{"id":3665,"date":"2021-11-09T16:49:16","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T19:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redecomua.org.br\/?p=3665"},"modified":"2023-08-12T13:58:42","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T16:58:42","slug":"aspectos-comunitarios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/aspectos-comunitarios\/","title":{"rendered":"Community aspects: the financier\u2019s approach in relation to the grantee\u2019s counterpart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Marcy Kelley, Gabriela Boyer and Rebecca Nelson<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Valuing and accounting for contributions from community groups can pay dividends in terms of impact and sustainability<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Haiti has proven to be difficult terrain for international financiers, with many failed development projects. However, in 2018, women from a community organization in Fanm Konba in southwestern Haiti demonstrated remarkable ingenuity in raising their own resources. They requested financing from a grantee of the Inter-American Foundation (IAF)<\/strong><\/a> to buy cattle. Following IAF guidelines, women included their 'counterpart' \u2013 <\/strong>a budget item that takes into account the labor and other material assets that community groups contribute to proposed activities. Later, IAF officials discovered that they were actually contributing an additional US$35 from their own pockets to purchase pregnant sows and goats to expand their herds and maximize their profits.<\/span><\/p>\n

As women had been involved in the project from the beginning, with their own ideas and resources, this was a natural new step for them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The US Congress created the IAF to support the initiatives of vulnerable communities willing and able to invest their own labor and assets in its efforts. This view was a response to widespread criticism in the 1960s that international development cooperation was creating dependency rather than sustainability. Thus, the IAF adopted two concepts that were pioneers in international cooperation at that time: first, the agency would finance community proposals instead of developing its own projects and, second, the agency would require communities to also participate with co-investments in projects financed by the IAF. IAF.<\/span><\/p>\n

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What is counterpart?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

'Consideration' refers to financial resources or assets that community organizations provide as a contribution to projects funded by the agency. Assets include volunteer labor, infrastructure (buildings, equipment, computers, vehicles), land, and other goods and services that would otherwise have to be paid for, purchased, or rented. Community members can volunteer their own time and assets, or raise matching resources from other sources, such as non-profit non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments or local, national or international businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Communities in Latin America and the Caribbean have invested their own resources in community initiatives for hundreds of years. Just like traditional practices, such as porridge <\/em>in the Andes and the kombit <\/em>in Haiti, where the entire community comes together to harvest the harvest or build buildings. However, the international community has not always recognized these collective efforts as a contribution to development.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Haiti, for example, international aid practitioners have seen nothing but need and lack of resources in the past. However, in 2019, Haitians committed counterpart funds worth US$3.7 million as co-investment to the IAF's US$5 million contribution. And this is one of the countries for which it is most difficult to leverage resources. The numbers are even more impressive across the IAF portfolio as a whole. On average, for every US$1 that the agency invests, the beneficiary partners (or grantees) mobilize around US$1.30, so this is not a symbolic gesture for the IAF. The true cost of an initiative is the total amount committed by both partners, without which the project cannot move forward. This basis in real needs maintains the realism of counterpart commitments. As communities are using, in part, their own resources, it is natural for them to control their budget and the implementation of their project themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

To measure the value of the match, IAF representatives work with local organizations seeking financing to identify and assign a monetary value to their assets. In many cases, such as the Liga Cuenca example highlighted below, IAF officials showed beneficiary partners that they were providing more resources to the budget than they realized.<\/span><\/p>\n

A visit to the Liga Cuenca facilities: identifying the counterpart on the field<\/em> When IAF staff visit a potential beneficiary partner, they verify the value of the community investment and often identify additional resources that the organization had not included in its initial proposal. An association of eight Costa Rican communities wanted to reforest two river basins. The proposed match included some administrative, transportation and training costs, representing about 20 percent of the total grant costs. When IAF officials visited the community, they saw a nursery of seedlings of native tree species being planted, school children helping to plant the seedlings and carry out community cleanups, and local water councils established to raise funds for buy tools and supplies. Furthermore, the communities met one weekend a year to celebrate their work and their access to clean water, and the sponsors involved co-financed the gathering. The donation budget had not included any of these costs as compensation. The IAF stepped forward to fund this project with a new assessment, which incorporated these contributions. When this perspective was revealed to them, the communities were impressed by the fact that they themselves had mobilized more than 150 percent of the IAF's original investment, and they felt encouraged to take on and develop even more activities with this newfound discovery.<\/div>\n
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Analysis of a representative sample of audited IAF investments financed between 2005 and 2015 showed that, at the end of their projects, beneficiary partners had actually mobilized a additional <\/em>20 percent to the funding compared to what they had committed to raising initially, exceeding their own projections by a total of almost US$400,000.<\/div>\n

Furthermore, this participation can have significant implications for organizational sustainability. IAF officials noted a connection between the longevity of organizations and their ability to raise counterparts. An initial assessment found that a Uruguayan women's NGO called Manos del Uruguay raised approximately half of the donation in volunteer hours, as well as providing meeting spaces and additional cash contributions from community residents to organize a network of women's cooperatives. weavers. Forty-four years after the initial investment, Manos del Uruguay remains a successful business, with little or no external support.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Responding to challenges<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

