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Local consultants are an implicit, but overlooked, part of many capacity development strategies. It takes a trustworthy consultant to facilitate genuine change in a civil society organisation. This practical note identifies the learning from a local consultant formation programme (“Consultants for Change” – C4C) implemented in five countries in 2016–17. The note highlights six factors critical to C4C’s apparent success: recruitment; focus of the learning; design of the process; assignments between modules; mentoring support; and the human/financial resources. These same factors may be relevant and applicable to other capacity development programmes.

Religious faith has always had an intense but uneasy relationship with development. Donors are currently seeking greater engagement with faith-based organisations (FBOs). This positive shift needs careful consideration. Faith can be a powerful – but flammable – fuel for change. FBOs are highly diverse and complex. Donors therefore need to handle them with understanding and care. This article outlines both the major concerns about faith in development and also the potential ‘value-added’ of FBOs. It charts growing interest yet residual ambivalence on the part of donors towards faith in development. It presents the practical challenges and suggests ways forward for both donors and FBOs.

We know what works in capacity development: a succession of studies from official agencies, academics and NGO practitioners have all highlighted similar principles of good practice. But the evidence also suggests that there is a distressing dissonance between what international development agencies know about capacity development and what they implement. This article explores the reasons for this failure. It highlights constraints that arise from the changing aid context and from a lack of resources and skills. Ultimately, however, it concludes that capacity development is driven more by self‐interest than by knowledge of what works. Until agencies' pride, greed and self‐interest can be restrained, much capacity development will continue to be disappointing and ineffective. But if agencies combine existing professional knowledge with virtues of humility, patience and a genuine commitment to others, then capacity development becomes something that can bring transformation.

HIV threatens the survival of many civil-society organisations (CSOs) in Africa. While we know the range of potential costs to such groups, we lack a detailed picture of the extent of the impact. This article highlights important findings from exploratory research in Malawi. Respondents perceived that overall performance in the four CSOs studied declined by an average 20 per cent because they were working in a context of high HIV prevalence. Yet the CSOs' workplace response to this threat was very limited, and they remain highly vulnerable to future impact. We consider why the CSOs have not been more proactive, and we recommend that donor policy should help partners to respond to the epidemic and enable them to remain effective.

The objectives were to assess the social and economic costs of HIV / AIDS infection on the organisational capacities of selected non-government organisations (NGOs) in Malawi. Sixteen semi-structured interviews with senior staff of four NGOs to estimate the costs paid by the NGO and the loss of management and staff time over the last 12 months because of HIV / AIDS plus questionnaires filled in by 48 NGO leaders. Labour costs were an estimated 12.5% higher because of HIV / AIDS corresponding to a 3% increase in overall budget costs. There was also an estimated 12.4% loss of staff time to address HIV-related issues such as funerals sickness and management time. The organisational costs of HIV / AIDS on NGOs in Malawi may be considerable and more serious than perceived by NGOs who must develop a workplace response. It also has policy implications for donors who may need to adjust their funding strategies. (authors)

Accessibility indexing is important in evaluating existing land use patterns and transportation services, predicting travel demands and allocating transportation investments. A GIS-based land use and public transport accessibility indexing model has been developed for measuring and mapping levels of accessibility to basic community services by walking and/or public transport, within local government areas. The model aims to assist the planning and decision making process to deliver integrated land use and transportation outcomes. It is an origin-based accessibility model that determines levels of accessibility by utilising GIS analysis techniques to measures accessibility based on both actual walking distances and public transport travel time. The model has been applied to two pilot studies in the Gold Coast City to assess its practicality and effectiveness. This paper outlines the methodology of the model and the findings related to these pilot studies. The paper also demonstrates benefits and application of the model to other urbanised local government areas.

This paper examines the role of leadership development in NGO capacity building and assesses some of the challenges of developing a new generation of NGO leaders. The paper draws on the analysis of new and existing research into the dimensions of NGO leadership highlighting the importance of both individual attributes and contextual relevance. Effective NGO leaders are able to balance a range of competing pressures from different stakeholders in ways that do not compromise their individual identity and values. Leadership development programmes therefore need to focus on both the values and identity of individual leaders while also assisting leaders understand and proactively respond to their rapidly changing external environment. We conclude that there is an urgent need to build the capacity of NGOs to develop their leadership capability. Unless systems and processes to support this work are put in place then the apocryphal warning “trees die from the top” will have more than a ring of truth in it.

Organization development (OD) has become an increasingly popular approach among international donors who are eager to improve the impact of their aid to developing countries. Major questions, however, have been raised as to whether this is not another example of “technique peddling” by Western donors and consultants. Many argue that this participatory, imported, Western approach to organizational change relies on cultural assumptions of open discussion that are simply not present in many developing societies. Taking up Lewis's challenge in his article “Organization and Management in the Third Sector: Towards a Cross-Cultural Research Agenda” (NML 2002), this article explores the veracity of such concerns. Using practitioner experience of implementing OD with African NGOs, this article reveals that many principles of OD are pre-existing within African cultures and are not a new foreign import. It concludes that, as with any culture, there are aspects that undermine and reinforce particular approaches to management and change. An anthropological perspective can assist in understanding the local culture sufficiently to be able to identify, avoid, or overcome cultural resistance, while at the same time using cultural symbols as levers for change.

Increasing numbers of international NGOs and official donors have responded to the crisis of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa by putting considerable and commendable effort into mainstreaming HIV/AIDS issues into their funding programmes. Many have shifted their funding strategies to prioritise support for HIV/AIDS programmes. Some like DFID (the UK government Department for International Development) have even altered their systems of funding to ‘appraise HIV/AIDS compliance’ making mainstreaming a condition for financial support. But this emphasis on programme mainstreaming though vital is only a partial and technical response to the problem. While programme mainstreaming does recognise and address the impact of HIV/AIDS on ultimate beneficiaries at the grassroots level it ignores the debilitating organisational impact that HIV/AIDS is also having on the local NGOs which are expected to implement the programmes. (authors)

Learning and knowledge management are crucial capacities for many NGOs. This article attempts to answer such questions as: why is learning seen as so important for NGOs? How do successful NGOs actually learn? And what role do key individuals or leaders play in this process? The article draws heavily on the findings of a study of South Asian NGOs, which suggests that an NGO's ability to learn is dependent on its organisational culture and in particular the development of an internal culture of learning. The case studies from South Asia reveal that the creation of this 'learning culture' derives primarily from the attitude of the leadership towards learning: at the heart of a learning organisation is a 'learning leader'.

This paper explores the nature of organizational strengthening, the organizational implications for European NGOs wishing to strengthen Southern partner NGOs and the pressing organizational strengthening needs which European NGOs themselves have. The paper concludes that European NGOs through their donor role are not in the best position to actually implement the organizational support themselves and that their primary role is to be effective funders of the process, not directing the process itself. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Many of the advances in high energy laser beam propagation through the atmosphere have been made or have been influenced by computer-aided analysis. The WJSA Omega code is being used to analyze the performance and sensitivity of ground-based high-energy laser beam propagation. This very flexible code has been configured to model the uplink/beacon beam propagation through the atmosphere and to model the beam control system. A discussion of the special requirements placed on a four-dimensional atmospheric propagation code is presented here. Also, some results comparing several modeling methods are given with an analysis of their respective limitations.