Center for Sustainable Development

June, 2009 Newsletter:

NGO/Donor Partnerships Equal IMPACT

 

I’m regularly asked by NGOs – “how can we make our proposals more attractive to donors?” Donors are looking for solid project concepts and sound implementation plans that will provide the kind of project impact necessary for fulfilling their mission. How can an NGO design projects with these qualities and present them compellingly to a donor? Here is an example:

 

The Director of an NGO that has grown steadily over a 10 year period confided in me that she could no longer be hands-on in each facet of her organization. She decided that she would like to let go of project development and delegate it to her staff. With more staff members working on project development, she felt the organization would be able to expand into more communities.

 

Smart move. However, project design takes on every aspect of a project – except for actually implementing it. She knew, as the director, she had the organizational vision necessary for project development, but realized her staff members were more compartmentalized within their jobs. She wanted to know how her NGO could make this transition.

 

Group Vision

We decided a good first step was for her to get specialized staff out of their silos and let them explore the organization’s bigger picture. She organized a two-day retreat with a series of activities designed to improve their understanding of community development, how their organization is positioned in the development world, and how their different organizational departments work together to create impact. 

Here are a few of the highlights that I recommend in initiating a project design:
Listen. I recommend beginning project design by listening to the community that you would like to work with. This is where your front-line field staff will show how important they are in the process of project design. Taking the time to develop relationships and facilitate a participatory needs assessment can uncover the causes behind the challenges faced by community members. Focusing on resolving the causes behind problems will create long-lasting impact. By incorporating community-identified need into the design of the project, community members will feel ownership and will more likely sustain the program after your organization is gone.

 

Plan well in advance: Start this process nine months to one year prior to projected project implementation – grant funding can often take that long to get.

 

Know your limits

The needs voiced by the community will give direction and scope to your project design, but do the range of needs fit in with your organizational mission? If your expertise is a match then you are off to a good start. However, if your organization is focused on agriculture, and the community wants a health initiative, what do you do? Try partnering: Partnering with a health focused NGO will broaden your skill sets and lead to future collaborations.

 

Research the Project Theme

Get on the Internet and search for scientific studies about your project’s theme and proposed activities. Look for the results of randomized control trials that give activity results based upon evidence. You are likely to find a selection of sound interventions that can be combined into a family of activities to fulfill project outcomes. On the other hand, you may uncover studies indicating that one of your potential project activities has not shown evidence of working to solve the community-identified problem; best to find out at the design stage!

 

Consensus Building

After you have a project concept, and before you do any more work, share your concept and activities with the community. Their input and their local knowledge can be very useful at this stage, and you will continue the process of building their ownership into the program.

 

Working Paper

The next step is for field staff, project management and fundraising staff begin to collaborating on the design. Draft a working paper that is no longer than two pages. Give a short description of the challenges discovered and highlight the process of working with the community on this assessment. Include one or two photos that illustrate the challenge and a photo of one of your recent community meetings. Describe the proposed project, how the activities you have chosen have worked effectively in other projects, and the expected outcomes. Introduce the community and write a short paragraph about your organization and its mission. This is not a proposal, this is a simple, quick-to-read fact sheet.

 

Donor Mission and Input

Many donors will be glad to have an introductory meeting with you, but it is essential to identify donors that have similar missions to yours. Go to websites to see what kinds of projects a donor is investing in. Ask colleagues for recommendations; often an introduction from a mutual acquaintance can help to set a meeting.

 

In the meeting share your working paper with the donor. Donors are trying to accomplish their missions and goals, and if your project concept will help them do that, then there is room for discussion. If your project isn’t a good fit for them, ask them if they can help you better understand the types of projects they like to invest in, or if they can recommend a donor where your project might be a better fit.

 

If they express positive interest, ask them if they have any suggestions for solidifying your project so it best fits their funding guidelines. Donors give excellent feedback because they have seen so many projects and because they have a clear understanding of their mission. Encouraging donor input forges partnerships and ownership. At this stage they will give you the forms and guidelines they require for the proposal submission.

 

In next month’s newsletter we will begin developing your concept into a formal design and proposal that will accurately represent the project and the outcomes you hope to achieve.

 

Next Month: July 2009 Newsletter

The Architecture of Project Design and Presentation

Beginning logframes

Developing budgets and project schedules

Writing a draft proposal

Building consensus: Asking for donor feedback on the draft

Revising the final proposal and submittal

 

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1.  Bangladesh: Participatory Riparian Forest Management Program
	3,100 community members of Koliapara village are suffering from the loss of livelihoods, cattle and land for cultivation due to increased flooding.
Kanika Chakraborty (Bangladesh), Susan Wasubire (Uganda), Lauriane Cayet (Reunion) and Doris Kaberia (Kenya) began developing a project with a disaster risk reduction component in Bangladesh in July. A participatory riparian forest management program is included in the project design to build the resilience of the community and enhance their capacity to deal with the challenges of recurring disasters.

