Do we have to publish how much of our funding goes to local partners?

Only if you have signed the Charter for Change, and even then the commitment is about publishing, not the website. Its commitments page says "Publish the amount or percentage of funding that is passed to NNGOs", and the full charter text puts that figure in public accounts and IATI data. Most partners will look on a web page, so publish it there too, with the year and basis beside it. The localisation row of the section checklist tags it Conditional for that reason.

Is a become-a-partner page worth having if we rarely take on new partners?

Yes, if it tells the truth. A page saying you are not seeking new partners this year, and when you expect to look again, answers a question a local organisation would otherwise have to ask someone inside. Without any page, the only way in is knowing someone already. The become-a-partner row lists what the page carries.

Does FCDO funding require a page about our consortium?

No. FCDO's branding guidance says implementing partners on ODA-funded programmes must use the UK International Development logo, including on websites: a duty to acknowledge the funder. A page describing who leads the consortium and what each member does is best practice, and the consortia row sets out what it carries.

What Local Partners Look For on an INGO Website

Q: How should partners complain about us?

Through a route that names who reads the complaint, with that reader outside the line that controls the partner's funding. Core Humanitarian Standard guidance says organisations working with partners should agree how they will raise and handle complaints, including against each other. The fields every complaints route should state are in complaints and speak-up pages .

Q: Should we list every partner we work with?

No. Name the partners who have agreed to be named and whose safety allows it, and say on the page that others are not named for their security. FCDO's branding guidance allows an exception where identifying UK support would endanger the people a programme serves and its staff, and the same reasoning applies to a partner list. The decision belongs to the partner and whoever holds security responsibility, not the web team.

Key takeaways

No UK law requires an international NGO to publish partner-facing pages; the duties that exist come from the voluntary Charter for Change and from individual funding agreements.
Charter for Change signatories commit to publish the amount or percentage of funding passed to national NGOs, and the charter places that figure in public accounts and IATI data rather than on a web page, which is where most partners will look for it.
Charter4Change's 2025 Spotlight, a self-reported survey covering 2024 with 32 complete responses, found only half of reporting signatories publishing their accounts publicly or through IATI, so a published funding share with its basis stated is still unusual.
A route in for local organisations needs its criteria, an expression-of-interest route and how long each step takes, including when an organisation will hear if the answer is no.
Core Humanitarian Standard guidance says organisations working with partners should agree how they will raise and handle complaints, including against each other, so a partner route must let partners complain about the NGO itself.
Some partners cannot safely be named, and FCDO's branding guidance allows an exception where identifying UK support would endanger people, so redaction is a decision made before publication and reviewed when the context changes.

Summary

Local partners read an international NGO's website for the terms of the relationship: how partners are chosen, what the NGO pays towards their running costs, how much of its funding reaches organisations like theirs and what they can do if they are treated badly. None of those pages is required by UK law; the duties that exist come from the voluntary Charter for Change and from funding agreements. This post sets out what a partner-facing section carries, from partnership principles and open calls to consortium roles and a complaints route that covers the NGO itself. It also covers the partners a website should leave unnamed for their safety, and who keeps each page true.

The Short Answer

They look for the terms: how you choose partners, what you pay towards their running costs, how much of your funding reaches organisations like theirs and what they can do if you treat them badly.

A partner-facing website states those terms in public:

partnership principles and an overhead policy
a route in, with criteria and timelines
open calls for sub-grants
consortium roles, named plainly
a complaints route that covers you

It also leaves some partners unnamed, on purpose, and says why.

Most international NGO websites are written for the people who fund partnerships. Partners read the same pages, looking for themselves.

The partner rows of the section checklist give each page its own entry. No UK law requires any of them. Where a duty exists, it comes from a voluntary charter or a funding agreement, and each section below says which.

Principles, and What They Cost

The Charter for Change is a voluntary set of commitments that international NGOs sign to shift humanitarian funding and decision-making towards local and national organisations.

Its eight commitments include "Reaffirm principles of partnership". The full charter text names those principles: Equality, Transparency, Results-Oriented Approach, Responsibility and Complementarity. Neither says they must be published on a website.

Publishing them is still the obvious first page. Christian Aid's partnership policy page sets out seven principles, starting with "Partnership is mutual", and links the full policy. The page was loaded on 30 September 2026.

It does not say what Christian Aid pays towards a partner's running costs or how a partnership ends: the two questions a partner is most likely to bring.

The overhead policy

The charter text commits signatories to "pay adequate administrative support". A page that states the policy turns that phrase into something a partner can hold you to:

whether partners receive a share of indirect costs
on what basis
whether it applies to every grant

I would publish the rate as well as the policy. "Adequate" is a judgement a partner can only make against a number.

How Much Reaches Partners

The charter's transparency commitment reads "Publish the amount or percentage of funding that is passed to NNGOs". The full text places that figure "in our public accounts" and "to the IATI standard", the open data standard for aid spending.

It does not mention a web page, but a partner is unlikely to parse an IATI file. A web page is where most readers will look.

