“Life after funding” is the first focus on Cops for Dev. discussion
Many communities are externally funded. Clearly, people have various opinions about this. Among the 5 interviewees we find a range of opinions:
- Communities never work unless 100% on their own power
- Communities of course must start from the need/demand on members’ side, but looking for funding for specific activities might help strengthen and develop the community and give facilitators AND members more space to work for the community
- Communities that started with funding and support from outside (like KM4dev) can give good results.
But irrespective of opinions about desirability of funding in the first place, it remains a fact that many communities ARE externally funded. The authors asked the following question:
How can you build in capacity so that these communities can transition (from one-off) and continue to function autonomously after the life-span of the funded activity is over?
And this is some of what they answered:
Beverly Trayner comes with very useful principles during cop design:
* consult potential users about the design of the community, and
include them in the design process;
* use a platform and or tools/technology that can easily be
taken over by someone from within the community when the
funding runs out;
* keep the tools simple at entry level with the option of more
functions as people become more familiar with it;
* use of aggregators so pages stay updated without anyone doing
anything;
* support a community of practice of technology stewards within
the larger community who can support their own
community/group/NGO.
Summarizing Joitske Hulsebosch’s reaction and adding to the list:
* Be very careful in choosing when to foster a CoP or not;
Include people who are passionate to learn in the domain
* Careful planning and design: spontaneous birth is an illusion
* natural hosts; an organization or institution who can be a
natural host or convener for the CoP
* Be clear beforehand what your intentions are getting support
for it. It’s important that the sponsor is prepared to be
flexible and support the CoP till it’s viable.
Lucie Lamoureux mentions how funding of specific projects can help
to partially fund a community (and strengthen it). Especially if
implemented by the community as a community activity.
Nancy White distinguishes at least 3 ways into this: “donor driven
or community driven or both. In my experience donors talk about
sustainability, but don’t really know how to support that from a
process standpoint and rarely seem to want the longer engagement to
mentor the process. (…)
Now, the second and third ways in – community led. If the “funded
program” is designed for life after funding, ownership and
participation in that design should logically include the community,
NOT JUST the donor. So maybe we turn some of our design expectations
over a bit and do more participatory design. It is changing the
fundamental relationship between funders and communities. Big big
change.”
Ueli Scheuermeier is soundly skeptical: “I usually say, that if a
community can’t get their act together and organize themselves to
keep going, then it’s a dud in the first place. Usually there needs
to be a core of at least 3-4 people who just keep digging away at it
and continue to exchange. Others will watch and join. The argument
that this all costs I feel is totally wrong: I have been highly
active in communities that simply got themselves a Yahoo Group, and
that’s that. To be blunt: The biggest problem for continued
autonomous functioning after the initial funding ceases is the
initial funding. If I were a funding agency trying to support the
emergence of CoPs, I would only fund something that is already
working on a shoestring. But more often than not, funding agencies
kind of initiate CoPs with the hope that they will continue. Wrong:
What funding agencies initiate is usually what is on their own agenda.”
“Ah, here’s a variant: Guys in a funding agency may feel they need
to get something going for themselves. Fine, then let’s not let them
project this outside and launch a CoP to take care of that. They
should be organizing their own little informal CoP among themselves
to take care of the issue, and that may eventually become more
formalized.”
Also see on this issue: -a blogpost on lessons learned about “life after funding” <http://cops4dev.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/notes-on-issue-1-life-after-funding/> from case studies from CoPs cultivated in the MENA region, other by CARE, and ICT4D by IICD. (by the three authors, Ruter, Mantey and Williams)
Questions to all readers:
* -What would YOU add to (or strike out of) the tentative list
started by Bev and Joitske of “design principles for autonomous
communities”?
* -Do you agree with the perspective of funders (donors AND ngo’s)
as pursuing their own agendas and not very capable of long term
guidance of communities? Why (not)?
* -How would you suggest to “change the fundamental relationship
between funders and communities” ?
