When I was a teenager, my father once asked me to hand him the newspaper. I tossed it toward him instead of getting up. He stood and picked it up, and he told me: “When you give, give with all your heart.”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. It continues to guide how I think about partnership and responsibility.

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Illustrative. A girl from the Xhosa tribe in South Africa at a classroom desk in the country's rural Transkei region.

For more than 20 years, my work has taken me into places shaped by crisis, resilience and hope. From responding to the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013, to spending nine months in conflict-torn South Sudan, to now living and working for over a decade in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa — I’ve witnessed the full spectrum of humanitarian work, from its finest moments to its deepest shortcomings.

What follows are lessons shaped by experience, mistakes and observation. I share them not as absolute truths, but as reflections offered in the hope that others may learn without having to repeat the same missteps.

Doing good vs. looking good

The first and most important rule in partnership, whether you’re a donor, an NGO or a company, is shared values. It’s easier to build something meaningful with people whose motivations and values align with yours. 

But shared values on paper aren’t enough. The real test is whether those values show up in practice. Do people act with transparency when things get uncomfortable? With humility when they don’t have the answers? With financial responsibility when no one is watching?

It’s easy to write “integrity” into a strategy document; it’s harder to live it.

I’ve seen organizations whose spending becomes so top-heavy that almost nothing reaches the people they aim to serve. The goal isn’t to starve organizations or their teams, but rather to find proportion and transparency, using resources in a way that sustains the people doing the work while keeping the cause always top of mind as the north star.

As for donors, if a donation is only for the PR photo or the “big check” moment and the money takes months to reach the beneficiary — or worse, never reaches them at all — the damage this causes is often invisible at first, but it’s real. Projects stall. Teams lose morale. Communities lose trust. You might move on to the next campaign, but the organization and the people left behind have to pick up the pieces.

This kind of “for show” corporate social investment does more harm than good. When the real goal is the selfie, not the story, the work becomes extractive rather than generous. It’s not giving; it’s taking credit.

Impact is more than numbers

Numbers matter. Governments, donors and reports rely on them. But numbers alone are a poor measure of impact if they are not grounded in real change.

For instance, I’ve encountered organizations that claimed to teach “computer skills” in two-hour sessions to people who’d never touched a keyboard. Photos are taken, attendance recorded, reports written, but participants leave no better equipped than before. 

Often, these practices are not driven by a desire to deceive but by pressure to deliver quick results. When scale becomes the goal, projects are designed to satisfy reports rather than people.

Instead of asking how many attended, we should ask what changed. Did workshops lead to understanding, not just participation? Did mentorship build competency and confidence in addition to leading to employment?

True impact begins when we slow down enough to listen and ask why problems persist. Why young people remain unemployed. Why rural learners struggle to stay in school. Why entrepreneurs need emotional support alongside business training.

Impact is not a statistic. It is a ripple, and ripples take time to appear. 

Overhead and core funding are not luxuries

No organization can survive on project funding alone. Operational costs are not luxuries; they are necessities. Rent, audits, transport, internet and salaries are the foundation that allows work to happen with accountability and consistency.

Behind every project are people carrying the weight of poverty, inequality and trauma. They are often underpaid, overstretched and unseen. Funding outputs without supporting the people who deliver them ignores the true cost of change.

A functioning printer, a reliable car or a project manager’s salary do not dilute impact — they make impact possible. If we want meaningful and lasting change, we must start funding sustainability and the people who make the work real.

Overhead is not waste. It is infrastructure. Without it, impact collapses.

Sustainable change takes time

Some work simply cannot be rushed. Education, agriculture and community development projects require years, not months. Most of our projects require more than one year of funding, yet funders often ask for short-term proposals. The question then becomes what happens after that one year of funding ends.

Short-term funding often disrupts trust just as it begins to form. Communities remember broken promises. Every abandoned pilot project teaches people to be skeptical of the next one.

Lasting change demands patience, commitment and the willingness to stay when things don’t work as planned. If we want to see transformation, not just intervention, we have to be willing to stay in the story long after the photo, the launch and the headlines are gone.

Partnership over power

The strongest partnerships are built on trust, not control. Real partners walk alongside one another, especially when challenges arise.

True collaboration means listening when problems are raised and responding with shared responsibility. It means showing up when things are complex, not only when they are polished.

While money often holds power, impact flows from relationships. When decisions are made together, dignity is preserved and outcomes improve. Real partnership is slow, it’s human and it’s heart-driven. Walking alongside each other is how we build trust — how we make change that lasts.

We’re at a turning point for the humanitarian and nonprofit world, a moment to rebuild trust, remember why we do this work and return to the heart of it all.

If you want to partner, do it with honesty and humility.

If you want to create change, focus on people.

If you want to give, give with all your heart.

Our work is not about perfection, but about persistence. It’s about staying curious, accountable and kind in the face of complexity. It’s about remembering that integrity isn’t a policy but a practice, renewed every day in the choices we make.

When we give with intention, when we walk with others instead of ahead of them, when we listen more than we speak — that’s when real impact begins. Because every honest action, every sincere partnership, every story told with care becomes a ripple, and together those ripples can form a big wave of change.

Galit Cohen is the founder and executive director of Ripples for Change, a nonprofit organization supporting rural communities in South Africa.