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Barry Smith is Regional Director, Southern Africa, of The Synergos Institute. Tina Thiart is Executive Director of the International Network of Women's Funds. This article was prepared for the 2007 edition of The CSI (Corporate Social Investment) Handbook produced by Trialogue. The CSI Handbook is designed for practitioners and decisionmakers in the field of corporate social investment in South Africa, as well as for people working in the development sector more generally. In particular, the book will assist those seeking to partner with other interested stakeholders in order to achieve greater developmental impact. |
By Barry Smith and Tina Thiart
In December 2005, leaders of independent, community grantmaking organizations in Southern Africa came together to form a new leadership and learning network -- the Southern Africa Community Grantmakers Leadership Cooperative. The Cooperative is a response to the sense of isolation and lack of peer learning opportunities often experienced by development grantmaker leaders, especially in the community sector.
Leadership development and "capacity-building" are too often viewed as technical training challenges that demand the expert input of skilled outsiders. Too often the potential of unlocking the wealth of knowledge and experience among community development workers and leaders is undervalued. By creating a safe space, based on mutual support and trust, for mutual leadership, peer learning and growth, it is possible to create a powerful force for building institutional capacity for more effective social change. This is a lesson that grantmakers have been learning through global leadership and learning networks like the Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support (WINGS) and the Synergos Senior Fellows Programme. In Southern Africa, community grantmaker leaders are re-inventing such a space through their own low-cost, informal leadership network -- the Cooperative.
The peer-to-peer learning model is a compelling one. Bringing together peer leaders -- facing similar challenges in diverse settings -- brings a particular energy to development and capacity-building. The model, if purposeful and focused on practical challenges, moves away from the "doing for" or "learning from" approaches of conventional consultancy and training. Among grantmaker leaders, it can capitalize on an emerging sense of common identity and solidarity, in a world where most people have little idea what a development grantmaker does. It builds on an instinctive trust for colleagues who share both the basic values, motivations and frustrations of their particular and often lonely profession.
In the Community Grantmakers Leadership Cooperative, about thirty-five community grantmaker leaders from twenty community grantmaking organizations (as diverse as the large Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, the smaller Ikhala Trust and Dockda Rural Development Trust, and the emerging Maria Lurdes de Mutola Foundation in Mozambique) have made a commitment to participate as individual leaders, with the backing of their Boards. Each leader signs up to a common Code of Commitment and ground rules for a "safe space" learning environment -- in which successes and challenges can be shared frankly without fear of censure or breach of confidentiality. The Cooperative meets three times per year for peer learning events and an Annual Retreat. At each meeting, members set personal and organizational gaols for the period ahead, and reflect with colleagues on their progress on previous goals. Members form partnerships of advice and collaboration on these goals, and increasingly have embarked on various forms of practical organizational and sectoral collaboration. As well as face to face meetings, the Cooperative has developed means of sharing in the spaces between meetings -- through a Cooperative online "blog" and other cost effective means of communication.
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Southern Africa Community Grantmakers Leadership Cooperative members on the Cooperative "The Cooperative gives me a feeling of inclusion, freedom and growth..." "The atmosphere is open and accommodating..." "This process has the potential to change the sector for the future." |
The learning agenda is owned and shaped by the members of the Cooperative, and some priority issues on the table have been:
- Sustainability and resource mobilization for community development
- More effective Boards and governance
- Strategy development
- Understanding the regional and international development and donor environment
- Sustaining and growing leadership
- Effective advocacy and lobbying for community development
- Social marketing and public relations
- Connecting with mechanisms and traditional patterns of community philanthropy
- Partnership and relationship building across sectoral divides
- Working with government, business and private philanthropists
- Asset-building through "Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment"
- Transformation and change management
- Giving substance and momentum to a "social justice philanthropy" approach in Southern Africa
Membership of the Cooperative continues to grow, and the members have given priority to expanding the representation of leaders from other countries in Southern Africa. Members have also formed three action groups on specific areas of common concern (relations with government agencies/para-statals; engaging with broad-based black economic empowerment; and joint marketing of the community grantmaker sector), with concrete joint action plans in place.
The Synergos Institute (Southern Africa) provides convening, financial and support services to the Cooperative -- with funding from the CS Mott Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation for South Africa and the WK Kellogg Foundation. However, Cooperative members have committed to cost-sharing with donors so as to create a sustainable network that would continue with or without external support.
Already, the Cooperative has engaged in constructive partnership dialogue with colleagues in the corporate sector, as well both the National Development Agency and the National Lottery in South Africa. It is exploring the possibilities of "Broad-Based Black Empowerment" to build long term assets for community development. It has crafted a common purpose statement for community grantmakers that articulates a broader vision of more vibrant culture of giving in the region, informed by an ethos of "social justice philanthropy."
In the end, it's all about leadership for social change -- reducing poverty and advancing social justice in Southern Africa. The Cooperative is an exciting venture that sets the scene for more effective social change partnerships both within and beyond the emerging community grantmaker sector.