A simple way to navigate
Piecing the puzzle together so CSOs can navigate to the level of thinking required to improve organisational capacity and sustain project impact.
The capacity Challenge
Over the past decade, global trends have imposed new pressures on civil society organisations to improve decision-making, increase environmental results and strengthen long-term livelihoods that enhance local and regional development. These pressures to deliver can negatively impact non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations and civil society organisations (NGOs, CBOs and CSOs) particularly when their capacity is low. Weaker organisations often lack the basic infrastructure needed to achieve results in an efficient and effective way. Given limited financial resources, competition increases and many organisations opt to expand both service offerings and project results at the expense of their internal organisational infrastructure.
Common reasons for the inability of NGOs, CBOs and CSOs to sustain project results include:
- Limited appreciation of the scope of challenges
- Scale of intervention is insufficient
- Linkages between needs and supply are weak
- Funding is inadequate (amount and timing of flows)
- Financial resilience to shocks is low
- Insufficient skill to manage a financial portfolio
- Unwillingness of organisations to adapt to changing circumstances
- Failure to implement lessons learnt
the big Picture
For civil society, building a strong organisation is very difficult. It’s often like putting together a puzzle without a clear idea of the final picture or building a house without a plan.
Future Fishers believes there are simple ways to navigate these waters and to guide CSOs to a level of thinking that allows them to design or form an idea of the final picture.
Just as when building a puzzle, the assembler must group pieces together by colour, pattern or shape, in the same way CSOs need to group elements by theme, as in the example Future Fishers’ approach to an “Information Management Capability”.
Why focus on capacity building?
Our objectives for strengthening CSOs/CBOs capacity are to improve livelihoods, enhance protection of coastal and marine resources and bolster support for national commitments under Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The principal change expected from our capacity building interventions is that the civil society collective will show improved strategic thinking in using our intervention to grow organisational capabilities to improve performance and facilitate greater conservation impact, while being able to think at least two-three projects ahead
