When funding shrinks, and the civic space it had pushed open strains and threatens to snap shut, it is the lattice of enduring networks that keeps it propped open. 

Longer term democracy, rights and governance funding is a rare thing. Five-year long, uninterrupted funding is rarer still. The long duration of the funding creates the space to design programs with intention and even allows for experimentation, failure and redirection from lessons learned. It provides the time to build the deep, trust-based relationships required for real behavioral and systems change. 

Originally funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Accountability Lab Zimbabwe’s New Narratives for Accountability in Zimbabwe (NNAZ) was just such a project. It aimed to strengthen civic participation, enhance local governance accountability, and promote citizen-led solutions.

The project engaged more than 730,000 citizens, supported emerging civil society leaders, musicians, and filmmakers, and produced impactful research, music, and films that elevated discussions on accountability at both local and national levels. Among many tangible impacts, the project influenced policy discussions at the parliamentary level and even brought service delivery to long underserved communities in Zimbabwe. Not least of all, nascent organizations emerged from accountability incubators building out the network even further.

Perhaps most crucially, it solidified relationships between community activists, cohorts of filmmakers, artists and young changemakers, state actors, and civil society with a view to endure once funding, that may never return, ended.

Like many others in the sector, the project’s trajectory was abruptly paused in January 2025 and then terminated the following month as a result of shifting U.S. foreign assistance and development  priorities. 

Not only was the rich learning at risk from this abrupt ending, but a loss of trust from governance champions across sectors. Recognising this, Accountability Lab Zimbabwe, with the generous support of the Swiss Embassy in Harare, launched a four-month intervention to ensure formal closure in communities of practice (program alumni and other stakeholders)  and communities of place (program participants at the time of closing), and a structured evaluation to gather lessons.

Programs and Campaign Manager for Accountability Lab Zimbabwe, Beloved Chiweshe shared what responsible program closure looks like, why it’s necessary for learning, and the necessity of stitching together networks of change makers who sustain the work once the program ends. 

What ending well looks like

Dignity & trust

“For some communities, it was the first time that people had come to a meeting organised specifically to announce that the project that they had been working in had ended.” 

A key and necessary effort to both honour the communities we had worked with and tie the loose ends of a network together, seemed not to be a common practice. Meetings to close off programs are often bundled with the start of new projects, with little space to fully absorb the learning, impact and relationships built over the course of the project.

Accountability Lab Zimbabwe (ALZ) held community exit meetings in four out of five Civic Action Teams (CivActs) communities across geographies. These gatherings formally concluded the project, but also to aligned with broader goals such as strengthening local governance, embedding accountability practices, and encouraging sustained civic engagement. The meetings provided a platform for ALZ to announce the project’s completion, thank community members and partners for their contributions, reflect on the achievements, consolidate lessons learned, and discuss strategies for maintaining the project’s outcomes beyond its lifecycle. Across all four meetings, a total of 249 participants attended, including local leaders, Community Frontline Associates (CFAs), civil society representatives, and other community stakeholders.

It was a lesson for us, and the sector at large, that communities who have long shared their most vulnerable challenges, data, and ideas with us greatly appreciated that community exit meetings were convened solely for the purposes of closing off the project. At a time when abrupt funding cuts led to the dissolution of many civil society organizations who had worked with communities over many years, the exit events were a way of ensuring that the trust built through the project was not lost.

Network as institution

“If you end well, it [the network] does not need resources to that extent to keep itself alive.”

The biggest repository of knowledge, skills and network is in the alumni of programs. With the closing of the NNAZ project, alumni were intentionally “graduated” from being connected to programs we ran to being connected, in their own right, to each other and others in the accountability and DRG network.

Through three alumni events, ALZ engaged project participants (alumni), reflected on achievements, and discussed strategies for sustaining impact. They were changemakers from the Accountability Incubator program, socially conscious artists from Voice2Rep, filmmakers from the Film Fellowship, and exceptional public servants who had been honoured as part of the Integrity Icon campaign. The event provided an opportunity for alumni to celebrate the conclusion of the NNAZ project and recognise their achievements, while also co-creating strategies to maintain impact and explore future collaborations. It also offered a platform for networking and relationship-building with civil society representatives from the ALZ accountability ecosystem, including the Bulawayo Vendors and Traders Association (BVTA), The Girls Table, Intwasa Arts Festival, Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE), Amakhosikazi Media, Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA), the National Youth Development Trust (NYDT), and the Christian Legal Society (CLS).

Changemakers that might not have met otherwise, were brought together. The alumni network was inducted into the accountability network more broadly, and threaded across sectors and consolidated using aligned values. 

Credibility & safety

“The sudden and abrupt departure from the ecosystem without any announcement, without any notice is one very quick way of denting the [institution’s] reputation.”

Over five years, ALZ sought to reframe accountability as a shared responsibility rooted in relationships, culture, and collective action. It focused on shifting social norms, amplifying citizen voices and building trust through the kind of positive role modelling and participatory action research that could lead to systemic change. This whole of system approach built on relationships and trust hinged quite significantly on institutional credibility. Institutions calling for positive role modelling would need to embody the behavior change they’re advocating for. Any breaks in credibility within the ecosystem can create mistrust with partners across spheres of work; either in communities, the state, and other civil society players. This not only dents the reputation of an individual organization, but can set back any future work done by other actors in the DRG space – severing ties and weakening the network, leaving governance champions vulnerable.

January’s abrupt funding cuts and shrinking aid more generally, has left those who might have kept themselves secure through that funding vulnerable to bad actors. And when the safe spaces that were created to gather might no longer exist, intentionally solidifying networks of governance and human rights champions across a range of sectors including the civil service, small business, media, arts, traditional and religious leadership and others, can go a long way to making people feel connected and safe.

Adaptive evaluation

“We saw the closeout as a process of looking into the future through the rearview mirror.”

The final assessment of the project used a goal-free, ecosystem-based approach, designed to identify both expected and unexpected outcomes without relying on predefined indicators. It enabled the evaluation to explore the dynamics of change within the accountability ecosystem, emphasising adaptive implementation, sustainability, and scalability of results.

A mixed-methods approach supported the process, combining document review, outcome mapping, and in-depth interviews with project participants, beneficiaries, and stakeholders. Purposive and snowball sampling ensured the inclusion of diverse perspectives, especially from different programme components and geographical contexts. The evaluation aimed not only to collect data but also to understand participants’ lived experiences, emphasising what they found most meaningful or catalytic.

Intentional endings can catalyze new initiatives 

Responsible, intentional and community-oriented exits are meant to open doors, rather than just closing a chapter. The new relationships built between diverse cohort members during the process, and the learnings harvested and shared among communities, became a generative process. While NNAZ has ended, we are incredibly proud to follow the work that our partners and  participants continue to do to move important work forward in Zimbabwe. Ideally, closing out well should be a key priority, and not an option, if we are to build and retain trust-based partnerships with communities. 

Samina Anwary