The ’State of Civil Society 2015’ report addresses some of the most urgent global issues. From humanitarian response to long-term peacebuilding, civil society is often at the frontline of the world’s challenges. There is a specific focus on resource mobilization. Many civil society donors want organisations to package the long-term and systemic change into neat little fundable projects that fit their programme and timelines. They work through complex chains of ‘fundermediaries’ who channel ever-smaller chunks of money with ever-larger relative reporting requirements. Many in civil society are good at playing this game but many of the most innovative, most ambitious initiatives rarely involve project proposals. Secondly, in many countries civil society is caught between measures that make it more difficult to access foreign funding and the fact that domestic funders are not yet able or willing to support change-seeking activities. And the situation is most acute in countries that have apparently ‘graduated’ into middle income status and have therefore fallen off donors’ priority lists. Thirdly, despite all the promises about ‘funding the front line’ and investing in the capacity of Southern civil society, very little resource actually reaches those who need it most and, arguably, could spend it best. Out of the $166 billion spent on official development assistance (ODA or aid) by OECD-DAC countries in 2013, only 13%, or $21 billion, went to civil society. Although current data is hard to obtain, the latest estimate from 2011 suggests that Southern-based NGOs get only around 1% of all aid directly. The rest of civil society’s allocation goes to Northern organisations that pass on an unknown share of their funding to CSOs based in developing countries. The picture is even bleaker when it comes to humanitarian activities, where the proportion of funds that go to local civil society organisations has actually fallen from 0.4% in 2012 to 0.2% in 2014. Private funders are generally better but they are nowhere near where they should be in terms of funding the frontline.