Building the Capacity of Organizations to Access Municipal Resources
Given Sao Paulo’s pro-poor municipal government and numerous community organizations, Brazil’s largest city presented the Urbis program with a unique opportunity to have a large-scale, positive influence on the urban poor’s ability to understand, apply, and shape public policy. The Urbis program aimed to strengthen hundreds of the city’s organizations representing the poor via the city government’s training academy, Espaço Público do Aprender Social (Public Space for Social Learning, or ESPASO), and ultimately instill a more demand-driven and urban-specific focus in ESPASO’s training program.
The Urbis program, in partnership with ESPASO and the Brazilian consulting firm Diagonal Urbana, began by conducting a survey of urban, pro-poor organizations, which highlighted four focus areas for the curriculum: organizational management, fund raising, technical competence and understanding social policy. The Urbis team then helped ESPASO develop a new, urban-focused curriculum that addressed these needs. This curriculum provided the participating NGOs with the skills to both manage their organizations more effectively and improve their ability to form partnerships directly with the government as service providers.
Over a five-month period ending in December 2008, the Urbis program implemented its first in Sao Paulo by supporting an array of free educational methodologies, including seminars, debates, and classroom instruction. In total, Urbis provided capacity building to 515 professionals from 220 NGOs throughout the city in this phase.
Following up on a commitment made to the organizations that completed the first Urbis curriculum, DIG and SMADS formed a partnership with Centro de Estudos das Relações do Trabalho e Desigualdades (Center for the Study of Labor Relations and Inequality, or CEERT), a Brazilian NGO, to deliver the second phase of the program. This consisted of a 40 hour advanced course in April - May, 2010 that focused on three topics selected by participants – fundraising, nonprofit management, and project development and implementation. Building the negotiation skills of NGOs was a cross-cutting theme. Judging by the 100% attendance rate, the course was well-received by the organizations.
Results: Through this tailored and wide-ranging approach—what can be thought of as a “wholesale” strategy to capacity building—the program dramatically improved the organizations’ ability to work constructively with the municipality, according to NGO leaders and to government officials at the Secretaria Municipal de Ação e Desenvolvimento Social (Municipal Secretariat for Social Assistance and Development, or SMADS). The participants’ concept of organizational management fundamentally shifted to place more importance on strategic planning and ensuring that information flows to staff. Participants also improved their understanding of the government’s pro-poor legislation, which has helped them communicate more effectively with authorities about the needs of the poor; specifically, Urbis enabled the SMADS accreditation of 24 NGOs so that they can now bid on municipal procurements.
The Urbis program also altered ESPASO’s approach to working with partner NGOs and has led the city to become more inclusive. ESPASO, for the first time, has allowed NGOs that do not have a formalized relationship with the government to benefit from its courses. This shift represents ESPASO’s new focus on strengthening small NGOs so that they too can qualify for government contracts and contribute more effectively to improving the lives of Sao Paulo’s poor.
Video of Urbis work in Sao Paulo - Produced by Novolhar
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