The nuts and bolts of strengthening community organisations

The nuts and bolts

of strengthening community organisations

Steve Fisher

Many years ago I had the opportunity to work with communities of Quechua-speaking people in the high Andes of the north of Peru. In one instance I was part of a team conducting a needs assessment to work out what programs or services a local NGO might be able to offer.

In one of the first communities we visited, we stopped in the street to talk with one of the senior men. It was cold and misty. He was wearing a big hat and a thick poncho. He looked weathered by the climate. We asked him what programs already existed in the community, especially supported or managed by government agencies. His reply was ‘el estado no llega aquí or ‘the state doesn’t reach here’. He seemed surprised we didn’t know that.

This experience, and many others since, have often led me to think about ways in which social development needs are best met if the government doesn’t arrive, which is the situation for most needs in most communities in many countries. The other options are the private sector, non-government or civil society organisations or the community itself.

Of course, the state might not be the best option anyway. During a recent project, I learned that a single department of the Government of Victoria (a state in Australia) has contracts with over a thousand NGOs, funding them to provide access to social services. Of course, this arrangement depends on the government having the resources, the mandate and the responsibility to support services in this way. Without budgets, then NGOs are not in a position to sustain services. And if service users are not able to pay the full cost, then the private sector cannot sustain a viable service either.

And so we arrive at local or community-based organisations. There are many very effective examples which are unknown beyond their own location. Two years ago in rural Colombia, my colleague Carolina and I visited an organisation that provides education and support services for children with disabilities. Their work is largely sustained through volunteers and contributions from local people and businesses. While we were working there a store owner delivered a donation of food and our accommodation was provided free of charge by a nearby hotel.

The Community Works team often discusses with community organisations how they can strengthen their work. We have been volunteers ourselves and so we have insights too. Faced with the day-to-day challenges of supporting their participants, few organisations have the time to reflect. Sometimes they don’t know what they don’t know. But given space to think about ways to strengthen their work, we commonly hear the same questions, which I share below with comments on approaches that have previously been effective in my experience.

How can we build our technical capacity?

If we take the example of community mental health and its myriad sub-divisions like suicide prevention and support for people who are lonely and isolated, organisations can often feel lacking in clinical skills if there is no trained mental health specialist on the staff. The same applies to a number of fields that benefit from or require specialist technical knowledge, which in the social sector include aged care, disability services, early childhood development and many others.

Without suggesting there are easy answers to any of these challenges, in a situation where technical capacity is lacking a sector development strategy can be a worthwhile option. This means that organisations work together as a group and seek external advisors to support the sector as a whole. The economies of scale can make specialist technical support more affordable and the prospect is more attractive to specialists because they have the opportunity to support a wider range of situations. I have seen versions of this approach work well in India and Sri Lanka, for example.

How can we innovate?

Organisations often have many ideas but few tools to develop what has inspired them into a project with objectives, a plan, milestones, resources and a means to sustain itself. Introducing methods like a theory of change, logic models, conceptual frameworks and a structured way of preparing a design document can be an empowering, even liberating experience, because it helps organisations crystallise what they might have been talking about for a long time.

A facilitated workshop can be a very effective way of supporting the process of turning an idea into a project, as I have seen on multiple occasions. Our publication The Facilitation Mosaic, available on the Community Works website, provides guidance on making workshops work.

How can we strengthen our management and governance processes?

The ways in which decisions are made and leadership and management works are often greatly influenced by the skills of people with often diverse backgrounds. Many local people who volunteer for organisations or are members of their board often have strong skills and experience, but from sectors unrelated to that of the organisation that are supporting. A foster care organisation may have a local estate agent and a solicitor as board members, for example. This is helpful, but they may lack social or development sector knowledge and will not necessarily know what good practice is, outside the professional disciplines that they come from. For that reason, organisations sometimes worry about whether they are governing and managing in a way that follows what might be called good development or social sector practice.

