The Role of Donor Agencies in Promoting Standardized Project Management in the Spanish Development Non-Government Organizations

Project management is an autonomous discipline that is applied to a huge diversity of activity sectors and that has evolved enormously over the last decades. International Development Cooperation has incorporated some of this discipline’s tools into its professional practice, but many gaps remain. This article analyzes donor agencies’ project management approaches in their funding mechanisms for projects implemented by non-governmental organizations. As case study, we look at the Spanish decentralized donor agencies (Spanish autonomous communities). The analysis uses the PM² project management methodology of the European Commission, as comparison framework, to assess and systematize the documentation, requirements, and project management tools that non-governmental organizations need to use and fulfill as a condition to access these donors’ project funding mechanisms. The analysis shows coincidence across donors in the priority given to project management areas linked to the iron triangle (scope, cost, and time) while other areas are mainly left unattended. The analysis also identifies industry-specific elements of interest (such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals) that need to be incorporated into project management practice in this field. The use of PM² as benchmark provides a clear vision of the project management areas that donors could address to better support their non-governmental organization-implemented projects.