Beyond Good Intentions: Why PRA Exists
The Philanthropy Reform Alliance (PRA) was founded by development practitioners in response to a growing recognition that many of the persistent challenges in development are not only technical but rooted in how systems, relationships, and decisions are structured in practice. This thinking builds on a central insight from Professor James Thomas’s book, But I Meant Well: Unlearning Colonial Ways of Doing Good, that good intentions do not automatically translate into good outcomes, particularly when the systems and assumptions that shape practice remain unchanged.
Despite global commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Grand Bargain, and broader reform efforts aimed at shifting power and improving effectiveness in development and humanitarian systems, a persistent gap remains between policy ambition and lived reality.
At the same time, the development landscape is undergoing important shifts driven by financial constraints, increasing pressure for more sustainable impact, and growing demands for locally led and contextually grounded solutions. These shifts present both urgency and opportunity to rethink not only how development is funded, but how it is practised
It is within this evolving context that PRA emerged as an Africa-led initiative founded by development practitioners seeking to bridge the gap between intention and lived reality. It creates space to pause, reflect, and critically examine how development systems function in practice, while also supporting the co-creation of more equitable pathways toward sustainable development.
At the heart of PRA’s approach is the recognition that systems are not abstract structures—they are made up of people. They are designed, maintained, and reproduced through human decisions, behaviours, and everyday practice. The ways people act within these systems are not neutral; they are shaped by personal values, knowledge, assumptions, experiences, and institutional norms that often remain unexamined.
This is why PRA Focusses on development practitioners. It starts from the understanding that transformation cannot happen outside the people who design, operate, and sustain systems. These systems persist not only because of structures, but because of the everyday decisions, judgements, and assumptions of those working within them. Understanding how practitioners think, decide, and act is therefore essential to understanding how systems are reproduced and what it would take to shift them in practice.
What Success Looks Like
For PRA, success is not defined by immediate structural overhaul, but by tangible shifts in how development is understood, practiced, and experienced.
We see this work as impactful when practitioners move beyond compliance with evolving funding models to actively interrogate and reshape how those models are enacted in practice—drawing on their own lived realities, constraints, and agency.
Success looks like practitioners developing a deeper, more critical understanding of how power, privilege, incentives, and institutional norms shape decisions and partnerships; becoming more conscious of their own roles within these systems; and engaging in more honest, grounded conversations about power, trust, and accountability.
It is reflected in subtle but meaningful changes in day-to-day practice—how decisions are made, whose knowledge is valued, how partnerships are navigated, and how accountability is understood and enacted.
Ultimately, PRA contributes to a gradual but necessary reorientation of development practice towards:
Solidarity over charity
Partnership over patronage
Community leadership over external control
Our Mission
Our Vision
Our Core Values
Local Leadership First
CBOs and community actors are strategic co-designers, not implementing arms. Their knowledge, priorities, and accountability downward to communities must be centered in development practice.
Honesty Over Performance
We create spaces where practitioners can name the contradictions of their work without professional consequence, we believe that honest reflection preconditions genuine change.
Practitioner Solidarity
We recognize that development workers are often trapped within institutional incentives that make it difficult to act on their own values. We work alongside practitioners, not against them.
Trust-Based Partnership
Relationships between funders and grantees, between INGOs and CBOs, between practitioners and communities cannot be reduced to compliance mechanisms. Trust must be actively built and mutually practiced.
African-Centered Knowledge
We affirm the validity and power of African-generated knowledge systems, including Ubuntu philosophy and community-led epistemologies, as legitimate foundations for development practice.
Practice What We Preach
PRA holds itself to the same standards it advocates for: transparency, shared ownership, community accountability, and continuous self-reflection are non-negotiable features of our own organizational culture.
We believe meaningful change begins with honesty, is sustained through trust, and is driven by those closest to the work.
Our Approach
Surface
Examine how Philanthropy and Development are lived, experienced, and negotiated in everyday contexts
Unlearn
Question, challenge, and disrupt extractive, hierarchical, and performative ways of working, and begin to let go of inherited practices that no longer serve equitable and just change.
Reframe
Explore alternative ways of relating, partnering, leading, and making decisions grounded in trust, solidarity, and local leadership.
Enable Practice Change
Translate reflection into action through shifts in behaviors, systems, relationships, and institutional practice.