Again, there are tools, methods and best practice principles that can help. For example, collecting data on participation and impact for the work of the organisation is essential in any effort to build support and funding. Ensuring that strategies exist for community engagement and protocols for cultural safety are other important steps. Grounding the work of the organisation in published research and knowledge of a field of work is essential. All these elements of strengthening management and governance can be achieved by seeking external support or networking with others working in the field. A good example in Australia is SNAICC, the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, and the National Rural Health Alliance, both of which hold national conferences that are milestone events for many organisations and their staff.

How can we attract funding?

Many community organisations are not compliant with conditions that apply to philanthropic funding. They might lack a board, a strategy, proper registration or a constitution. And even if they do comply, the skills to prepare a compelling application for funding might not be available to them. We have also seen situations in which organisations struggle to find time to reply to enquiries from interested funders, such are the constraints to their management capacity.

It is too easy to suggest here that training is the answer, but training plus a period of support and coaching for a few months or more can make a huge difference to the ability of an organisation to tell the story of its work in a way that is competitive when it comes to applying for funding. Again, we have seen it for ourselves.

To conclude, this article comes from a belief in the value and the positive impact of community-led initiatives in social development. While their achievements are immeasurable, there is no doubt that so much more can be done when organisations are able to grow and become stronger. How to develop better strategies to strengthen community organisations is a subject worthy of much more attention.

Key ingredients for effective community research

by Steve Fisher

Key ingredients for effective community research

Steve Fisher

We have had a positive experience recently in working with two community groups to design and conduct research on topics they consider important. Both research projects were managed by Ninti One and we contributed to the work as their partner. I came away from each project thinking that the reasons why the projects went well deserved to be thought through and written down, which is the purpose of this article.

By community-based research, I am referring to any process that works with local people to conduct research. There are examples featured on the projects and publications pages of this website. In one of the projects that inspired this article, the objective of the group was to learn what the rest of the community thought about a cultural education program their organisation had been running and also an initiative to improve local employment opportunities. The community is located in the Northern Territory. In a second project, we trained a group of young people to conduct research on priorities for youth in a town in Western Australia. The aim was for them to make the case through research for government investments in certain services and facilities to meet the needs of young people.

For both projects, we worked through a standard research process which had the following steps:

Objectives – Working out the purpose of the research and what it was intended to achieve
Design – Identifying the information we needed to collect, choosing the research method (such as surveys or focus groups) and working out the sample (who and how many people we will talk to)
Data collection – Usually through small research teams.
Data analysis – Working out what the information we have collected is telling us.
Presentation – Preparing diagrams and charts that interpret and present the findings of the research.

In both places, the results achieved and the feedback from the communities were very positive. So, what were the key ingredients that led to effective community research in these example? The illustration below is a summary.

I will explain these four points. Some people might work best as lone researchers, but community-based research really calls for a team approach. We have usually worked with a minimum of six local people and up to around twenty. People feel more confident when doing something new as part of a team. It can be fun, especially when people share their sense of humour.

When starting the work, we have noticed that allowing up to a day for sitting down with people in a comfortable place and doing some preparation works really well. Some slides may be useful to show, especially where examples of research from other communities can be show and explained. But flipchart paper, whiteboards and marker pens are equally important. Writing down the five steps above, explaining how they work and then asking people for their suggestions makes for a process of participatory preparation that often brings the best out of the team given that they know the community well. For example, it may be important to ask:

What exactly do we want to achieve from the research?
How can we explain what the research is about, to people who are willing to participate?
Who should we talk to?
What methods should we use?
What is the best way to ask questions? What words and phrases will people find easiest to understand?
How should we record the responses of people?

It might seem obvious to include this point, but so many people in communities are invited to meetings for which the purpose is not clear to them. We need to make sure this problem is avoided when planning community-based research. Otherwise, the level of energy and interest of the team might understandably decline. It is worth writing a clear purpose on paper to stick on the wall and then referring regularly to it as the one everyone agreed in the first bullet point above.

The final key ingredient in effective community-based research is the methods. We commonly use and recommend surveys as being the most manageable method for local people new to research. Surveys can be administered fairly quickly across a couple of days, especially if there are small teams made up of two or three people moving around the community to talk to people. The results build over time and people can start to analyse and interpret the data as more information is collected.

