Organisational strengthening and effectiveness
We provide advice, grants, and connect grantees with consultants for organisational strengthening. This support helps grantees grow stronger, better attain their grant objectives, achieve their missions, and contribute to a safer, fairer, and more sustainable world.
Our grantees can use the grant funds to support or develop any organisational strengthening issue they consider a priority. This can include:
Foundational support
This includes basic support to help organisations exist and be safe, such as: complying with legal, financial, tax, registration, or fiscal requirements; and providing integrated security and wellbeing support.
Direct response
This support responds to specific challenges organisations face in their daily work, such as: child safeguarding; fundraising; strategic planning; board development and effective governance; strategic communications; leadership development; and monitoring, evaluation, and learning. This also includes support for human resources, such as: staff and volunteer management and development.
Organisational development
This is a more complex form of support to address a variety of issues, such as: changing programme focus; expanding to new geographies; changing leadership; or reacting to external factors that impact the overall programmatic and institutional set-up.
Field building
This support aims to help organisations that are leaders in their fields to offer organisational strengthening support to other not-for-profit organisations or develop resources, such as research or tools that can benefit civil society as a whole and other organisations.
How to access support
Our grantees interested in organisational strengthening support should contact their responsible programme officer directly.
Discover our organisational strengthening and effectiveness stories
Would you like to read more stories like this? Please visit our “Stories” page.
Principles that guide our work
We are guided by a set of principles in our work. These principles include:
Co-creation: We co-create solutions with grantees and experts
Trust: We trust our grantees to build a vision for their success
Localised: We encourage tailored organisational strengthening for each programme and location in which an activity is being considered, building on existing efforts and best practices
Ownership: We ensure that grantees own any organisational strengthening actions
Collaboration: We work in an integrated way with our grantees and other foundations, leveraging existing solutions and tackling difficult problems in a collaborative way
Integrated and strategic: We support organisations to focus and develop the systems, structures, skills, resources, and power needed to serve their ultimate missions
Equity: We strive to ensure fairness and equity in the way we support organisational development, from selection to execution.
Watch our latest videos
In-country consultants and civil society support organisations that can offer a range of high-quality organisational strengthening services demanded and needed by Oak grantees. Watch our latest videos:
In this video you can find out more about how we provide financial support for organisational strengthening. This support helps grantees grow stronger in terms of their organisational capacity, so that they can better attain their grant objectives and achieve their goals. We provide this support directly to grantees through grants or by linking grantees with consultants that Oak has established partnerships with.
If you are an Oak grantee and would like to be considered for organisational strengthening support, please reach out to your programme officer who will put you in touch with Adriana Craciun, our senior adviser for organisational strengthening.
Would you like to see more videos? Please visit our YouTube channel.
Publications
Funding Organisational Development
Oak Foundation together with Laudes Foundation, MAVA Foundation, Mercator Foundation and PeaceNexus Foundation reflected on, articulated and shared their learning about supporting Organisational Development (OD). In this paper they share their key insights on how to engage in OD, describe a standard OD process and address dilemmas.