Project duration: 1.5.2020. – 31.5.2021.
Project reference: 2020-1-DE04-KA105-019519
Grant amount: 32.284,00 €
Donor: JUGEND für Europa, Erasmus+ German NA
Summary:
The reality of NGO sector is that ensuring sustainability is much harder compared to for-profit companies and private sector. Many NGOs are too reliant on governmental grants and funds from international organizations. Among other things, non-governmental and non-profit organizations are faced with frequent fluctuation of workers due to very stressful and often underpaid work. Loosing experienced and skillful staff can have very negative consequences to organization’s survival. These negative factors, as well as many others in NGO sector, are a direct result of inadequate strategic planning or, in many cases, none at all. As partner organizations on this project have a good network and knowledge of NGOs in their community, we analyzed current situation and noticed that organizations with long-term existence, good team and strong impact have a Strategy that was skillfully developed and they stick to it in their work. More importantly, they understand a need to revise their Strategies at least every 5 years, due to changing national and international environment (political, economic, and many other external factors). Among partners on this project, there are organizations with different profiles and years of existence, but all of them need to improve their strategic planning skills and knowledge. Not just for their own benefit but for them to be able to transfer that renewed knowledge to other organizations within their communities.
Objectives of our project are the following:
– provide tools and knowledge to NGOs to analyze their current capacity and a potential that is not being used, to understand their strengths and weakness, explore both internal and external resources and turn them into realistic opportunities.
– among all team members and workers, creating a habit of regularly checking their Strategy, creating and executing Action plans accordingly. Organizations need to understand that Strategies are there to be used and not just some documents you need to have on your shelves or websites.
– to learn from each other, exchange knowledge and information about different national situations, build upon shared EU values and good practices and thus improve our partnership’s teamwork and future cooperation
– enhancing abilities and knowledge of our youth workers and providing them opportunities within organizations to put that knowledge to use by organizing workshops for other youth workers and NGO members from local community In long term, working together on development/revision of our Strategy documents now will contribute to more structured and focused activities on national, EU and international level in our future work. Youth workers will gain new skills and knowledge and they will further improve their key competences by organizing local Strategy Workshops.