Overheads, or indirect costs, are essential for humanitarian organizations, helping to fund core institutional functions such as risk management, internal controls and building up reserves for organizational sustainability. Most donors provide a fixed overhead rate that often falls short of covering the actual operating costs of their direct partner organizations – let alone those of their local and national partners. This practice can undermine equitable partnerships and limit the financial viability of locally led humanitarian response. 

In this online session, Kaela Glass, Head of Humanitarian Financing Policy and Geneva Partnership Unit at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), will discuss this tension. She will explore questions such as: 

  • How can partners’ indirect costs be covered within current donor constraints? 
  • What are good practices for overhead sharing between intermediaries and local and national actors? 
  • Why do we need additional, separately budgeted overheads, rather than split allocations between intermediaries and their local and national partners, to make locally led response viable? 

Kaela will be joined by Pierre Vischioni from the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) as well as Ghaida Nawam from Nusaned, sharing addtional insights.

Speakers 

Kaela Glass is Head of Humanitarian Financing Policy and Geneva Partnership Unit at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Kaela has been with NRC since 2018 covering NRC’s partnerships with UN agencies and the Swiss government, and leading NRC’s work on humanitarian financing policy. Over the last 15 years, she has also worked with other humanitarian organizations, such as USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance on their disaster assistance response teams, with OCHA’s assessments, planning and monitoring branch, and as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator in Ethiopia’s Somali Region. Kaela holds a Master of Public Policy and a Master of Social Work from the University of Minnesota.  

Pierre Vischioni is a Senior Policy Advisor with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) in Geneva, focusing on humanitarian policy, advocacy and strategic partnerships. He brings over 20 years of humanitarian experience, including more than 17 years in field-based operational and leadership roles across contexts including Ukraine, Iraq, Myanmar, Palestine and the South Caucasus. His current work includes humanitarian financing, pooled funds and funding quality. Pierre represents DRC on the OCHA Pooled Funds–NGO Dialogue Platform Advisory Group (PAG) and serves as DRC’s Grand Bargain focal point. He holds graduate degrees in Humanitarian Action from Aix-Marseille University and International and European Law from the University of Exeter. 

Ghaida Nawam is Co-Founder & Executive Director of Nusaned, a Lebanese non-profit community-based humanitarian and development organization. Ghaida co-founded Nusaned in 2020, in the middle of Lebanon’s collapse, because she believed local organizations could lead, not just implement. Nusaned works across food security, shelter, WASH, livelihoods, and emergency response, with UN agencies, INGOs, and donors as partners, not gatekeepers. Localization isn’t a concept Ghaida advocates for from the outside. She lives it, building systems, fighting for space at the table, and proving every day that Lebanese-led organizations can meet the highest standards of accountability, coordination, and impact.Ghaidaa also serves as National NGO Representative on the OCHA Pooled Funds NGO Dialogue Platform Advisory Group (PAG).

This event is part of