Background
In Africa, Asia and Latin America, citizen participation through a range of civil society organizations has become a growing and vital force. Civil society organizations have brought significant material and human resources from the community level to bear on poverty problems through donations of time, energy, materials and money.
Locally managed and controlled organizations that provide direct financial support to other organizations within their societies have been established over the last decade in many southern countries. A few were established twenty or thirty years ago. These organizations are injecting critical financial as well as technical resources into local civil society and mobilizing resources from a wide variety of sources both domestic and international for this purpose.
Case Studies and Analysis Papers
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Few of them were created with a single large endowment, as was the case with most northern private foundations. Most of them rely on a wide range of strategies to mobilize financial resources including earned income contributions from individuals and corporations and grants from international organizations. Some managed donor-designated or donor-advised funds following the US community foundation experience.
General consensus over terminology has yet been reached; these new types of organizations are usually referred to as "foundations" or "foundation-like organizations." Though many of these organizations have adopted legal identities as foundations or trusts, others are registered as nongovernmental organizations. In general, they differ in many ways from their northern counterparts. For example, they are more likely to mix program operation with grantmaking. Many of them act as convenors of civil society groups, as bridging institutions to other sectors of society or as technical assistance and training providers.
To distinguish this type of southern foundation-like organization from northern foundations we can use a term such as "community development foundation" or "southern foundation" or use a new term. One new term which has been proposed is "civil society resource organization" or CSRO. This term refers to organizations which combine financial assistance to community-based organizations and NGOs with other forms of support for organizations or the civil society sector as a whole. In this series of papers we will use the terms "foundation" and "civil society resource organization" interchangeably.
This expanding universe of foundations/civil society resource organizations around the world has not been systematically studied. As one of the first steps towards developing an understanding of this sector, Synergos responded to a request from a group of southern foundations.
In April 1993, a group of foundations from a dozen southern countries met with northern foundations and official foreign aid agencies to discuss the emerging role of foundations in strengthening civil society in Africa, Asia and Latin America. A major outcome of the discussion was a decision to learn more about how these organizations are created, how they develop and evolve, and how they sustain themselves as philanthropic entities. The group decided on case studies and analysis as the most fruitful approach. The Synergos Institute, which works with local partners to establish
and strengthen foundations and other financing organizations, accepted the task of producing case studies of these organizations. These papers are one of the products resulting from this effort.
Methodology
A Global Advisory Committee of southern foundations guided the two-year effort by Synergos. The advisors selected eight geographically diverse cases from over sixty organizations identified through an initial survey. Local researchers were retained in each country and the Synergos research team worked with them and the Advisory Committee to develop a common protocol.
The protocol hypothesized four areas as key to the operational effectiveness and sustainability of southern foundations: origins and genesis of the institution; institutional governance; program evolution and management; and financing. The case researchers studied these issues via multiple data collection methods and sources. The primary method was to conduct direct structured interviews with individuals involved with each case organization, including board members or trustees, the managing director, staff members, grant recipients, and other relevant organizations. In addition to interviews, researchers gathered mission and vision statements, annual reports, operating strategies and plans, internal and external evaluations, financial plans and administrative procedure manuals. Data collected by the different methods were systematically organized into distinct databases which were the basis for each written case study. The case studies were coordinated by the Synergos research team, which then provided the funding to a cross-case analysis team for the preparation of three analytical papers. The two teams prepared condensed versions of the case studies for publication.
Use of the Studies
The eight case studies bring to light key factors that have led these organizations to be successful, and the studies document the crucial processes they have gone through to respond effectively to the needs of their national civil societies. Across the very different conditions that brought about their formation, the cases reveal that foundations/CSROs can play a central and strategic role in strengthening civil
society. Their comparative advantage as resource mobilizers enables them to have a large effect both in stimulating new financing and connecting financial resources to the community-level where they can have the greatest impact. In particular, they have excelled at:
- providing seed resources for the growth of civil society organizations in their countries;
- leveraging diverse sources of financing for the projects and programs of civil society organizations;
- assisting northern foreign aid to be channeled to civil society in more sustainable and effective ways; and
- acting as an interface for public policy dialogue between civil society and the government and business sectors.
The case studies and the related analytical papers are a useful tool for those who wish to build foundations/CSROs around the world. Synergos hopes they will be widely used as a catalyst for the development and strengthening of this important group of institutions that provide financing to the voluntary sector.
Acknowledgements
The case study project has involved the talent and contributions of many individuals and organizations over the last two years. We would like to acknowledge their efforts and emphasize that the project would not have been possible to complete without their contributions:
- The Global Advisory Committee: Graça Machel, Foundation for Community Development, Mozambique; Cornelio Marchán, Esquel Ecuador Foundation; Ethel Rios de Betancourt, Puerto Rico Community Foundation; Kamla Chowdhry, Center for Science and Environment, India; Aurora Tolentino, Philippine Business for Social Progress; Paula Antezana, Arias Foundation, Costa Rica; Maria Holzer, Polish Children and Youth Foundation; Eric Molobi, The Kagiso Trust, South Africa.
- The case writers: Teresita C. del Rosario, Alejandra Adoum with Angela Venza, Anthony D´Souza, Alfredo Ocampo Zamorano with Margee Ensign and W. Bertrand, Victor E. Tan and Maurino P. Bolante, Maria del C. Arteta and William Lockwood-Benet, Victor M. Ramos Cortes and Lauren Blythe Schütte.
- The case studies research team: Betsy Biemann, S. Bruce Schearer, John Tomlinson, David Winder and Eliana Vera at The Synergos Institute and Catherine Overholt at the Collaborative for Development Action.
- The cross-case analysis team: Darcy Ashman, L. David Brown and Elizabeth Zwick at the Institute for Development Research.
Financial support for the project was provided by the Aspen Institute, the Compton Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
In addition, a number of individuals made very important contributions to various aspects of the research: Kathleen McCarthy at the Center for Philanthropy, City University of New York, and James Austin at Harvard University provided valuable research advice; staff and board members of the case organizations gave time, interviews and key background materials;
Yvette Santiago, Miriam Gerace Guarena, Amelia Moncayo and Armin Sethna assisted in the coordination and production of the study documents.