Systems change needs strong organizations. We support organizations to achieve people-level and system-level outcomes in health, education, and economic opportunity. Achieving these transformative outcomes requires clear leaders that can make good strategic choices, and strong organizational capabilities that can act on them. Co-Impact therefore seeks to provide program partners with the time and space needed to clarify their strategic choices and make coherent decisions aligned with their systems change goals and to develop the organizational capabilities that are most critical to their mission. We do this throughout our engagement, and by allocating a dedicated amount of USD 500,000 for organizational strengthening within Co-Impact’s systems change grants.
Lack of strategic coherence is one of the biggest barriers to organizational effectiveness. Too often, social change leaders are pulled in multiple directions and unable to align the organization with its purpose. This is caused by both internal distractions (wanting to do too many things) and funding dynamics (chasing donor priorities, fundraising, and reporting). This results in fragmented priorities and misalignment between core purpose of the organization and how the organization spends its time and money, undermining the ability to do deep systems change work. Therefore, achieving strategic coherence i.e., the ability to focus on purpose and make choices that strengthen the purpose (including saying no to money, activities, etc. that detract from purpose) is essential to achieving long-term, enduring impact.
To operationalize strategic coherence, we consider four categories of capabilities. How does an organization align its critical capabilities with its purpose? Internally, it is seen in the nature and composition of its leadership and governance, and how it arranges/aligns its people, systems, and processes. Externally, it is reflected in how an organization selects and nurtures its partners as well as how it engages with funders. Equally importantly, how the organization makes its values and culture come alive at the heart of its decision-making, serving as guideposts and not just something to post on the wall. These four aspects form the backbone of organizational capabilities to then decide which, when, and how specific capacities (such as finance, communications, learning and evaluation, human resource development etc.) should matter.
A deliberate and disciplined process to identify and prioritize organizational strengthening needs helps make good choices of where to invest. Program partners are best placed to identify and invest in the critical capabilities that are their biggest priorities at any given time. At the same time, established ways of looking and acting, habits and norms, can come in the way of what is needed and how it evolves. Engaging with an external facilitator who is able to bring in voices of internal and external stakeholders and ensure the discipline of a diagnosis and prioritization process, combined with supportive discussions with the Co-Impact team, can be really helpful in determining organizational strengthening needs and take the burden off the organization to figure this out on its own. The resulting organizational strengthening plan is a living document which is updated over time.
Please share your comments, feedback, and suggestions with Yasmin Madan (yasmin@co-impact.org).
