By Wahome Ngatia
Ann Kobia has spent a decade watching the ground shift beneath the NGO sector. As Human Resources and Partnerships Manager at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), she’s had a front-row seat to an industry-wide transformation that’s forcing organizations to make impossible choices: maintain mission or maintain headcount.
The answer, increasingly, is that they can’t do both.
With major donors retrenching and funding streams drying up, Kobia’s role has evolved from traditional HR management into something closer to organizational triage. She advises leadership on strategic workforce planning in an era of permanent uncertainty—deciding who stays, who goes, and how to do more with less without sacrificing impact.
“The old model is broken,” she says bluntly.
The New Employment Calculus
The shift is fundamental. NGOs are abandoning the luxury of specialized roles and embracing what Kobia calls “strategic role consolidation.” Translation: one person now does what three used to do.
“We have to look at what roles can be combined,” Kobia explains. But it’s not just about combining similar functions. It’s about fundamentally rethinking job architecture. Multiple responsibilities get redistributed across the organization simultaneously, creating hybrid roles that would have seemed unthinkable five years ago.
Consider fundraising—once the domain of development specialists. Now it’s baked into every major position. Program officers write grants. Communications managers cultivate donors. Project leads manage budgets with an eye toward sustainability. The specialized fundraiser is becoming an endangered species.
The Rise of the Project Economy
Permanent positions are going the way of the pension plan. PACJA and organizations like it are pivoting toward project-based contracts that align workforce size directly with funding realities.
“We hire people based on the projects we undertake,” Kobia says. “And we’re truthful and clear from the beginning—your engagement ends with the project’s conclusion.”
It’s a seismic shift from headcount-driven growth to what she terms “value-based employment.” Organizations are shedding the vanity metric of staff size in favor of lean, mission-aligned teams. Better five excellent people working on fundable initiatives than fifteen talented people working on programs that can’t sustain themselves.
The implications ripple beyond organizational charts. This model demands a different kind of worker: adaptable, entrepreneurial, comfortable with impermanence. Job security, in the traditional sense, is increasingly a fiction.
The Hardest Decisions
Letting talented people go because of funding constraints rather than performance failures is the part of the job that keeps Kobia up at night. But she’s learned to reframe the narrative.
“Releasing talented people opens opportunities for others who may be equally talented—if not more so,” she notes. It’s not callousness; it’s pragmatism born of necessity. Leaders who can’t make these difficult calls risk taking their entire organization down with them.
The sector’s contraction is real, but it’s also revealing. Organizations that survive this period will emerge more focused, more efficient, and perhaps more effective than their bloated predecessors.
How to Win in the New Normal
For professionals eyeing NGO careers or trying to future-proof existing ones, Kobia’s advice is unambiguous: become indispensable.
Develop a signature competency. In a crowded field, you need to be known for something specific—exceptional grant writing, innovative program design, donor relationship management that actually moves the needle. Generalists without a distinguishing edge will struggle.
Make noise about your achievements. The myth of humble service is charming but career-limiting. Use LinkedIn, industry platforms, even TikTok to showcase your work. Headhunters can’t find you if you’re invisible. Your impact deserves visibility, and your career depends on it.
Commit to perpetual reinvention. Kobia’s own trajectory illustrates this principle. An undergraduate degree in communications became the foundation for credentials in organizational management, project management, and human resources. She’s now pursuing a doctorate in social entrepreneurship. Each qualification expanded her value proposition and career resilience.
“You have to keep acquiring skills the marketplace needs,” she emphasizes. In a sector undergoing structural transformation, yesterday’s expertise quickly becomes obsolete.
The Bigger Picture
The NGO employment landscape is undeniably challenging. Some will read this as a cautionary tale about a sector in decline. But there’s another interpretation: an ecosystem shedding unsustainable practices and emerging stronger.
The organizations surviving this transition are learning to do what they preach—operate efficiently, maximize impact per dollar, and remain laser-focused on mission over institutional preservation. For talented professionals willing to embrace flexibility, develop hybrid skill sets, and demonstrate measurable value, opportunities still exist.
They just look different than they used to.
The question isn’t whether the NGO sector has a future. It’s whether you’re building the capabilities to have a future in it.
