Equitable and sustainable funding for community-based organisations in global mental health

Community-based organisations working in mental health are essential for supporting wellbeing globally, particularly in areas where other services are scarce. Such organisations are uniquely attuned to local needs, challenges, and priorities, often established and led by members of a particular community themselves. Thus, community-based organisations provide culturally relevant services and programmes within familiar environments by trusted providers, whereby community participation is central to their implementation. However, existing global health funding mechanisms hinder community-based organisations from accessing resources to sustain their work, instead favouring large, professional organisations, often partnered with academic institutions in high-income countries. At present, the global health funding landscape is built on priorities, processes, and definitions of funders in the Global North, leading to the disproportionate scrutinisation of community-based organisations in the Global South (we use the terms Global South and Global North while recognising their geographical inaccuracies and that these divisions indicate the geospatial distribution of power and resources, both historically and at present, and colonial histories).To facilitate change, important questions should be raised about whose priorities and knowledge matter, to which we bring our collective expertise as global health researchers, practitioners, and implementers. As we reflect on these problems and provide recommendations for funders, we call for a radical shift towards funding mechanisms that recognise communities and community-based organisations as active agents of change, and that complement their local experience and knowledge. In this Comment, we focus on mental health, but the key arguments apply more broadly.