting difference.
“It needs to be more than a success story. It needs to be more than a few photos. You all need to be thinking about and putting in place now, an impact measurement and monitoring system that's thinking about, are you tracking the right things?”
Organisations should assess whether participants are applying what they have learned and whether communities continue to benefit, he said. Follow-up assessments and consistent monitoring can help establish those outcomes and provide stronger evidence when approaching potential funders and impact investors.
According to figures presented at the forum, the Greater Guyana Initiative has recorded 42 joint initiatives, reaching approximately 250,000 people across all ten administrative regions. Initiatives highlighted included cancer screening services for more than 2,000 women and girls, purified water for 18,000 students through Project FLOW, and training for more than 1,100 poultry farmers.
Raheem encouraged participants to use the forum to identify potential partners, explore different funding approaches and strengthen how they measure results. The goal, he said, is to ensure that development investments continue benefiting communities long after the original grants have ended.
