Institutional Profile

One strategy used by several development projects to become more self-sustainable is to choose an institutional profile that will help them achieve this aim.

The institutional profile that a development initiative chooses –which means becoming a public, civil or private organization, a for-profit or not-for-profit institution, etc.– affects its options for addressing challenges, establishing collaborations, acquiring, diversifying and managing its resources, and choosing its beneficiaries. It also affects the initiative’s responsibilities and possibilities to grow and scale. This is why any chosen institutional profile influences a project’s self-sustainability, so it is helpful that initiatives become well informed about their possibilities if they wish to take on the profile that will best help them achieve their objectives and become more self-sustainable.

Not all initiatives, however, decide to become legally incorporated –sometimes doing so would not serve their objectives and, in other cases, the process can be complicated and costly. But some development projects have greatly benefited from legal enrollment because it has helped them gain more credibility and obtain more public or private resources. 

Therefore, when different initiatives plan for self-sustainability, they evaluate which institutional profiles can best help them meet their objectives:

• Non-Profit Organizations: this profile gives an initiative access to donations and public and private funds, which allows the project to serve the most vulnerable populations with the least economic capacity.
• Hybrid Organizations: this profile is composed of both a non-profit section that facilitates access to donations and public and private funds, and a parallel for-profit section that will help the project generate profits by selling products or services, which can be invested in solving social problems and serving the populations that need it most.
• Social Enterprises: this profile allows an initiative to minimize its economic limitations to address the social problem it is working on (access to drinking water, education, etc.) while, at the same time, generating profits.
• Networks of Initiatives: this profile is all about initiatives forming a network by banding together with other projects with complementary objectives in order to share resources and responsibilities and achieve more comprehensive and relevant interventions for all.
• Religious Organizations: by representing a specific community, this profile can make the work of the initiative visible among its members and facilitate their support.