NGOs and capacity building: for what and for whom?

Is much of the talk about ‘capacity building’ woolly theorizing? What happens when capacity building is pursued and funded as an end in itself? Is enough known about what it really entails? Donors and international NGOs have often understood it to be simply training in accountancy and financial management. What do the clients - southern NGOs - want and expect to develop capacity?

An INTRAC report on a conference reviewing experience looks at differences in north-south priorities and suggests how actors should work together to determine capacity building needs, plan appropriate interventions and measure their impact. Among the different international and southern NGO perceptions highlighted in the study are:

• While donors and NGOs are more concerned with promoting local resource mobilisation, southern NGOs are keener to improve the quality of donor funding.
• Southern NGOs generally attach more importance to individual capacity building than international NGOs.
• Southern NGOs do not generally share northern enthusiasm for collaboration with business.

The cited examples of good practice argue for a broad vision of capacity building as an ongoing process to help NGOs adapt in a world made uncertain by globalisation. Complementary interventions are needed at societal, inter-organisational, organisational and individual levels. External relations with other NGOs are essential to create networks to advocate for the establishment of NGO-friendly legal frameworks. While it is easy to talk in impersonal terms about organizational change, what are really required are individual leaders willing to change attitudes and work practices. International NGOs must avoid holier-than-thou assumptions that they do not themselves require capacity building.

Capacity building must be owned and driven by the organization on the receiving end. International NGO-imposed capacity-buildings runs the risk of reinforcing southern cynicism that capacity building is a stratagem to simply make southern NGOs more efficient implementers of northern structural adjustment priorities. Recognising that they have to relinquish control is a challenge to international NGOs used to identifying the capacity building needs of southern partners. Successful capacity building requires generous and ‘hands-off’ donors.

The report also stresses that:

• Debate over the merits of programme-focused or organisational-focused capacity building is irrelevant. It is not a question of either/or but of both.
• Capacity building offers entry points. Working with organisations on improving gender training programme delivery brings into sharp relief internal gender issues within the training providers’ organisation themselves.
• Limited evidence of the impact of capacity building at beneficiary level exists.

Among the many pointers for the future evolution of capacity building are:

• International NGOs need to ask, what is our agenda? Are we really altruistic? What are our unconscious interests in promoting capacity building?
• Off-the-shelf programmes need to give way to contextualised training cognizant of local culture and a degree of previous exposure to participative training techniques.
• Measuring impact, although a challenge, cannot be shirked.
• Donors should subsidise local capacity building providers and NGOs should contract them.

Source(s):
‘Power and partnership: experiences of NGO capacity building’ by Rick James, INTRAC, NGO Management and Policy Series #12, 2001 Full document.

Funded by: UK Department for International Development (DFID), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SIDA)

id21 Research Highlight: 2 May 2001

Further Information:
Rick James
INTRAC
PO Box 563
Oxford OX2 6RZ
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1865 201851
Fax: +44 (0)1865 201852
Contact the contributor: intrac@gn.apc.org

INTRAC, UK

Other related links:
ELCI promotes networking between NGOs working towards sustainable development through capacity building

Capacity is dedicated to advancing the policy and practice of capacity building in international development cooperation

Capacity 21 helps developing countries to build their capacities to integrate the principles of Agenda 21

ACBF addresses capacity needs in macroeconomic policy analysis and development management in Africa

IFCB focuses on key future priorities of capacity building for SNGOs to enhance their effectiveness

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