Civil society organizations play a vital role in the success of a country’s development. The capacity of CSOs to perform this function, is so key that is now one of the metrics for the new USAID country roadmap on the Journey to Self-Reliance.

Under the USAID Strengthening Civil Society (SCS) Globally LWA, with our prime FHI360, SI led development of a programming resource entitled, Capacity Development Interventions: A Guide for Program Designers. The Guide aims to help program designers who work in any sector to envision and implement with civil society organization (CSO) partners the capacity development (CD) support that will strengthen local systems and help CSOs achieve their missions. Program designers from both implementing partner and donor organizations who are working to build the capacity of CSOs can use this Guide to better distinguish among CD approaches, the processes involved in each, and potential impact of a chosen approach. By identifying organizational characteristics and areas of potential capacity growth, this Guide enables program designers to better select the intervention necessary to achieve their desired goal.

SI Program Director Salman Jaffer commented, “From our experience, we have seen interventions oriented towards CSOs evolving from transactional (Capacity Building 1.0) to a more systems-based perspective (Capacity Building 2.0). Given the extensive amount of work in this space, we noticed a gap in finding a framework and roadmap that practitioners and program designers can use to identify CB interventions to match their needs. We hope that this Manual fills that void.”

Social Impact is proud to be part of the SCS Consortium led by FHI360.