2.  Perú: Participatory restoration & conservation of a fragile mangrove ecosystem
	Sylviane Bilgischer (Belgium/ Perú), Roberta Colombano (Italy/Netherlands), and Carolina Quiroz (Mexico) began developing a project to restore and conserve a fragile Mangrove ecosystem in a village in Perú in January.
The members of El Bendito are finding it difficult to maintain productive livelihoods due to an increasingly stressed mangrove ecosystem linked to climate change challenges. Theirs is a protected area for the conservation of mangroves and the community lives through the extraction of hydro biological products—so it is in their interest to restore and conserve the mangrove forest.

3.  Agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture for Malawi Food Security
	Jo Thomas (UK/Malawi) and Marina France (US) began developing a food insecurity project in May in the Phalula Village in Malawi.
770 families face food insecurity as a result of land degradation and soil erosion (largely from deforestation) as well as climate change linked rainfall patterns.  Our partners developed an agroforestry income generation program that looks first at identifying markets before choosing agricultural products to plant.

4.  Forest Reserve Nigeria: REDD+ | NTFPs | Climate Smart Agroforestry
	Bridget Nkor (Nigeria), Jason Yapp (Malaysia/UK) & Donatella Fregonese (Italy/UK) began developing a project with the indigenous Buanchor community who are the custodians of the Afi Forest Reserve—a habitat for gorilla—and biodiversity hotspot.
The community is suffering from a loss of environmental services provided by the forest due to forest encroachment and poaching. The adaptation project includes the development of Non-Traditional Forest Products, a REDD+ forest stewardship program, and a climate smart agroforestry program.

5. Community Afforestation Program in Bangladesh
	In July partners Michael Chew (Australia/Bangladesh), Sabrin Sultana (Bangladesh), and Elijah Mujuri (Kenya) began developing a project with 1,245 people of the village of Putiajani, Bangladesh who are frequently affected by flooding and river erosion caused by the cutting  down of trees.
After thoroughly researching potential project activities our Bangladesh partners developed a project which includes a Participatory Community Afforestation Program.

6. 300 Hands-On Field Activities for Community Based Adaptation Projects: Water is the Underlying Theme
	I am announcing an updated  compilation of Community Based Adaptation Field Activities—complete with links to source materials and technical information.   This collection of 300 CBA field activities began as a resource for our CBA online students. However, as it grew, we decided that it was important to make it more broadly available to CBA development practitioners.
Here are how the activities are organized: 1. Agriculture and water. 2. Small island developing states. 3. Emergency preparedness and disaster risk reduction. 4. Energy. 5. Livelihood. 6. Health & sanitation. 7. CBA project design. 8. CBA participatory inclusion. 9. Long-term investments. 10. General resources.

7. Help Scale Up Project Successes: Help Us Increase Impact to 200,000 Beneficiaries by December 31.
	Help us to scale-up these impacted-oriented courses and their resulting projects. In the courses’ first 21 months 500 people from 320 organizations in 113 countries have developed and are developing projects impacting 170,000 people. Help us scale up the reach of our courses so that a much greater number of students can begin projects and increase this impact to 200,000 people by year’s end.
HOW: 1. NETWORKING. Please spread the word about our courses to your friends/colleagues through your blog, your newsletter or your Facebook page—or by ‘liking’ & commenting on this post on our Facebook Page.  Please consider providing a link to our Online Learning page on your website.   2. SCHOLARSHIPS. Consider making a scholarship donation for field staff who can’t afford course fees.   3. ENROLL. Would you like to improve an existing project or learn from scratch how to design, fund and launch a community based project that can provide sustainable solutions for adaptation to climate change and disaster risk reduction? Student projects have utilized 175 different kinds of solution oriented activities to help address community need. Scan the list of activities to see which ones would work for your project.   Choose a course appropriate for you project and during the course we will connect you to scientific documentation, workshop lesson plans, and how-to manuals and field guides.   To learn about other student projects in real time, please visit our Facebook Page; or visit the  CSDi Development Community to see their regular postings—and join 600 colleagues in sharing resources & collaborating online.   Visit Online Learning to see a full listing of January 2012 Quarter, Community Based courses that begin on January 10.   Call for CBA project case studies: Do you have a community-based adaptation to climate change project that you would like to feature in a new Earthscan book from Routledge? ‘A Field Guide to Community-Based Adaptation’, Tim Magee, will be published in the summer of 2012. For case study submission requirements, please write: Online.Learning@csd-i.org .