Keeping the lights on, and keeping HR practices legal while they do it.

When USAID and PEPFAR pulled funding in 2025, it wasn’t just programmes that took the hit. It was people. NPOs and NPCs had to retrench staff fast, often with HR teams stretched across five donor reporting requirements and zero budget for a proper Section 189 process. That’s not a competence problem, it’s a resourcing one. But the CCMA doesn’t care why the process fell short, only that it did.

The result: referrals, Labour Court findings against organisations doing genuinely good work, and in a few cases, closures that a compliant process could have avoided.

This isn’t really a funding story. It’s a capacity story. The sector needs HR partners who understand donor funded structures specifically: contract volatility tied to grant cycles, governance gaps on boards, and how to run a defensible process when the money disappears with no warning.

If you’re on a board or in HR at an NPO and you’re not 100% sure your last restructure would survive a CCMA challenge, let’s talk. Drop a comment or send me a message, happy to walk through it.