Bridges To Knowledge: A Blog by Barry Camson

The CVO Network: An Innovative Approach To Leveraging Resources In The NGO Sector, Part 4

This is the last post in this series about the CVO network in Haifa, Israel. The previous post dealt with interaction and knowledge sharing in the CVO network. This post will look at examples of CVO successes and the dynamics among the various aspects of the CVO network.

Acknowledging and Sharing Success

CVO is proud of the courses that it runs. Yael Abada, the CVO Director stated, "organizations outside of Haifa come to us and say that they want to be in the course, in the network. Courses are very professional. People get a lot of knowledge, tools, connections."

Another accomplishment of CVO is being a local infrastructure which is very unique in Israel. Yael said, there is no other organization on the local level that is doing what we are doing. People want to learn what we are doing and how we are doing it."

CVO has gained experience and had success in building networks and increasing the power of organizations working together. They have success in increasing the voice of organizations.

CVO has been successful with the use of clusters. The Special Needs cluster and the Young Adults clusters are examples of successful CVO clusters. The Special Needs cluster is made up of 33 organizations. The Young Leadership cluster is made up of 15 organizations. Signs of success for a cluster are: if other organizations want to joint the cluster; if they produce new connections or new projects; if they have collaborations among themselves; if they promote issues or if they have products.

CVO would like to be doing more to share knowledge with others in regard to clusters, the Lead Haifa program and new programs being initiated with leaders of the recent protests in Israel. CVO would like to focus more on how members could work together to lobby.

Dynamic Relationships Among Network Elements

All of the network elements set out here act to support and reinforce one another.

Fostering interaction between individuals and organizations in order to build relationships and the atmosphere of CVO is a key driver. Facilitation supports achieving this. Facilitation results in norms that guide actions and behaviors and helps to create a good working atmosphere among members. Focusing and re-focusing on mission continues to be helpful to motivate members and to keep CVO on course. Having an approach to recruitment and inclusion supports the mission and lays a foundation for interaction.

The governing and convening structures especially the clusters and sub-teams do the work of CVO.

Funding enables all of this to happen and ultimately results in value that is added by the efforts of CVO to members, individuals and the community. Part of this value is what knowledge CVO is in a position to share with various Haifa community groups and those outside of Haifa.

The leaders' theory of change is specifically appropriate for operating and governing as a network and underlies many of the other network activities.

Conclusion

In the twenty first century, there are increasing instances of people and organizations operating as networks. This is certainly supported by the interactive capabilities of the Internet. Beyond this, there is the recognition that often the highest leverage for advancing the goals of individual organizations consists in affiliating as a network. This is especially true in the non-profit sector where individual organizations do not have the benefit that private sector organizations do in generating revenue and funding. CVO is a significant illustration of the value of the network approach in the NGO sector.

The CVO Network: An Innovative Approach To Leveraging Resources In The NGO Sector, Part 3

This is the third post in a continuing series. The previous post explored how the CVO network in Haifa, Israel is organized and how it convenes its members. This post will look at the important role of interaction and knowledge sharing.

Interaction and Knowledge Sharing

Clusters meet once a month at least for several hours. Sometimes they meet in between. Clusters have an email group. Members of clusters invite each other to their activities in their organizations. There is a core group in the clusters that provides for continuity. The clusters in turn have small groups that work on special issues.

The leaders of CVO are actively pursuing knowledge and resources outside of the network. They do this in other forums such as degree programs, conferences and meetings with CEO's. They share knowledge in staff meetings and engage in peer learning where, for example, dilemmas faced can be discussed. This knowledge is made available to members of CVO.

CVO facilitates the sharing of knowledge among NGO's. Small individual organizations have limited ability to learn about what approaches work across the NGO sector and in their particular area of activity. As a result they end up operating without the benefit of this knowledge. They can often "reinvent the wheel" which increases the costs to the individual organization and their funders. CVO provides opportunities for representatives of member organizations to meet with representatives of other organizations operating in similar or different fields and find out what others are doing. There is a lot to learn from each other because many of the challenges are the same. According to Director, Yael Abada, CVO enables organization members to "get out of their bubble" and interact with those across a wider spectrum. "We give them the opportunity to meet other organizations, come to a course, meet the mayor."

CVO develops a lot of knowledge. There was a published journal article written by Yael Abada that described the work of CVO and that conveyed the uniqueness of their approach. CVO would like to be doing more to share their knowledge with others who could benefit by the example of CVO. Among the areas that CVO could talk about are: how to development a network, current events taking place in Israel and relations with municipalities. CVO has been playing a role in following up with the summer protests (Tent Cities) in Israel which dealt with affordable housing among other issues. CVO has knowledge and insights from this as well. CVO could develop staff workbooks. They could also be developing research connections with the University.

Facilitation and Norms

The clusters are facilitated by CVO staff. Sometimes facilitation assistance is brought in from outside. Facilitation is provided especially in the first phase of cluster existence. After this, CVO tries to work through sub-teams in the clusters. Each cluster develops norms to support their interactions. For example, in the Special Needs cluster, one whole day was dedicated to this. They looked at objectives, decided how they will work and set out their expectations and responsibilities.

