Constructing a Theory of Change for organisational capacity development

There is obviously no uniform Theory of Change that applies to all the Dutch interventions targeting civil society actors in the DRC in terms of capacity development. Some general characteristics and pathways can nevertheless be distilled from the different ToCs that were composed as part of the evaluation (see Bulte et al.

Generally, Congolese CSOs rarely think about their own organisation in terms of capacity and do not have a clear outlook for the future. Most staff members find it difficult to think critically about their own organisational capacity. When asked about what they wanted to achieve, personnel were much more inclined to think in terms of the direct impact they wanted to have on their beneficiaries, but less clear about the way in which this could be achieved. Secondly, in considering their ambitions for the future, most personnel are inclined to think more ambitiously than realistically. Increasing capacity often seems to equal expanding geographical coverage of activities: from territory level, to district, national, or even sub-national level (the Great Lakes Region). Underlying the ambition to expand is the conviction that funding availabilities will continue to exist. All organisations expressed this to be the bottleneck for their further development. Exit strategies usually did not go much beyond ‘finding new donors'.

An element that came up in all ToCs was the value attached to internal organisation development and improving formal procedures and bodies: Boards of Directors, General Assemblies, statutes, and international regulations. This was an element that was not so much imposed by donors, but that is more related to the associational culture that exists in the DRC (Hilhorst and Bashwira 2015); having a Board of Directors, a General Assembly, statutes, and internal regulations is seen as indispensable and as an indicator of well-functioning organisations.

In expressing their needs in terms of capacity development, it was striking to observe that staff members stayed close to the type of training they had previously received. In recent years, for instance, one organisation had received a lot oftopical training (on their working themes: human rights, good governance, and conflict mediation). Whereas good knowledge was available on this, staff members still expressed the need to have more training on these themes. Staff from another organisation that had already received quite some training through various donors on project management (M&E, financial reporting, etc.) indicated the need to have more training on this topic. Expressed needs and expectations were thus often in line with experiences from earlier years, which fed into expectations of what could be demanded from the donor in the future.

Donors usually seem to have a stronger voice than CSOs in deciding which interventions are offered. Especially donors with several partners in the same region tend to offer the same type of capacity strengthening to all partners, with limited attention to specific needs. Most donors focus on capacity strengthening needs of individual staff members in terms of project management skills. Such training does not need to be tailor-made but can be provided to various organisations with different backgrounds at the same time through a one-size-fits-all approach and is hence rather cost-effective. Improving project management skills of CSOs is important for donors, as it makes it easier for them to monitor progress and to report on results. Most CSOs had received such capacity strengthening in the past and in the first two years of the MFS-II funding, but this greatly decreased towards the end of the funding period.

Most donors regularly assess the capacity of their Congolese partners; for instance through organisational scans and SWOT analyses. During the evaluation period, training became less frequent than it had been in earlier years.

Since 2012, the major Dutch donors increasingly shifted to working with CSOs that already had certain capabilities, to the detriment of weaker organisations. Having less generous budgets available themselves, it became more crucial to show good results. “This is easier to achieve with stronger partners,” as a manager at one of the donor offices explained. Partnerships hence become more instrumental, with less room for the capacity development of partners themselves. In some cases, donors started to seek ways in which they could co-implement projects together with local partners: “Partnerships used to be about financing and capacity strengthening. Now we will look into possibilities for co-implementation,” as one donor representative explained. One of the reasons given for this is that it is becoming more complex to meet all the requirements for the more limited funding opportunities that are still available, such as EU funding.

Overall reductions in funding are clearly visible in CSO's budgets. Comparing 2012 and 2014 budgets shows that 13 out of 18 CSOs had to deal with considerable reductions, with one CSO not having any funding at all, and with nine CSOs having less than 50% left of their annual budget. Five out of the six holistically-oriented organisations were among the CSOs that saw budget reductions.⁹ It strengthens the tendency of CSOs to follow donor agendas rather than the needs of their beneficiaries, and to render upward rather than downward accountability (Kyamusugulwa, Hilhorst, and Jacobs 2018). This risks the sustainability of projects and a lack of coherence when different projects are funded through different donors that all have their own agenda.