Capacity building and resourcing options

You can invest in your funding partners through secondments of staff with useful expertise, so they work in the non-government organisation for a set period. Or an non-government organisation staff member might be seconded to government to gain particular skills or experience that will be beneficial to the community.

The Department of Internal Affairs administers the Community Internship Programme, which might be able to assist your secondment opportunity.

The development of social lending and investment has been substantial overseas and has risen in parallel to the rise of social enterprises.  It is still relatively undeveloped in New Zealand, where two community trusts (Southland and Canterbury) have about 10 years successful experience, but have kept this as a small part of their overall activity.  Some local councils have also offered local groups loans on soft terms. For example, Christchurch City has run a Community Organisations Loan Scheme for some years as part of its general community funding activities.

In October 2009, the ASB Community Trust and the Tindall Foundation published a comprehensive report by Glen Saunders that describes what social enterprises are and explores what has been happening with social lending and investment in NZ.  Further information on A new funding paradigm: Prospects for social lending and investment by foundations in NZ is available from the ASB Community Trust.

Training opportunities can also be provided to staff or volunteers from the community.  This might include involving them in training or workshops that you have arranged for your own staff, where the content or the speaker has relevance to their work also. (Often this may not involve any additional cost, as you are already covering the costs of the presenter/speaker.)  The opportunities for shared learning also offer additional benefits of generating new discussion and building sound working relationships with each other.

Collaborating on projects may make it possible for several organisations to achieve something they couldn't do alone. This can be done by sharing costs, responsibility and assignment of staff so that the burden is spread around.