Advancing the Work while Securing Funds
a strategy for self-sustainability
More self-sustainability means having more autonomy and less reliance on external funding, expertise or decisions. It means having a larger capacity to choose and negotiate with other initiatives what’s best for your project and what’s not. It means an increasingly equitable participation, which will lead to development models that are more comprehensive and relevant for all, that is, more sustainable. Know more
Several development projects increase their self-sustainability by getting on with their work while they secure or receive specific funds.
For many initiatives, getting financial support is a long and complicated process because money is scarce in the development field, which means that there is a lot of competition and even when funding is actually secured, it often takes a long time to make its way into the project’s bank account. And even though resource transfers are often delayed, it is quite common for donors to expect results on time as a condition for future support, pushing projects to start and develop programs with their own resources while funds actually get to them.
Advancing work while funding arrives is an important resource management and allocation strategy because it allows a project to secure one more resource, and initiatives’ self-sustainability is greater when they have diverse sources of support instead of depending on just one or a few.
For this reason, some initiatives have savings – which some call stability funds– to be able to move forward with the work when resources are not yet secured or have been delayed. Other initiatives make sure they have more than one source of funding so that they are not entirely dependent on the payment dates of just the one. Still others leverage their local resources to move forward (voluntary contributions, infrastructure, human capital, etc.).
There are many different ways of advancing the work while securing funds to increase self-sustainability. Take a look at how these initiatives have done it!
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