When the Funder Always Wins: The Quiet Power Struggle Inside Research Projects

A power structure sits behind every collaborative research project, which is never put in the proposal

1. Introduction

Research projects bring together a wide range of stakeholders. These stakeholders include funders, universities, communities, and many other constituents who work toward the same goals and outcomes. On paper, everyone has a seat reserved at the table. In practice, one seat remains bigger than the rest.

Recent in-depth conversations with a project manager and other participants who have spent almost a decade running an internationally funded research project in the Sri Lankan tea sector revealed something different from a partnership. The project manager described it as a hierarchy instead, one that quietly reconfigures itself at every stage of the project and rarely favours the same people twice. His story is not unusual; it is the norm.

2. The Governing Hand Behind the Scenes

Every research project includes more participants than are depicted in organisational charts and organograms, such as funders, university academics serving as project managers, field staff, local communities and third-party assessors. Each party holds its own unique kind of power. Some have formal power, some have earned it, and some have inherited it from those who control the money—and who always win. The roles can be mainly categorised as ‘organising and managing’, ‘executing’, ‘governing ’, and ‘supporting’

When a funder steps back operationally, its authority does not fully disappear, though it may seem to. Instead, it goes dormant, ready to reassert itself the moment a report is due or a target is missed. Project managers may run daily operations, but they rarely set the terms under which they operate. What becomes obscure is that power does not stay still; it moves phase by phase, decision by decision, which is exactly why static organograms and charts fail to capture what is actually happening and who is in charge.

3. A Pattern Recognisable to Any Project Manager

In the conversation, the project manager described a moment of unexpected freedom during execution, when the funder largely stepped back from the project.

“As the project manager, I saw firsthand how the granting body pulled out during the execution phase, giving us more freedom to run things our way. This allowed me to resolve conflicts between academics, industry partners, and enumerators more effectively and flexibly using my authority to the fullest”.

That autonomy came with a catch, which most funding relationships share.

“When donors fund the project in developing countries, we often feel that we are viewed with suspicion and mistreated. They frequently provide funding in arrears, forcing us to request funds from our university under a personal guarantee. This puts us at significant financial risk and exposes us to the determinants of bureaucratic nature at the university administration.”

Freedom during delivery and risk during funding: a trade most project leaders never explicitly agreed to, yet one implied in the contract. Five phases, five different balances of power: ideation and planning are dominated by governance, execution briefly hands the reins to the project team, and closure pulls control back.

4. Why Usual Power Models Fall Short

Most stakeholder-power tools treat influence as fixed, mapping who has power and interest once and then managing accordingly. This is a useful starting point, but entirely wrong for how research projects unfold

Power does not hold still across a project’s lifecycle.

Early on, funders and governance bodies hold nearly all the power, shaping scope, budget, and terms before anyone has a say.

• Early on, funders and governance bodies hold nearly all the power, shaping scope, budget and terms before anyone else has a say.
• During execution, that grip loosens. Project managers gain real authority, while funders take on a watchdog role.
• At closure, power swings back, with final reports, sign-offs and evaluations putting the funder back in control of how success gets defined.

A single stakeholder map drawn at the start of a project is already out of date by the time execution commences. The table below, drawn from a real research programme, showcases how much that balance swings from phase to phase:

Notice the paradox during execution: governance involvement drops to its lowest point, yet its underlying power stays at its peak. That gap—high power, low visible involvement—is exactly where surprises tend to happen.

Rather than a single fixed response per stakeholder, this extended model calls for different strategies—negotiation, flexibility and updates—depending on where power and interest lie at each stage.

5. The Hidden Cost: Who Pays for the Power Imbalance

The imbalance is not just structural; it has a human cost, and that cost does not fall evenly.

There are three levels of strain, each shaped by the layer above it: pressure from funders on managers, pressure from managers on staff, and impacts on communities entirely outside the formal project structure. 

At the top, project managers absorb financial risk through funding delayed until milestones are met, personal guarantees to universities, and endless report revisions chasing the funders’ expectations rather than the actual outcomes of the project. Further down, field staff and researchers experience something different: gender bias in hiring, underpayment for demanding work, burnout from unrealistic timelines, and growing disillusionment with the careers they signed up for. And furthest from the funder’s view, entire communities absorb the largest cost of all: new institutions and practices introduced in the name of progress, often with little regard for the knowledge and traditions already there. Farmers who have worked on the land for generations can find themselves sidelined by initiatives built to ‘help’ them.

The people with the least power in a project are usually the ones asked to make the most changes.

6. Shift in Perspective: From Static Matrix to Living Dynamic

The real failure is not that power is unevenly distributed, which is true of nearly every project. The failure is treating the distribution as fixed. The better question is not ‘Who holds the power?’ but ‘Where will power sit next, and are we ready for that shift?’

A funder who steps back during execution has not relinquished control. It has paused its exercise of control, waiting to resume at the next milestone. A project manager granted autonomy has not gained lasting authority; they have only been loaned it temporarily for a phase. Seeing power as something that moves, rather than something fixed, changes how leaders should prepare for each stage of a project.

7. What This Means for Project Managers

A few shifts are worth making based on these patterns.

• Negotiate visibility early: discuss not just the budget, but how and when the funder’s involvement will change across phases, before the contract is signed.
• Expect the handoff points: the moments of greatest risk are not mid-project; they are at the transitions, when power quietly changes hands.
• Build flexibility into agreements, especially around reporting and fund disbursement, rather than accepting rigid terms designed for the funder’s comfort, not the project’s reality.
• Watch who absorbs the pressure further down the chain—the people with the least formal power often carry the most operational strain.

None of this requires new frameworks; it requires noticing that the old ones were never built to move.

8. Closing Invitation

Every research project has an organogram, but only a few have an honest one.

The next time you join a funded project as a manager, researcher or partner, it is worth asking not who is officially in charge, but who will actually hold the power six months from now. The answer is rarely the same at every phase. And the projects that succeed are not the ones that ignore that shift. They are the ones that plan for it.