A call for tailor-made capacity support

No one needed to tell Megan. How many years had she been involved in capacity development of Civil Society organisations? Wasn’t she the one who went to seminars, read about it and talked to collegues? The one who adressed the importance of tailor made interventions to achieve organisational change? On the other hand, wasn’t her collegue right that good practices from other countries could be easily replicated,that capacity assessment tools were universal and could be applied anywhere? She asked around to find out how many collegues took the particularities of CSOs really in consideration while designing capacity develoment support. The answers made it clear to her: tailor made capacity development was in theory a generally accepted concept but hardly applied in practice. She would like to do it differently.

Simon Forrester and Tine Veldkamp, two practitioners in the realm of CD support to CSOs, look at Megan’s dilemma.

Of course, Megan is a ‘composite’ character, created from this writer’s experience over recent years, but we can see that Megan is right. Capacity development done as 'a one size fits all exercise' will not lead to internalized organisational change. A lack of ‘fit’ with the particularities that make CSOs ‘individual’ has proven to be a pitfall and hampers the pathway to organisational change. 'One size fits all' is not based on organisational development as a process but on an ideal image of what an organisation should look like. Since organisations don't meet general standards, good results of one size fits all approaches are often strokes of luck. They hardly address the specific development problems of CSOs, rarely generate ownership, and can lead in the worst case scenario to reverse development.

Successful capacity development of CSOs at organisational level starts with seeing the spectrum of CSOs differently. Atailor-made capacity development process puts the spotlight on CSOs unique appearance and development questions. The ‘capacity for whom?’ question is key to understanding CSOs particularities, that shape their specific capacity development demands, like structure, their stage of development, their function, governance characteristics or the scale at which they operate. Membership organisations, like cooperatives and trade unions, go through different organisational development processes than community-based organisations. CSOs with a formal structure, within which professionals carry out the principal activities, face different development challenges as compared, for example, with voluntary structures. Faith-based organisations might have different capacity development questions regarding accountability, representativeness and coordination mechanisms than those of feminist activist groups. When capacity development is about helping a CSO one step further in its development process, then it is also clear that capacity development support should be different to that for CSOs that are still in a pioneer stage, reflecting on their ‘raison d’être’, and more mature CSOs that already have proven their relevance, possess supportive systems, and engage in strategic alliances.

Thus, the diversity of CSOs and the differences in their organisational development justify a closer look at the particularities that define or limit their development. They give good reason to address capacity development as a process that is relevant to CSOs specific situation and which creates space for organisational dialogue about desired capacity changes. The range of particularities of CSOs also requires the use of assessment methods that address issues that are meaningful to the CSOs in question and to select the right experts for support who understand development differences between CSOs.

Sharing insights into how CD support can relate in a better way to the particularities of CSOs is something that we can all benefit from, so, please provide comments and your tips on the provision of tailor made support.

Organisational development of CSOs is the main focus of guidance currently being developed for the European Commission. The Guidance is a response to the September 2012 Civil Society Communication which emphasizes the importance of strengthening civil society actors to perform their roles more effectively, particularly local actors. The guidance will be made available later in 2014.Materials from a series of seminars on support to the capacity development of CSOs are available for download. (http://capacity4dev.ec.europa.eu/public-governance-civilsociety/minisite/capacity-development-civil-society-organisations-exchange-seminar)

(This posting and the related materials have been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents are the sole responsibility of the contractors providing the technical assistance and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union)