Capacity building
We provide financial support for organisational development and capacity building. This support helps partners grow stronger to better attain their grant objectives and achieve their goals. We provide this support directly to partners by providing grants or connecting partners with consultants.
Partners can use the grant funds to support any capacity issue they consider a priority for their organisation. These include:
Foundational support
To help partners to comply with basic processes such as legal and financial or fiscal requirements, registration and taxation, or security and wellbeing.
Direct response
Support which responds to specific challenges organisations face in their daily work, such as fundraising, strategic communications, leadership, or programme design.
Organisational development
Support for organisational transformation for institutions undergoing significant change due to a shift in programme focus, expansion to new regions, a change in leadership, or the impact of external factors.
Field building
Support for organisations that offer capacity development to other not-for-profit organisations or that develop resources, such as research or tools, which benefit civil society as a whole.
Three principles that guide our work
Collaboration & Partnership
We strive to foster collaboration and partnership with and among our partners, as well as with other funders providing capacity building support.
Ownership
We seek to ensure that our partners own their organisational development and capacity building efforts. We always consider the local constraints affecting them.
Ongoing processes
We view capacity building and organisational development as ongoing processes that require persistence, patience and flexibility.
Helping partners reach their planned outcomes
We provide financial support for organisational development and capacity building. This support helps partners grow stronger to better attain their grant objectives and achieve their goals. We provide this support directly to partners by providing grants or connecting partners with consultants.
Through the organisational development and capacity building support, we hope to see outcomes such as:
- Effective organisational leaders, with the courage and humility to demonstrate difficult decision-making, which will in turn enable staff to perform and adapt to change.
- High-performing organisations delivering meaningful, measurable, and sustainable results, from the perspective of the people or the causes the organisation serves.
- Effective networks with compelling strategies that complement the work of their members.
- Intermediary grant-makers with the strategies, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and trust to support their own partners’ organisational development and capacity building effectively.
- In-country consultants and civil society support organisations that can offer a range of high-quality organisational development and capacity building services demanded and needed by Oak partners.
Discover our capacity building stories
Would you like to read more stories like this? Please visit our “Stories” page.
Watch our latest videos
In this video you can find out more about how we provide financial support for organisational development and capacity building. This support helps partners grow stronger in terms of their organisational capacity, so that they can better attain their grant objectives and achieve their goals. We provide this support directly to partners through grants or by linking partners with consultants that Oak has established partnerships with.
If you are an Oak partner and would like to be considered for capacity-building support, please reach out to your programme officer who will put you in touch with Adriana Craciun, our senior adviser for organisational development and capacity building.
Would you like to see more videos? Please visit our YouTube channel.
How to access organisational development and capacity building support
Oak partners and grantees interested in capacity building and organisational development support should contact their responsible programme officer directly. If you are not an Oak partners, please read this page to find out more about our grant-making.
Publications
Leadership transition in Ethiopia & CB resource on leadership transition
Oak Foundation commissioned a short research project with civil society organisations in Ethiopia. The aim of the research was to learn what we could do as an outside funder to better support healthy leadership transition in partners.
Funding Organisational Development
Oak Foundation together with Laudes Foundation, MAVA Foundation, Mercator Foundation and PeaceNexus Foundation reflected on, articulated and shared their learning about supporting Organisational Development (OD). In this paper they share their key insights on how to engage in OD, describe a standard OD process and address dilemmas.