CDRA Homepage

I have spent many years in the field of development in South Africa working for NGOs. For the last five I have been providing organisational development services to NGOs throughout southern Africa as a member of the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA). Earlier this year I was able to spend six weeks (as part of a sabbatical) engaged in trying to understand more about the realities of European donor NGOs. My primary purpose for doing this was to contribute to better informed future strategies and practice in the CDRA. From a more personal perspective it was an amazing opportunity to engage in dialogue with a small number of donor agencies with no responsibility for fundraising for my own organisation. Having spent the past 15 years working for "recipient" organisations it was a rare opportunity to meet with donors without any sense of having "my cap in my hand".

The theme that I chose as a means of focusing my exploration was "donor impact on the capacity of recipient organisations". The choice of the theme was strongly influenced by the work that we have undertaken over the years with a wide spectrum of development organisations (totalling approximately 175 in all). In reflecting on our own learnings we have come to a number of conclusions which led to our interest in exploring the theme. These include:

• The conviction that the capacity of any organisation to deliver is very often dependent on more than the development of individuals within organisations and the resulting development of individual organisations themselves. Unless organisations can operate in effective relationship with each other, access to necessary resources and ability to deliver quality service is severely limited.

• The realisation that combinations of donors, NGOs and CBOs often form the core of the "delivery systems" responsible for the implementation of development initiatives. The overall health and ability of these "systems" to deliver is highly dependent on the nature and quality of the relationships between the key elements of the system, which itself is inextricably coupled to the "health" and level of development of the individual member organisations.

• The fact that there is increasing recognition that the nature of the relationship between donor and recipient organisations is central to ultimate quality of the service provided. The term "partnership" is being used more and more often to describe this relationship, yet there are few who would claim to have achieved a relationship that meets their own basic criteria of what a partnership should be like.

In our attempts to assist NGOs build their own capacity to deliver it has become increasingly evident to us that the quality of the relationship between donor and recipient has enormous potential to either help or hinder the process. For this reason I was hoping that my exploration would contribute to further developing CDRA's understanding of, and future practice in the area of working at the interface between development organisations.

From my discussions and reading I have learned much. It struck me that there seem to many similarities in the relationships between southern NGOs and their sources of funds (ie Northern NGOs) - and between northern donor NGOs and their principals. Another strong, and somewhat surprising, sense that I got was that the general insecurity common amongst southern NGOs (related to their inability to clearly and succinctly measure and prove their value to others), was evident in their northern counterparts as well. From my many and varied learnings however, I intend only to raise one which had a particular impact on me and on the theme I was exploring.

It interested me greatly that northern donor NGOs, like NGOs in the south are feeling the pressure to prove that they are "adding value". It seems as though the threat is that European governments (independently and collectively) are increasingly demanding to know what value the intermediary donor NGOs are adding to the funding process, and to prove why governments should not by-pass them and engage directly in funding relationships with recipients in the south. There is obviously a complex history of the politics of the region and the role of donor NGOs and development aid in general that has resulted in this pressure being brought to bear, it is however more the response of the NGOs which is of specific interest to me.

"You are absolutely right we are not adding sufficient value, we need to look for and engage in additional activities which add more value" ...... seems to characterise very crudely the generalised response which I seemed to hear. The question that underlies much of the search for "adding more value" is articulated as "how do we contribute towards building the capacity of our partner organisations?". The answer to the question seems to incorporate a wide array of responses from in-depth explorations of the meaning and concept of partnership, to the provision of training courses and consultancy services by donor agencies. What I found alarming is that all the good critical and creative thinking that has resulted from the perceived threat seems to be leading away from the core purpose of donor organisations - which I understand to be funding. No one seems to be asking "what is it in the way we fund that adds value (or could add more value) to the transfer of money from the north to the south, that no government could achieve?". Donors seem to be asking what else they can do other than funding.

All too often I heard members of donor organisations saying, with great emotion, that "we don’t just want to be funders, or conduits of money". I did not understand them to be saying that they don’t ‘only’ want to be funders, in the sense that they are already disbursing funds as professionally and developmentally as possible and now need to diversify into other supplementary services. Their response and the emotion behind it reminded me more of the common, and understandable, NGO sector aversion to anything that is too closely related to the capitalism. The ultimate fear is to be seen as the "bankers" of the development sector. The implication being that it is not through the transfer of money that development really takes place, but through other "capacity building" processes. This undervaluing of the role of appropriately and developmentally disbursed funds in the development process - by the very agencies whose primary role it is - is the single issue that I feel has the greatest potential to impact on the sector as a whole.

