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ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING

Firelight's Organizational Learning Program has two main objectives:

1. Continuous improvement of our own and our partners’ programs; and
2. 'Leverage': using our experiences and knowledge to get more resources to the grassroots.  

By informing and persuading other funders of the importance of channeling resources to the grassroots organizations making a difference in children’s and families’ lives, our leverage strategy—which includes our organizational learning, communications, and advocacy initiatives—has the potential to impact the lives of millions of children still in need of support and services.

Our Organizational Learning Program employs a rigorous approach to capturing and analyzing the data we have collected over the years and synthesizing the lessons we have learned into practical, applicable knowledge. Our findings and insights will help us improve the partner selection process; assist partners in refining their interventions on behalf of children and families; facilitate peer learning and experience sharing; and help us deploy more targeted capacity building, monitoring, and evaluation efforts.

Our Learning Agenda is focused on bringing to light evidence of the efficacy of CBOs and contributing to the understanding of how community-based groups respond to local needs and work to improve the well-being of vulnerable children and families. Guided by the five questions listed below, the research will go beyond describing the effect of community-based responses on child well-being to explaining that effect and exploring its practical and policy implications.

Firelight has engaged Susan Wilkinson-Maposa to serve as our external advisor for the Learning Agenda. Until recently, Susan was the Director of the Community Grantmaking and Social Investment Programme at the Centre for Leadership and Public Values at the University of Cape Town business school. With civil society expert Alan Fowler, Susan co-authored what is widely considered a groundbreaking research monograph entitled The Poor Philanthropist: How and why the poor help each other (2005).

GUIDING QUESTIONS

In order to focus our learning and articulate what we and our partners know, we have adopted a set of five questions to guide our learning process:

1. What do CBOs choose to do to promote child well-being, and why do they do it?
The answer to the ‘what’ question will detail the activities that CBOs undertake, analyzing them by programmatic focus area (e.g. education, health), and comparing holistic to single-sector approaches. The ‘why’ question will explore the motivation of CBOs, looking at what makes them tick. An important part of this is an analysis of the CBOs’ founding stories, and how their goals and ambitions change over time.

2. How do CBOs do their work?
Initially, we expect to analyze this question at three levels of CBO operations: (a) influencing behavior at the household and community level; (b) meeting basic needs by providing local services; and (c) helping households and communities access government services. We will adjust our model based on what the data indicate.

We will also look at the relationship between CBO capacity level (emerging, expanding or established) and their ways of working; the importance of leadership and gender in CBOs; and how CBOs perceive issues like innovation and sustainability.

3. What is the effect of CBOs’ work?
Early on, we will concentrate on the benefits to children and families, exploring how benefits are chosen, and how CBOs assess the values of the benefits they offer. We will look at how CBOs target who in the community should benefit, and examine the correlation between CBO characteristics and the nature and scope of benefits. We will take outcome data into account, as available, but will also look at how CBOs understand and plan for the longer-term outcomes of their activities.

4. Based on the responses to the first three questions, what seems to be the optimal 'division of labor' among CBOs, government, and other actors?
Some aspects of child well-being (e.g. health and education) are usually delivered by the state and enhanced by community efforts. Other aspects (e.g. psychosocial support) are best undertaken by the family and community and supported by the state. Yet others (e.g. economic strengthening) could be undertaken and supported by either party.

On the basis of what we observe through our learning efforts, we will make recommendations about the optimal ‘handshake’ between community action and government services across a variety of sectors and situations.

5. Based on the responses to the first four questions, what are the best ways to support and strengthen CBOs?
For the last 10 years, Firelight has been in the business of helping CBOs build their capacity. We expect to gain much additional insight through our learning efforts and put it to immediate use to improve our capacity building work, and also to communicate it broadly to other funders, national governments, and CBOs themselves.

Firelight has developed a tool to measure CBO capacity along six dimensions (community linkages, holism/breadth of approach, adaptive capacity, organizational identity, sound management, and relations with stakeholders). This tool will play an important role in the analyses of each of the above guiding questions. We will critically evaluate and seek to improve it during the course of our learning effort.

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GUIDING QUESTIONS

In order to focus our learning and articulate what we and our partners know, we have adopted a set of five questions to guide our learning process:

1. What do CBOs choose to do to promote child well-being, and why do they do it?

2. How do CBOs do their work?

3. What is the effect of CBOs’ work?

4. Based on the responses to the first three questions, what seems to be the optimal 'division of labor' among CBOs, government, and other actors?

5. Based on the responses to the first four questions, what are the best ways to support and strengthen CBOs?