Table 9 Good practices for donors facing transition
Transition timing | Approaches |
|---|---|
Impending transition | ➢ Strengthen key organizations and individuals who can carry advocacy forward following transition, and who present the potential to serve as country-level and future capacity building resources for smaller organizations. ➢ Support networks with robust existing capacity to mobilize advocacy, or encourage the unification of CSOs, while ensuring community needs are represented. ➢ Channel funding through intermediaries to create broad advocacy support and pressure over governments. ➢ Create meaningful participatory mechanisms to bring together civil society and government to agree to rules of engagement and codify participation. ➢ Provide time-bound, flexible bridge grants, with catalytic funding available to support targeted advocacy. |
Longer-term engagement | ➢ Diversify funding modalities to support a mix of organizations, potentially through donor coordination mechanisms and intermediaries. ➢ Support longer-term capacity building across different levels of the system – individual, organizational, and systemic - and define in tandem with CSOs what support is needed. ➢ Support social accountability efforts that engage members of affected populations to generate public engagement and demand and hold their government to account. |
Changing donors’ approach at any point of engagement | ➢ Provide more flexible funding, reporting and evaluation with core support, looser grant application and reporting requirements, and improved monitoring and evaluation to better measure advocacy. ➢ Build an exit strategy and consider sustainability from the start in partnership with CSOs ➢ Support rights-based activities, particularly organizations and activities that include or are led by members of affected populations, and focus on embracing the diversity of vulnerable populations. ➢ Address enabling environments by recognizing the historical and political context in which civil society sits, and adjust donor involvement accordingly. ➢ Strengthen access to data and information via knowledge sharing hubs and online tool repositories. ➢ Consider non-traditional modes of engagement like informal initiatives and mobilization via social media. |