Other methods are valuable too, including semi-structured interviews, focus groups and case studies. These methods take more practice and skill to manage but are important to a mixed methods approach that brings together qualitative and quantitative data.

‘We are not researchers’ – Making M&E accessible

by Steve Fisher

‘We are not researchers’

Making M&E accessible

Steve Fisher

The increasing need for evidence of the impact of investments in social development, health and education programs places pressures on organisations and their staff. This is not unreasonable, but for many people, monitoring and evaluation remains an obscure subject, distant from the day-to-day activities of working with clients.

Community Works often runs introductory training workshops on monitoring and evaluation for health workers, NGO board members or groups of development professionals seeking to strengthen their work in this area. Sometimes participants make clear their difficulty with the subject. ‘We are not researchers’ they say. ‘Çollecting and analysing data is not something we have done before’. Or, they sometimes imply, is that the reason we became health or community workers in the first place.

We have learned from these experiences. As a result, we try to develop materials and deliver training sessions that follow four key principles:

Modify language

The phrase ‘impact assessment’ often throws people off course straight away. We have found that ‘measuring change’ is a good way to talk about monitoring and evaluation because it leads to a conversation about what are the specific changes a project or program intends to achieve and how can we best measure those changes. In social development, usually the answer is to ask people good questions. The same applies to other terms, such as data (equals information).

Desmystify the subject

Monitoring and evaluation is research. But that doesn’t mean the subject has to be clouded by research process jargon. For example, data analysis can be broken down into a process of grouping responses to interviews or surveys into key messages, trends and ideas. We often suggest that teams measuring change present all their data on the wall or on a big table, so everything can be seen together. That makes it easier to spot key insights and other information.

Focus on the process

When an electrician or a plumber comes to my house to repair or install something, the technical language they use is often a barrier to me understanding what they are going to do. We have addressed language above. But not knowing the process also leaves me clueless about their work. The same applies to monitoring and evaluation. In supporting better practice, one of the most useful ways we have found to support people is to set out the steps required. We sometimes present the process visually, as a flights of stairs for example. Once people can see the steps, the whole process seems more manageable.

Build on the strengths of participants

Often, qualitative information is best collected through, for example, interviews and focus groups. It sounds obvious, but the backgrounds of certain professional or community groups can be very good preparation for this kind of work. For example, health workers are often skilled in putting people at ease and asking questions in a supportive and encouraging way. This means they are often very effective, once given the chance to practice and guidance on the way to facilitate a focus group, for example.

In our training programs, we like to introduce practice early on. We find that participants who might have approached M&E with indifference or fear, become animated and interested when they see how effective they can be in collecting information through talking to people.

Applying place-based approaches to strengthen social and community support systems

by Maria Rodrigues

As strategic partners of Spring Impact, we have been pleased to coordinate an international study of place-based approaches to early childhood development this year with support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. The term ‘place-based’ was new to us, but it soon became clear how this way of thinking and doing underpins much of our work.

Place-based approaches shift the focus of development practice from projects and programs to place, meaning a particular sub-national geographic area such as a county, district, or municipality. The logic underlying these approaches is that wellbeing is closely tied to geography, and that improving the situation for people living there requires adaptive, responsive, and cooperative action by a diverse array of actors. Instead of prescribing a particular set of activities to address a complex social need or problem, place-based approaches compel a wide range of people from different sectors and sections of the community to ask, ‘How can we work together to make this a better place?’

This logic links social impact to locally-driven action. If wellbeing is closely tied to geography, and improving the situation for people living there requires adaptive and responsive action, then no one is better positioned to drive that action than the people most closely connected to that place. While many approaches to social and economic development value local participation and empowerment, place-based approaches frame local leadership, information, and decision-making as absolutely crucial to success.

This resonates strongly with our experience in social development settings. For example:

Stronger Communities for Children

The Stronger Communities for Children (SCfC) initiative strengthens capacity in remote Aboriginal communities to give children the best start in life. Working closely with our partners at Ninti One, and funded by the Australian Government, we have aimed to ensure that local people have a real say in decisions made about service delivery. In 2017, Community Works conducted a literature review on Collective Impact that informed the strategic framework used by Ninti One to design and implement SCfC. Since then, Steve Fisher has worked closely with local communities to plan, monitor, evaluate, and learn from the initiative. Their guide for measuring local change can be viewed here. Listen to community board members discuss their experiences with SCfC here.

