• Working with donors

Working with donors

This paper investigates the mystery surrounding what makes capacity building work and why. It focuses particularly on experiences drawn from the INTRAC Praxis programme since 2003.

Frequently missed in the capacity building mystery is the opportunity to change. It is mistakenly assumed that once a capacity building event has taken place, capacity has been built. Yet planning to change is different from changing itself. Good capacity building requires donors with foresight and insight who have the courage to support the shifts in power and relationships.

The authors make a number of suggestions which would help improve capacity building. These include:

• stakeholders need to articulate more clearly and negotiate a shared understanding of capacity building, which should be rooted in the specific context and culture in which it takes place
• inherent obstacles to capacity building in the aid system must be mitigated as far as possible
• the degree of difficulty entailed in building capacity must be appreciated
• more attention should be paid to managing and resourcing the implementation of change
• capacity building should be backed by far-sighted donors, acting as accomplices to the process.

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