Looking for a Local NGO Partner in Madhesh Province?

If you are an INGO country office, a provincial programme or a municipality that must place work through a locally registered organisation, the practical question is not whether partners exist in Madhesh. It is which of them can survive your diligence file and still turn up in the ward on the day. This page sets out what a local NGO partner in Madhesh Province has to prove, what the law puts on you as the funder, and what a ward-level partner in Dhanusha can honestly deliver. Shrijanshil Nepal is a non-profit organization in Nepal registered in Ganeshman Charnath Municipality, Dhanusha, and the documents listed below are the ones we send when an assessment opens.

Why the law makes you find a local partner

An international organisation cannot implement a project in Nepal on its own. It signs a General Agreement with the Social Welfare Council, and then a Project Agreement that is tripartite — the INGO, the local partner NGO and the Council — covering the activities, the annual funding, the geographic area and each party's responsibilities. Where several local partners are involved, the Project Agreement is signed between the INGO and the Council instead. Timing matters: a Project Agreement not executed within three months of the General Agreement can leave the General Agreement invalid.

The money has its own gate. Under Section 16 of the Social Welfare Act, 2049, a social organisation seeking material, technical or economic assistance from a foreign country, an international organisation, a mission or an individual must submit a project proposal and application to the Council, which is to decide within forty-five days in coordination with the concerned ministry. Only yearly assistance up to Rs 200,000, for a project to be finished immediately, may be taken on prior notice alone, with a report submitted after the work is done. Assistance from foreign organisations to approved projects is to be channelled through commercial banks operating in Nepal.

There is now a step at your end too. The Foreign Aid Mobilisation Policy, 2025 requires international non-governmental organisations to secure prior agreement from the local authority where they intend to implement, expects federal, provincial and local government participation at the project formulation stage, and requires partnership details with local NGOs to be submitted to the Council. In practice the municipality conversation now happens before the partner contract, not after it.

One point catches funders out. Affiliation with the Council is not conferred by district registration: Section 13 of the same Act is written for organisations "interested to keep affiliation", who apply for it. A certificate from the District Administration Office is not an SWC affiliation certificate. Organisations that are affiliated must file an audit report with a description of their work within six months of the close of the fiscal year. Ask any prospective partner for its affiliation status in writing rather than inferring it from a registration number.

Due diligence on an NGO in Nepal: what to ask for

Most partnership assessments in Nepal converge on the same short list. These are the items we can supply, and the place where each one can be checked without taking our word for it.

We send these as one bundle by email on request. They are the same checks we published for ordinary donors in our guide to how to check if an NGO in Nepal is registered, and we would rather you ran them than skipped them.

What a ward-level partner in Dhanusha actually delivers

Dhanusha has eighteen local levels and a population of 867,747 at the 2021 census, and the NGO Federation's district chapter alone lists 174 member organisations. Supply is not the constraint. Matching the size of the task to the size of the organisation is.

At our scale, in the wards around Ganeshman Charnath, the useful contribution is the unglamorous half of implementation:

• Ward-level mobilising — house visits and school and mothers' group announcements in the two weeks before an activity, which is what decides attendance
• Securing the ward recommendation and a usable venue, usually a school or health post, and the local permissions that go with it
• Participant enumeration and attendance records in a form that survives an audit
• Day logistics: registration desk, crowd flow, volunteers, transport of materials
• The follow-up round nobody budgets for — the revisit three months or a year later
• Referral into the government system rather than parallel to it, which is how our community health and ambulance work and our women's skill training are run

The closest thing to a reference we can point you at is public: a free cervical cancer screening camp at Dhanki Pokhari, Ganeshman Charnath–01, organised with support from the Ministry of Health and Population, Madhesh Province, with specialist gynaecologists leading the clinical side and us handling mobilisation, site and records. The full set of activities is on the causes this NGO in Madhesh Province runs, and a ward-by-ward description is in what we do in Dhanusha.

What we will not promise

• We are a district-based organisation, not a national one. We have no presence in the other seven districts of Madhesh and will not sub-contract a partner we cannot supervise.
• We cannot absorb foreign funds before an SWC project approval is in place, and we will not accept them into any account other than the organisation's own.
• We do not run cash transfer or stipend schemes, and we do not promise salaries to participants.
• Specialist clinical services come from government or visiting specialist teams. We organise around them; we do not provide them.
• We have no surge capacity for large-scale emergency response.

How a partnership actually opens

1. Send the scope: thematic area, target wards or municipality, period, indicative budget and your reporting template, through our contact page.
2. We return the diligence bundle above, plus an honest note on whether the ward coverage you want is within our reach.
3. A joint scoping visit with the ward office — under the 2025 policy the local level needs to be in the conversation early, so bring it forward rather than treating it as a formality.
4. If the funding is foreign: your project proposal goes to the Council, we sign as implementing partner in the Project Agreement, and the funds arrive through a Nepali commercial bank.
5. If the funding is provincial or municipal: the route is inclusion in the local annual plan and a ward recommendation, which we describe in how an NGO works with a ward office.
6. Reporting: narrative and financial on your template, with the annual audit filed as required.

Companies placing a CSR allocation rather than programme funds should start instead with our CSR partnership page, which covers the documents a bank or company audit will want.

Questions funders ask

Does an INGO have to work through a local NGO in Nepal?

Yes. An INGO cannot implement projects directly; implementation runs through local partner organisations, and the Project Agreement with the Social Welfare Council is tripartite where there is a single local partner.

Must the local partner be SWC-affiliated?

District registration and Council affiliation are different things, and affiliation is applied for separately. Where foreign assistance is involved, approval under Section 16 is the binding requirement, so ask for current status in writing and factor the forty-five day decision window into your timeline.

How much foreign funding can a Nepali NGO take without Council approval?

Up to Rs 200,000 in a year, for a project to be finished immediately, on prior notice to the Council and with a report afterwards. Anything beyond that needs a project proposal and permission.

Do we need the municipality's consent before we start?

Under the Foreign Aid Mobilisation Policy, 2025, INGOs must obtain prior agreement from the local authority where the project will be implemented, and implement in the local authority that gave that consent. Treat it as a first step, not a sign-off at the end.

How do we verify a Dhanusha organisation independently?

Take the registration number to the District Administration Office in Janakpur and ask for the renewal status, call the ward office named in the proposal, and read the last audited statement. You can read more about our charity in Nepal before you do, but the office is the authority, not the website.

If you have a programme that needs a registered partner in Dhanusha and you want the diligence pack before you commit to anything, write to us through the contact page with the wards and the period you are looking at. If the work is larger than we can honestly staff, we will say so in the first reply.