Defining Roles and Responsibilities

Many development initiatives have found that clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of their various participants is an important self-sustainability strategy.

When the different members of a development project are clear about who does what, their work tends to be more effective and better coordinated, and financial and human resources tend to be better deployed to reduce dependence on external resources. In addition, having clear responsibilities helps evaluate the project’s progress and increase its transparency, which has often proved useful to attract donors, volunteers and collaborators of all kinds because this conveys trustworthiness. In short, when everyone’s roles are clear, communication among the initiative’s members is better, as is communication between the development project and its external partners.

Some initiatives organize rotating administrations so that all project members become familiar with different activities: one person is in charge of a given area for one year, for instance, and then manages a different area the next. Some give leadership roles to people who are traditionally discriminated against by their communities, which promotes their empowerment. Still others appoint workgroups with the precise goal of monitoring self-sustainability. And those projects that seek to convey trustworthiness to donors with regards to proper management of funds rely on legal figures such as trust funds, for instance, where each party involved signs a contract that defines the role and responsibilities of each collaborator, who is then obliged to comply. Some also sign agreements with other development projects in which they define specific commitments such as matching funds, where one party makes an economic contribution for each equivalent contribution invested by beneficiaries or participants from the other party. Still others create co-management systems to share responsibilities with the communities they work with so that there is greater local stewardship of the project and not all decisions are made from the same central office.