About LINC

Who we are

Founded in 2013, LINC is a mission-driven small business committed to supporting local organizations and actors leading their own development. The recipient of Inc. 5000 “Fastest Growing Companies” award, we are a team of experienced, passionate, and multilingual humanitarian and development professionals. LINC is a proven steward of donor funds, having managed a global portfolio of both large and small projects valued at over $80 million in 30 countries worldwide. LINC’s headquarters is located in Washington DC, with regional hubs in Africa (Addis Ababa), Latin America (Mexico City), and Europe (Pristina).

What we do

LINC is a thought leader and partner to donors, civil society, and government on issues of localization, including locally led development, capacity strengthening, systems thinking, collective action, and monitoring, evaluation, research and learning. We work hand-in-hand with our partners to design and implement programs, deliver training, and generate actionable evidence that drives smarter, more sustainable impact.

What makes us different

We are pioneers of locally led development. Our research, learning, and thought leadership have influenced donor policies, and the projects we have implemented help the international development community better understand, engage, and support local actors worldwide. We partner with donors, implementers, government, universities, civil society, and the private sector through the full program cycle, from design, through implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning. We use participatory methods that engage stakeholders, transfer skills, and elevate their voices.

LINC has developed and adapted tools and approaches to facilitate learning and action for locally led development, including:

• Understanding local systems. Understanding local actors and the complex systems in which they operate is fundamental to the effective design, implementation, and measurement of locally led development. In addition to leading USAID’s Local Systems Practice Activity and developing the Systems Thinking Users Guide, we regularly use approaches such as Social Network Analysis, Causal Loop Diagrams, and Structural Factor Analysis to understand the complex systems in which our partners work. We use Systems Thinking to understand local systems.
• Elevating local voices. Collective Action is a form of strategic collaboration following an intentional and agreed-upon process that shifts dynamics among stakeholders to facilitate working together toward shared objectives. In addition to developing toolkits on how to integrate this approach into development programming, LINC routinely applies the framework to bring together local stakeholders to make progress on a common challenge through communities of practice, multi-stakeholder dialogues, and joint action plans. Our approach to facilitating collective action balances trust with results, ensuring that diverse local voices are incorporated and advancing locally driven priorities. We use Collective Action to elevate local voices.
• Incorporating local lessons Since our founding, LINC has used evidence-based monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) and collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) tools and approaches to help our partners and clients monitor the performance of programs, evaluate their impact and results, learn, adapt, and design new programs. We use learning and adaptation to understand what works and then apply it.
• Facilitating Local Leadership Transforming international development to center local actors requires new approaches and capacities for everyone involved, from donors to governments, implementers, civil society, and the private sector. LINC’s organizational development approach helps local actors critically examine their own place in the larger system, align services to local demand, and self-identify capacity development priorities, using tools such as our proprietary Pre-Investment Capacity and Knowledge Scorecard (PICKS) tool. We also leverage our deep familiarity with donors and implementers to provide tailored training and capacity-strengthening to help them improve their operations. We strengthen capacity to improve the ability of our partners to promote locally led development.

Where we work

LINC has current and past programming in more than 30 countries worldwide. We work in partnership with local organizations, sharing resources, transferring skills, and building trust.