Pathways to Financial Sustainability for NGOs

Social Innovations Advisory (SIA) is pleased to announce the release of its report, Building the Roadmap for Financial Sustainability for Rights-based CSOs in the Global South. The report analyses case studies of CSOs in the Asia-Pacific region that are piloting a wide range of business and funding models. These cases are based on interviews conducted during the spring of 2019 with 22 CSO leaders about their experiences, achievements and challenges. Summaries of 16 of these cases in standardized templates are now available in the CSO Sustainability Database on the website of Innovation for Change (I4C). The report can also be found on the website of Rights CoLab, of which SIA's director, Shawn Shieh, is a Contributor.

 

The findings of this research project have also been shared in the following platforms:

 

·      A podcast in the Civic Innovator’s series featuring SIA’s founder, Shawn Shieh, Innpactia’s coordinator, Ana María Espin and Innpactia’s founder, Juan Carlos Lozano on “Creative Sustainability” focusing on the imaginative and inventive ways that civil society organizations are seeking resources, funding and other support for their work in often difficult circumstances.

 

·      Shawn Shieh’s OpenGlobalRights article on how Chinese CSOs are at the forefront of exploring hybrid business and funding models thanks to China having perhaps the most diverse funding ecosystem in Asia.

 

·      SIA’s report and cases join a growing body of work carried out by the Innovation for Change network and Rights CoLab on financial sustainability and alternative CSO business and funding models in other regions of the world. SIA’s report can be found on the website of Rights CoLab, and the cases can be found on Rights CoLab’s Mapping Civil Society Innovation platform.

 

SIA plans to use these findings to highlight the critical importance of financial sustainability and local funding to both funders and CSOs in the coming years. We will be developing toolkits and providing trainings and coaching to mentor CSOs on exploring alternative business and funding models.

 

For questions, please contact Shawn Shieh, Founder and Director, SIA, at shawnshieh@gmail.com.