Publication is patchier than the target. Charter4Change's 2025 Spotlight is a self-reported survey of signatories covering 2024. It drew 32 complete responses, and a quarter of signatories did not report. It found that:

those who reported "sent a weighted average of 27% of humanitarian funding directly to national partners", against the charter's 25% target
"only half of reporting signatories publishing their accounts publicly and/or through IATI"

CBM Global is one public example of the figure published openly. Its Charter4Change page reports against each commitment; under "2025 Progress at a Glance" it gives €3.56M total humanitarian funding, €2.69M (75%) channelled to local and national partners and €61,963 invested in capacity strengthening. I loaded it on 30 September 2026 and have not checked how the figures were calculated.

That caveat is the page's real requirement: a funding share means little without its basis. Beside the figure, state:

the year
what the percentage is a share of
what counts as a local or national partner

Replace it when the next year's figure is reported. It is the same discipline as a where-your-money-goes page: a number a reader can trace, not one they have to trust.

A Way In for Organisations You Do Not Know Yet

A become-a-partner page is the one most international NGO sites lack. Without it, the only way in for a local organisation is knowing someone already inside. The page needs four things:

which kinds of organisation you partner with, and where
the criteria you assess against
an expression-of-interest route
how long each step takes, including when an organisation will hear if the answer is no

Open calls for sub-grants

Each call states:

its status (open, closed or next expected)
who is eligible
the overhead policy that applies
the reporting it demands
when decisions are made

Neither the charter nor FCDO's counter-fraud standards require calls to be published; they govern how sub-granting is done and reported. Publishing the calls is how you show the process is fair.

Keep closed calls up with their dates, so the next applicant can see the rhythm.

Language and data

Both pages are read by people for whom English may be a second or third language. A route in that exists only in English is open to fewer organisations than it claims. Which pages exist in which languages, and who keeps translations current, is covered in multilingual website governance.

The expression-of-interest form also collects information about organisations and the people who run them. Decide who reads it and how long it is kept before it goes live.

Consortium Roles, Stated Plainly

Joint programmes are where credit goes missing. A consortium page should say:

who leads
who holds the contract with the funder
what each member does
whose name goes on the results

The charter's equality commitment is to "Address subcontracting and ensure equality in decision-making". A page that presents partners as delivery agents under one organisation's banner says the opposite, whatever the partnership policy claims.

Funder rules here are narrower than they look. FCDO's branding guidance says implementing partners on ODA-funded programmes "must use the UK International Development logo", including on "websites (eg on home page or a page listing donors)".

That is a duty to acknowledge the funder, set by the funding agreement, not a duty to describe the consortium. The partners are the ones who need that.

A Complaints Route That Covers You

Guidance on the Core Humanitarian Standard says "Organisations working with partners should agree on how they will raise and handle complaints (including against each other)" (CHS guidance notes, 2018).

The last three words are the ones a partner reads. A route that lets communities complain about partners, and never lets partners complain about you, is a monitoring tool. It is not accountability.

A partner route uses the same fields as any other (audience, languages, anonymity, timescales, escalation and who reads it), set out in complaints and speak-up pages.

One field matters more here than anywhere else. A partner complaining about the programme manager who controls its next grant needs a reader outside that line of funding, named on the page.

Who You Leave Unnamed, and Why

Some partners cannot be named. The charter commits signatories to include local actors as spokespeople "when security considerations permit". FCDO's branding guidance allows an exception where identifying UK support would "endanger the lives, safety and security of the people who benefit from the programme and staff". The same reasoning applies to a partner directory, a map or a case study with a place name in it.

Redaction is a decision made before publication, not a correction after it:

Agree with each partner whether and how it is named.
Have someone with security responsibility review the list.
Look again when the context changes: a partner that could be named last year may not be safe to name now.

Names rarely leak from the directory itself. They leak from an old press release, a report PDF, an image caption or the location data inside a photograph.

Say on the page that some partners are not named for their security, so an absence reads as care rather than concealment.

Who Owns It

These pages draw on programmes, finance, communications, security and country offices, so they drift. Give each a named owner and a trigger:

Funding share. Changes when the year's figure is reported.
Calls. Status changes on the closing date.
Partner list. Reviewed whenever a context changes.

Where country offices publish their own partner content, what they control and what the centre sets is the question federated website governance deals with.

I would also ask each partner to check the page that describes it before it goes live. They are the readers most likely to spot what is wrong.

A partner reading your website is checking you, much as you check them. It wants terms it can rely on, a door it can use without an introduction and a route it can use against you if it has to. Your partnership policy says what you believe. The website shows whether a partner can hold you to it.

What This Post Does Not Cover

This is about the website: which partner-facing pages to publish, what each carries and who keeps it true.

It is not advice on localisation practice, on how to calculate a funding share or on security risk assessment. Those belong with your programme, finance and security leads.

The documents a partner's own due diligence asks for (registration, accounts, safeguarding, fraud and sanctions policies) are a separate pack, covered in what an NGO's website can answer before FCDO due diligence.

It does not describe any partnership Socialectric has been part of; the examples are public pages, loaded on the date given.

About Socialectric

Works with

Credentials

The promise

Reviewed on

What Do Local Partners Look For on an International NGO's Website?

The Short Answer