01.
Challenge

Recognizing the vast expertise that already exists on organizational and funding models in the third sector, but also from social enterprises and the private sector, with this project we aimed to build on existing knowledge and collective, hard-won wisdom to identify and test potential support modalities contextually-designed to the needs of the civil society sector that will enable women’s organizations to become more impactful, sustainable and resilient in an ever-evolving world with increasingly complex challenges.

Specifically, we aim to address the following question: How might we better support women’s organizations to stay relevant and agile, resilient and sustainable agents of change in ever-changing, complex contexts?

To that end, jointly with the Fund for Gender Equality (FGE), we launched a research-action initiative to identify and test potential support modalities contextually-designed to the needs of the civil society sector.

Applying a design process, we began with an initial hypothesis and set of questions exploring civil society perspectives - with a particular focus on women’s rights organizations - about: 

1. alternative funding and partnerships models

2. alternative organizational culture, values, and operations

3. alternative programmatic approaches

which provided the framework for our research plan. To the end of identifying areas of opportunity, and evaluate further opportunities for the FGE to support women’s civil society we synthesized our initial findings shaping our first co-creative session.

Conceived as a co-creative workshop, this session provided four key insights from the research phase - i.e. regarding the need for networks and partnerships; the issues around donor-driven agendas; the needs and priorities of WCOs; and challenges with self-care - and asked for participants’ views in a ‘World Café’-style activity.

Following this initial activity, a futuring session took the participants to explore fictitious future scenarios to explore new ideas for WCSOs’ resilience and sustainability. This challenged the participants to think outside of the box and then apply new “realities” in these fictitious future scenarios. Findings of this session were again synthesized leading to opportunity areas which formed the starting point of our two-day prototyping workshop in April 2019.

Building on the outcomes of the futuring session, we continued our process with a two-day workshop that was organized on 15th and 16th April 2019 at UN Women Headquarters.

In preparation for the workshop, participants were asked to complete an impact diary encouraging reflection on our three main areas of inquiry on alternative funding and partnerships models; alternative organizational culture, values, and operations and alternative programmatic approaches. Participants were asked to share their reflections and findings over the course of the first morning of the workshop before moving into ideation in the afternoon. 

Split up in smaller groups around different areas of opportunity, facilitators led participants through a series of ideation methods resulting in a great number of ideas around four opportunity areas. Following a voting process, the four most promising ideas were chosen, further refined and broken down in small facilitated groups. Prototypes were developed and build given initial concepts shape and form. Following several rounds of iteration, share-backs, and presentations four final ideas emerged which teams presented to senior management concluding the workshop. 

The implementation of prototypes in currently still underway - for further information on this project please contact me via email.