Donors increasingly speak of locally led aid response, but often do not walk the walk. Case in point is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the humanitarian and development agency of the largest donor country in the world. In late 2021, USAID set a target that 25% of its funding would go to local organisations by 2025. Its 2022 progress report showed that around 10.2% of all eligible funding went to local actors. A deeper investigation indicated that USAID was employing a loose definition of who counts as a ‘local’ actor. With a stricter definition, this number fell to a sobering 6%. Why is this important and where do we go from here?