The agency still faces some challenges. First, the IAF quantifies and evaluates contributions in goods on a country-by-country basis. While this allows program staff to judge proposals based on their knowledge of the local context, it makes it difficult to compare tradeoffs across countries and regions, or over time. Second, the IAF's definition of contributions in assets is also, necessarily, quite limited. It is difficult to put a price on intangible things such as cohesion or community action capacity, and therefore the agency measures only those contributions that are most objectively measurable. Although the IAF does not attempt to calculate the value of intangibles as consideration for a donation, it recognizes their importance. It is intuitively logical that the experience community leaders gain in mobilizing resources to offset IAF funding increases the likelihood that their initiatives will be sustainable. Finally, it is likely that the agency undervalued counterparts because grantee partners are currently not trained to document them. As the example of Liga Cuenca shows, communities tend to undervalue their own contributions. The IAF is currently developing an accessible training manual to standardize assessment across portfolios.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the years, IAF officials have also reached an uncomfortable conclusion: Candidates representing particularly marginalized populations, such as indigenous, Afro-descendant, or LGBTI groups, may have more difficulty raising counterparts at the local level than less marginalized groups.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly, without considering the local context, the counterpart requirement could, in fact, create more barriers for community organizations to receive funding instead of expanding their sustainability possibilities. In at least one case, a group led by people of African descent was forced to close when the promised compensation did not materialize. Despite these challenges, IAF audits showed that community-based Afro-descendant groups were as capable of managing their financial resources effectively as other organizations. In other words, the ability to mobilize the full value of the promised counterpart should not be the only measure of a group's performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

To avoid further harm to already marginalized groups, the IAF developed a context-based approach to counterpart. This applies to vulnerable groups within relatively affluent environments, such as people with disabilities, and to entire countries where there is little availability of resources. For example, IAF officials do not expect the same percentage match from a candidate like Fanm Konba in Haiti as they would from one based in Mexico.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, to ensure that the matching requirement is an opportunity rather than a barrier to communities, the IAF has begun to engage the local private and philanthropic sector in supporting community development in a more proactive way. Initially, IAF grantee partners provided compensation primarily from their own money and labor, and occasionally from donations from local government or religious organizations. Beginning in the 1990s, the IAF began encouraging corporate social responsibility and local philanthropy to increase the availability of resources to potential beneficiary partners.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Building the financing environment<\/em> The IAF has worked with companies and corporate foundations in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean to expand investment in community development through co-financing. For example, in 1995, the IAF partnered with the Colombian organization Fundaci\u00f3n Social to attract companies to support community development. This resulted in the creation of an alliance of companies, called RedEAm\u00e9rica in 2002, with 12 co-founding partners. The alliance has grown to 80 corporate foundation members in 14 countries, contributing US$3 for every US$1 invested by the IAF. Among other efforts, RedEAm\u00e9rica members founded organizations that address unemployment, food insecurity and water scarcity, and created an award to recognize outstanding corporate-community collaborations. The IAF has also provided technical and financial assistance to local community foundations, which pool resources from a variety of sources and offer funding targeted to a specific geographic area, in contrast to international funders with more fluid priorities. As part of Global Alliance for Community Philanthropy <\/a>From 2014 to 2019, the agency worked with funders around the world to encourage local philanthropy through models such as participatory financing and giving circles. The IAF has stimulated the community foundation sector in Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti and Uruguay.<\/div>\n
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Recently, the IAF developed a stronger framework for mobilizing community assets, which emphasizes unlocking and institutionalizing sources of financing and technical assistance for community development.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

Essential lessons: why value and demand compensation?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

The IAF sees its approach to counterpart resource mobilization as generating many important benefits. This is an approach that is both diagnostic and formative, helping the agency to identify organizations with local commitment and improving the experience of community organizations in mobilizing assets. It values existing tangible and intangible community assets, such as engagement, and renews local forms of giving, such as porridge <\/em>and the kombit<\/em>. It drives community organizations to mobilize a variety of resources, reducing their dependence on traditional donors and, as a consequence, the power imbalance between funder and beneficiary. It strengthens civic engagement and promotes democratic processes, such as developing community budgets with local and municipal governments, and also involves new supporters and investors in local causes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Historically, international development agencies viewed some communities solely as recipients of aid, a view that still persists in philanthropic practice despite decades of criticism. This article should challenge anyone who is still convinced by the myth that people in low-income countries do not have the capacity or willingness to invest in their own development. Leaders like the women of Fanm Konba in Haiti are surpassing us, and it is up to us as funders to follow their lead.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Marcy Kelley <\/strong>is Operational Director of the Program Office of the Inter-American Foundation<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabriela Boyer <\/strong>is a Representative of the Inter-American Foundation<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebecca Nelson <\/strong>is a Writer\/Editor at the Inter-American Foundation E-mails<\/span><\/p>\n

* Originally published at: https:\/\/www.alliancemagazine.org\/magazine\/issue\/december-2020\/<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marcy Kelley, Gabriela Boyer and Rebecca Nelson<\/p>\n

Valuing and accounting for contributions from community groups can pay dividends in terms of impact and sustainability<\/p>\n

Haiti has proven to be difficult terrain for international financiers, with many failed development projects. However, in 2018, women from a community organization in Fanm Konba in southwestern Haiti demonstrated remarkable ingenuity in raising their own resources. They requested financing from a grantee of the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) to purchase cattle. Following IAF guidance, the women included their 'counterpart' \u2013 a budget item that takes into account the labor and other material assets that community groups contribute to proposed activities. Later, IAF officials discovered that they were actually contributing an additional US$35 from their own pockets to purchase pregnant sows and goats to expand their herds and maximize their profits.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iaf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}