Mental Health Friendly Cities

Community Works has supported the Mental Health Friendly Cities initiative since its inception as a key partner of citiesRISE, a global platform for transforming mental health policy and practice. The initiative focuses on urban municipalities as drivers of change, places where cross-sectoral cooperation to integrate measures for improving mental health can lead broader systems change. Mental Health Friendly Cities facilitate and leverage leadership by young people to change the narrative around mental health, improve access to support, foster social cohesion and create environments that are conducive to wellbeing. Coordinated action at the local level and sharing of knowledge across cities are crucial factors in identifying proven solutions and accelerating their uptake.

Grant Activity Reviews

In partnership with Ninti One, Community Works has been reviewing a government-funded program for socio-economic development in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia. These reviews are ‘place-based’ in the sense that evaluation teams take a holistic, cross-sectoral approach to understanding the impact of the program in specific remote areas, and determining strategies for improvement that build on local strengths and target the needs and aspirations of local people. Part of Community Works’ role in this work has been to prepare briefing reports that equip evaluation teams with rich contextual information about each place they visit, including local history, demographics, health and education data, culture, and topical issues that should be factored into the review process.

In each of the examples above, we work with our partners to take an in-depth, holistic look into particular places and how they function, in order to empower local people to drive programs and services that produce social benefits for the whole population.

At Community Works, we understand that strong, healthy and empowered communities are basic building blocks for development. In our experience, place-based approaches are especially powerful when working with First Nations and other communities whose identities and belief systems are closely tied to land. From this cultural standpoint, place-based thinking is highly intuitive.

As national and international development agencies and funding bodies become more interested in place-based approaches, we see great potential for improving the alignment of large-scale initiatives with local agendas, value systems and ways of thinking. Investing in a place-based approach means supporting strong relationships between people working together for positive social change. It means strengthening information flows from communities to service providers to governments and back again. It means trusting the people most closely connected to a place to drive local decision-making, because they are the ones best positioned to lead progress toward a shared vision. For national and international agencies, it means playing a supporting role rather than the lead.

For all of these reasons, Community Works sees place-based thinking as both highly compatible with self-determination and highly pragmatic when it comes to achieving better outcomes for disadvantaged populations. We look forward to contributing to the emerging evidence base on these approaches, and continuing to work with our partners to support best practice.

Click here to read our report ‘Scaling up place-based strategies to strengthen community early childhood systems’

The Chaco Networks; environment and development in South America

by Steve Fisher

The Redes Chaco (pronounced Red-es Cha-co) or Chaco Networks is a group of people and organisations concerned with the sustainable development of the Gran Chaco Region of South America, an extensive low-lying and semi-arid area that is part of the territory of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil.

Ivan Arnold of Nativa addressing the Redes Chaco Meeting in February 2015

I recently participated in the regional meeting of Redes Chaco held in Embarcación, Argentina, close to the border with Bolivia. I was invited to the meeting by Ivan Arnold of Nativa, a Bolivian organisation that will be the subject of a separate blog post. Afterwards I spent some time visiting Nativa and understanding their programs, with a view to Community Works assisting or working with them in some way.

The home of a Chaqueña family participating in a Nativa project to reduce pressure on forest resources

Taking an Australian perspective on the Chaco, it has much in common with the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. Water quality and availability is a challenge, seasonal climate change (especially the rainy season) can present difficulties for access and infrastructure, while the pattern of sparse settlement leads to complexities around access to services and economic development. Topics of interest to Redes Chaco include water, climate change vulnerability, enterprise development and natural resource management. The presence of many indigenous people and organisations in the region brings a unique social and cultural dynamic to the region.

Redes Chaco has recently launched a fund to support sustainable development projects. Community Works will maintain our interest in the work of the organisation and any opportunities to make positive connections in Australia and elsewhere.