It’s no secret it’s getting harder and harder for civil society organizations around the world to function, and for funders to support them.
Dozens of countries are increasing restrictions on what civil society organizations can do, and from where they can get money. Funders and NGOs are pushing back, usually through public policy advocacy. But there is so much more that we can be doing to handle these restrictions than just saying “no.”
There are lessons for us from the field of social resilience, which talks about how to keep things going in the face of shocks and stresses. The field made major strides in recent years in understanding how to manage shifting environments, and we can use them here. We’ve just published an article by the Global Greengrants Fund, supported by the Global Fund for Community Foundations, on what funders around the world are doing to handle the ever-shifting sands of supporting civil society.
To keep up support for citizen action, we present a new conceptual framework on how to adapt
- funding practices,
- strategy and
- environments
You can read the blog here, and the full article here. Comments are always welcome as we figure out ways forward in these troubling times.