Section 01: Introduction
What is this toolkit about?
This toolkit is not just a kit of tools! Tools are included of course, but we hope to encourage you to take a step back and take a fresh look at the way you support capacity strengthening with your partners.
We believe that starting with some principles to help guide you will provide a firm foundation for your own decision-making.
Then the toolkit goes into more practical areas:
Do you feel that partners are sometimes reluctant participants in strengthening their own capacity or just ‘going through the motions’?
Are you sometimes at a loss about what the real problem is?
Are you frustrated when training courses seem to make little difference?
This toolkit will give you some practical ideas about what you could do differently.
Why strengthen civil society organisations (CBOs and NGOs)?
Civil society organisations (including sports clubs, trades unions, and culture groups as well as NGOs and CBOs) play a central role in improving the lives of citizens in ways that businesses and government don’t.
They provide fun, social connections, and opportunities for people to change their own lives and get involved for the wellbeing of their communities.
NGOs and CBOs can innovate, can organise people and can give a voice to those who may be left out. They are vital to reducing conflict and inequalities in society. They often hold powerful people to account, and promote political accountability beyond party politics.
Strengthening civil society organisations is an end in itself – not just a means to enable partners to deliver projects and services more effectively.
What is a ‘strong’ organization?
Ourvision of a strong organization is what The Barefoot Collective in South Africa describes as a ‘sovereign organization’. An organization which draws its purpose and effectiveness from their experience within a community, is accountable to them, and successfully achieves its purpose. More on this in Section 4.
"Sovereignty is a particularly powerful concept when applied to an organisation, suggesting the same authentic qualities, describing a home-grown resilience, an inside-out identity, the idea of an organization being the expression of the free will of its own constituents. It should be clear that rights like food sovereignty can only exist if they are embedded in strong, sovereign organisation."
Who is this toolkit intended for?
This toolkit is written for people working or volunteering with smaller organisations. It is for those who don’t have big budgets for international travel, who don’t have specialist staff who are there to write proposals, set up M&E systems or collect data for reports – but do all this themselves, with a few colleagues and volunteer trustees.
If you are based in the global north: you will probably be thinking of how you can use this guide for strengthening the capacity of partners in the global south. That is one key purpose. But you can also use it to approach strengthening your own capacity. You will learn a lot from doing it ‘to yourself’ and it will also show integrity and credibility if you can tell your partners you have used the approaches in your own organization. Even more, if you involve your partners in your assessments and self- reflection.
If you are based in the global south: you are maybe using this with a partner in the global north or with others in your region. We hope this tool can help to create a common language and approach with them. But beyond that, we hope you will feel it useful for you to lead your own development, challenge poor practice of some northern partners, and find your own version of a Sovereign Organization.
How and what for should it be used?
We hope this guide will give you:
Ideas for new ways of doing things
A framework for thinking about what is a ‘good’ or ‘strong’ organisation
A common language and set of models to use with your partners
Some lessons (learned the hard way) of approaches that work
Challenges to think about your own attitudes and the skills you need to be effective
We recommend a read through the toolkit, especially the first few chapters, before starting to use the tools.
Then pick it up, drop it again, take ideas, or read whole chapters. Use it to answer burning questions or to help you develop your thinking and strategy. You know best how it can be useful.
Overview of contents
Sections 2-4: The basic frame for capacity strengthening: definitions, how organisations change and principles which shape good practice.Thinking more deeply about what we mean by a ‘strong’ organisation.
Sections 5-7: Teasing out the mains stages in capacity strengthening: assessment, choosing ways of building capacity then putting together a plan. Top tips for the journey.
Section 8: Some practical ways of tracking the changes in capacity and assessing what difference it made. Learning from your experience.
Section 9: Exploring what makes you effective in your role – change starts with ourselves.
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