Building Capacities for Social Transformation and Empowerment
Capacity strengthening of smaller, local and emerging CSOs to prepare them as sustainable, resilient, locally rooted and locally networked organizations
CAPSTONE is an institutional development programme for the young and promising Indian non-profits. Building on 40 years of experience of delivering impactful capacity development support to non-profits, Participatory Research in Asia – PRIA has conceptualised CAPSTONE as a highly flexible, contextualised, futuristic, cohort-based learning programme.
The Indian non-profit sector faces unprecedented expectations, especially in the post-CoVID-19 context, to do more with lesser resources. This is particularly so for smaller and younger civil society non-profit organisations working with excluded communities. To meet the challenges of our time, to solve the ‘wicked problems’, non-profits need to become adaptive, sustainable and resilient institutions. This requires systematic investment in building their capacities to think strategically, develop impact focussed programmes and plans, and access locally available funds to meet the developmental needs, empowerment, and inclusion of the marginalised and the excluded.
As India moves to lower-middle income status, the traditional international development resources for institutional strengthening and capacity building of non-profits have disappeared rapidly. The traditional OECD donors, while continuing to provide resources for implementing sectoral or thematic programmes, have not prioritised resources for institutional strengthening, leadership development, and building financial resilience in non-profits. A market-led model of programme support has resulted in exclusion of a large section of the smaller and younger non-profits, which runs the risk of becoming redundant, despite a magnificent history and trajectory in the sector. What institutional strengthening support has been provided by national and international funding agencies has generally remained narrowly designed, primarily focused on project management. A small number of metro-centric NGOs, English-speaking and writing, internationally well-connected, with strong inter-personal ties and new age corporate leadership tend to secure most philanthropic attention and resources. This trend has gained further momentum during the months of the CoVID-19 pandemic.
The need for a comprehensive, long-term institutional strengthening programme for non-profits focussing on strategic thinking, organisation development and renewal, institutional learning, leadership development, financial sustainability, strategic communication, gender integration, digital preparedness, coalition-building cannot be overstated. In the post-pandemic era, digital preparedness and cyber security also assumes greater importance across the country. CAPSTONE addresses this felt need and gap in capacity strengthening of non-profits to prepare them as sustainable, resilient, locally rooted, and locally networked organisations.
CAPSTONE will enable the non-profits to:
PRIA’s approach to capacity development intervention applies the following principles.
Using this approach, CAPSTONE will be rolled out in phases, to successive cohorts of organisations. Each cohort will undergo a yearlong intensive learning cycle, where each structured training will be followed up with coaching, mentoring, and onsite handholding support.
To strengthen the non-profits to be able to respond to diversity of populations and social concerns in the post-pandemic period, the CAPSTONE will target younger, smaller, and local, organisations.
General criteria for selecting an organisation will include:
Preference will be given to organisations working on issues of:
Each non-profit partner will require unique ongoing support as they implement their strategic and organisation development plans. This will be provided through the handholding, coaching and mentoring support, which will include facilitating development of appropriate organisational policies and procedures, and providing informational, coalition and networking connections to help the organisation gain visibility within the district and at the state level. All training and capacity building will be contextually relevant, culturally appropriate and in language(s) that the organisations are comfortable with.
The capacity building support in each priority will be offered in a blended mode. It will include a short duration (3-4 days) physical face-to-face training programme, an online component (essential pre-readings, assignments, interactions with peer groups as well as facilitators, and webinars/ online discussion, before and after the face-to-face training, followed by onsite coaching, mentoring and hand holding support.
The CAPSTONE encourage participation of one or two senior leaders from each organisation in the face-to-face (physical and online) training. These senior leaders could be the founders, chief executive, board members or a senior member from the leadership team.
Efforts will be made to organise online and/or physical thematic discussion and workshops with organisations working on similar issues in subsequent years. This will help contextualise the institutional development interventions as well preparing joint programme actions and proposals. The project will also include other thought leaders from the sector with relevant thematic expertise.
