Online Program

Oral

Donor organizations spend tens of millions of dollars every year to build the capacity of organizations. This capacity building is almost exclusively oriented towards the development of organizations to develop the capacity to carry out donor projects, with little (and often no) focus on building the capacity of the organization to sustainably and reliably achieve its mission. Early work by the research team that is conducting this study suggests that capacity building, as currently practiced, actually undermines the sustainability of organizations, and ultimately works against the stated goals of county ownership. In this presentation, we present the findings from two-rounds of data collection of a longitudinal study of organizational development working with 44 organizations in Ethiopia. The study is designed to overcome existing challenges in measuring organizational capacity, having developed rigorous and validated indicators of capacity in 11 key domains. These capacity domains are then combined to create an organizational development score. Having established a baseline level of organizational development in 2012, the study conducts its second round of data collection in 2013, and will conclude in 2014. Changes in organizational development will be correlated with organizational performance (measured from different donor-specific performance indicators), and the organization's ability to achieve health outcomes (measured by a parallel longitudinal household study of 8,600 children in the organization's catchment areas. This study will provide an increased understanding of the correlation between organizational capacity inputs and changed child health, and also generate a means whereby donor organizations can more accurately predict those organizations likely to produce the greatest social return on investment.

Session Objectives: Define organizational development and differentiate it from capacity building Describe the changing importance of organizational development as country ownership becomes a priority Explain the multiple domains of organizational development Develop indicators to measure organizational development