Over the years, there has been growing recognition of the importance of making development more locally led. The Bridgespan Group's multiyear research on community-driven change (CDC) has shown that when funders and nonprofits bring the communities they serve on board as partners rather than simply beneficiaries, it leads to more lasting and equitable change.  

Consequently, funders are becoming more aware of the need to fund more community-driven organisations. However, what they often find it challenging to access how committed nonprofit or intermediary organisations are to being community-driven.  

To help with this process, we spoke with 50-plus funders and nonprofits to develop a checklist that funders can use as part of their due-diligence process to assess the degree to which organizations bring a CDC orientation to their work.  

The checklist is not meant to be used simply as an auditing tool. Instead, funders can use the questions in this resource as a starting point to engage more deeply with their grantees and understand their approaches to development work. It can also help funders understand how to support nonprofits in advancing their CDC efforts.