If there is no relationship between how (and how much) money is given, and the development of capacity of the recipient organisation, then indeed it is true, anyone (even governments) can disburse funds effectively. If donor NGOs do not understand and appreciate this relationship it is correct that they should feel threatened. From the work of the CDRA over the years we have seen the dramatic positive impact that committed developmental donors can have, and the opposite effect of those who see themselves simply as conduits of funds. What hope is there if donors don’t sufficiently appreciate the vital role that funding plays in the development of recipient organisations. I have often likened funding to the "life blood" of an organisation. Alone it cannot sustain the life of an organisation, but without it survival is not possible. Healthy organisations depend on the effective and efficient functioning of many "organs", but too much or too little blood in the system is life threatening, as is blood of the wrong "type".

While there is clearly a need for many different support services in order to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of recipient NGOs, it is funding that has the ability to destroy recipient organisations with such ease, or provide the basis from which they grow and develop. Donors must ensure that their core activity of funding is building capacity and not undermining it, before they engage in diversifying and moving into other activities. In order to achieve this there are two fundamental abilities that donors need to have incorporated as part of their essential practice. The first is the knowledge and ability to understand the phases of organisational development, to diagnose the particular needs that organisations have at any point in their development, and how these needs change over time. The second is the ability of donors to differentiate their funding response in order to meet the specific developmental needs of their recipients as they evolve and change. In this way they will be contributing directly to the development and capacity of organisations.

The ability to accurately diagnose funding needs developmentally, and the ability and flexibility to respond to them appropriately is not easily come by, and not often encountered. To understand how organisations develop takes study and experience, the ability to diagnose the developmental needs of organisations demands the building of trusting relationships and diagnostic skills. Even if the diagnostic ability exists, the policies and procedures of funders and those who fund them often make the differentiation of the way in which funds are disbursed almost impossible. Unless donors take seriously their ability to fund developmentally, and develop confidence in its value, they will always remain vulnerable and insecure. In order to ensure that their core purpose, of disbursing funds, is developmental and adds value, they will have to start practising a lot more consciously and critically, and ensure that they draw learnings from it in order to continuously improve. To build their ability to differentiate their funding response donors will have to find ways of bringing about change in the requirements of their own organisations and those of their principals.

If donor NGOs believe that the only way they can prove that they are adding value is to start engaging in non-funding capacity building activities, their core purpose remains threatened. Governments can be effective as conduits of money, but they are not at all suited to differentiating their funding response. The question is whether donor NGOs can prove themselves to be truly developmental, and show that the development of organisations is worth investing in.

Returning to the theme that I was exploring, it is clear to me how donors can best impact on the capacity of their recipient organisations. Not through being all things to all recipients, but by taking seriously their core responsibility of providing funds developmentally. There is no other means I can imagine by which they can contribute more to the building of capacity. The other part of my objective was to explore the relationship between donor and recipient (often referred to as partnership) and consider whether there was any way the CDRA could assist in its development. In my understanding of this relationship (in common I believe with many other recipients) I assumed that the essential contribution that donors brought into the "partnership" was related to firstly to the development of financilally sustainable organisations. I also know that recipients are eagerly seeking donors who are committed to providing a service which is responsive to their real needs, while being critical and developmental in their approach. My conclusion is that the CDRA can best serve the interests of the sector as a whole at present, not by attempting to work at the interface between donor and recipient, but by attempting to find a way of sharing our knowledge of development, and of recipients with donors as a means of developing their core practice.

 

About the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA)

The Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) was  established in 1987 as a non-profit, non-governmental organisation (NGO) to build the capacity of organisations and individuals engaged in development and social transformation. We are based in Cape Town, South Africa and work mostly in Southern and East Africa.

Email: vernon@cdra.org.za Webpage: http://www.cdra.org.za
P.O. Box 221, Woodstock, 7915, South Africa
Telephone: -27 -21 462 3902
Fax: -27 -21 462 3918