NGO support toolkit (English) 

Partner and project selection

Once NGO/CBO support providers (NSPs) have established their strategic plan defining their scope of work, they need to identify and select NGO and CBO partners to work with and/or the projects they wish to support. This process is undertaken by NSPs when first establishing their NGO/CBO support programme or as they take on functions of grant provision or technical support. It also occurs periodically as they support different partners, for example, if their scope of work or strategic direction changes.

The process NSPs follow for identifying, selecting and supporting partners to implement projects will depend on many different factors. These are summarised in the table below. If there are few CBOs and NGOs already established, the NSP may have to begin by mobilising and strengthening community groups, or by working with any existing civil society structures (e.g. research institutes, trade unions, indigenous power structures, cultural movements).

A commmon way used to identify interested organisations is to announce a Request for Proposals (RFP) through established media channels in the country. Where media channels are weak, or the NSP is targetting small organisations that may not have the capacity to respond to public announcements, institutional response mapping exercises can help to identify potential partners.

A Request for Expressions of Interest (REI / EOI) is commonly used before a full RFP, to screen credible organisations and project concepts. This minimises the number of detailed proposals that have to be prepared by potential partners, and assessed by the NSP. In addition, the overall quality of proposals is improved as the NSP can provide more guidance, and in some cases support, to the partners developing detailed proposals.

The NSP should give guidelines for its partners developing project proposals, however where capacity is low, the NSP may go further and provide technical support to assist in project design, or financial support to conduct needs assessments.

In all these steps, the more time and effort the NSP invests, the better the quality of projects it supports will be. The effectiveness and efficiency of project implementation can be greatly improved by investing in the project design stage.

Issues to consider

• There is a tension between having to show results demonstrating the impact of the NSP’s work and the time needed to build up weaker but potentially crucial NGOs/CBOs.
• When working with weaker organisations, NSPs need to be realistic about their expectations and be prepared to demonstrate to their own donors the need for longer term investment in building capacity.

Related themes

Institutional response analysis

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