In 2001, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) established the Democratic Governance Thematic Trust Fund (DGTTF) which is the primary mechanism through which donor partners channel non-core contributions to UNDP’s activities on democratic governance. The main function of this funding mechanism is to provide country offices with discretionary funds to explore innovative approaches in democratic governance in politically sensitive environments and within the areas of inclusive participation, responsive institutions or international principles.

In response to country demand and in alignment with the UNDP Strategic Plan Outcomes in the context of democratic governance, the DGTTF has approved since its inception, approximately USD 113 million across 750 country projects through the annual competitive call for proposals to UNDP Country Offices. Through strong support to projects in LDCs, and in particular through the call for proposals for the 2010 and 2011 tranches which placed priority on projects with a focus on MDG acceleration, the DGTTF has helped position UNDP at the forefront of strengthening the links among democratic governance, poverty reduction and achievement of the MDGs.

The results of the 2007/2008 independent evaluation indicated that the DGTTF has been successful as a “venture capital fund”, promoting innovation in an area of development where it is both extremely important to make progress and notoriously hard to do so. The evaluation confirmed that successful innovations have almost always led to major programmes of reform and capacity-building, supported not only with UNDP core funding but even more often by other donors and the governments concerned, thus reinforcing DGTTF’s role in fostering strategic partnerships and facilitating mobilization of additional resources in democratic governance (“Executive Summary, Evaluation of the DGTTF”, p.7). The DGTTF has actively responded to key recommendations of the evaluation, including the development and implementation of a Lesson Learned Series whose purpose is to continuously assess the level of innovation, catalytic effect and success of DGTTF projects, and to feed and share experiences into UNDP policy and programming at national, regional and global levels.

Country projects remain the principle area of activities funded by the DGTTF. Towards this principle investment, the DGTTF also funds regional and global initiatives -via UNDP Regional Service Centres and the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre- that support country projects in terms of policy guidance, strategic programming, oversight and monitoring, learning, analysis and knowledge sharing, etc.

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