The goal of CVO facilitation of the clusters and sub-teams is to support these groups doing the work though not to do the work for them. Yael said, "we are trying to work through the sub-teams in the clusters, trying to make these sub-teams work more independently."

Leadership's Theory of Change

There are some governing, working theories held by CVO leadership that influence actions in the network.

One theory that underlies the existence of the network, itself is that organizations can be more successful in carrying out their respective missions and impacting the surrounding community by existing in a network of organizations.

Another theory is that in order to make changes, seeds need to be planted in many people and organizations. Operating in a network is different from operating as a single organization which often can have a hierarchical command and control structure which makes directing the organization simpler.

Yael Abada described an example of how change was facilitated in CVO. With regard to a "change I made in the CVO years ago. I thought that the way things were going on was not good. Didn't allow us to do any organizational development. In order to make this change, I had to plant the seeds of the idea in many people and organizations and to speak with each one of them and to see if they were pleased with the situation, if they wanted to change and help them become supporters of the change. There were people very much opposed to the changes. When we had enough support, we could go public and say this is the change we want. People voted for this change."

Another approach to change is to bring in new member organizations to change the balance within the network.

One important understanding put into action by CVO is that focusing on the mission is a good way to re-motivate and rejuvenate people. CVO might dedicate an entire day to revisiting the mission.

Change has occurred in the past by inviting all organizations in Haifa to participate in meetings to address mission and goals. This is followed up by roundtable forums to address these issues. These issues continue to be raised in each forum or meeting. The process is never-ending. Among the issues addressed are: Is this CVO's job? Does the project fulfill CVO's mission? Is this an issue common to several organizations?

To learn and adapt, CVO tried to go beyond Haifa to the North. With regard to this, Yael stated, "we try to have more impact. To go beyond Haifa to the North. We have big barriers. Financing the organization. If this were not the problem, we could have bigger impact in the city and to go beyond the city."

Another governing approach is that CVO pays attention to what other organizations are doing, though CVO does not try to compete with them. CVO does not do activities in the field on their own.

In the next and final post, we will look at some of the successes of CVO and see how all of the elements of CVO as a network work dynamically to support CVO as a network.

The CVO Network: An Innovative Approach To Leveraging Resources In The NGO Sector, Part 2

This is a continuation of a series of posts. Previously we explored the value provided by CVO as a network of NGO's operating in Haifa, Israel. Now, we will explore how CVO operates to provide this value.

Inclusion, Participation and Commitment

CVO recruits members to become part of CVO. There is a core of members that continue from year to year. There are other organizations that belong depending on their particular organizational needs or what their finances allow. CVO started with 32 organizations. Last year, there were 100 out of 300 organizations in Haifa that were members. An organization could be a member one year and not in another year. CVO thinks about other approaches to tie together these Haifa organizations including the use of technology. The result is that a single NGO can leverage the knowledge of many other NGO's in performing its work.

CVO recruits members by locating all the organizations that may be interested in a given subject and following up with them. CVO recruits actively by advertising in newspapers, using mailing lists, their own Internet site or by meeting with administrators of these organizations.

In the recruiting process, CVO will go to organizations to see what they do. This can lead to an invitation to the organization to participate in CVO.

Economic or political interests are not part of the CVO network. Yael Abada said, "we had a very big discussion on, should we add to the network businesses and political parties?" In the end, CVO "decided not to let political interests or economic interests be part of the network or the decision making process. This is in keeping with the idea of civil society as a space between the government and business sector.

Arab citizens are included in all of the activities of CVO. Yael stated, "We make efforts that in every cluster (working group of CVO) or course the Arab organizations will be part. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't." She continued, "Special needs organizations are involved, feminist Arab organizations, communications organizations are involved."

Organizations may want to participate in CVO in different ways. They might want to come to the General Assembly which is one of the major discussion and decision making forums of CVO. They might want to come to training or attend a course. They might want to be a board member.

What CVO expects from organization members according to Yael is "to pay member fees, to come to gatherings, to take part in a week of volunteerism, to come to courses, to use us if they want to send a message to other organizations, to use our data base."

Operating Model, Governance, Funding

CVO is an official entity according to Israeli law. CVO has a board that meets once a month and a chair of the board. The board has 14 members most of whom are representatives of other organizations. One creative tension in the board is between thinking about their own organization and CVO. Which organization do they want to promote more? It is helpful when the board members think more about CVO and work for the benefit of CVO. The assumption here is that when CVO as a whole benefits then all the individual NGO's that are a part of it benefit as well.

 CVO has a director, Yael Abada, five staff plus part time jobs. There is a General Assembly which meets once a year, chooses the board and approves official documents. The General Assembly provides for general awareness of the members. The work of CVO is done in what are called clusters. CVO is funded mainly by the Haifa-Boston Connection, plus the Joint Distribution Committee. It is also funded by municipalities and provided with in-kind contributions by the University of Haifa. Members pay 200 sheckles a year. CVO also writes proposals to American foundations with representatives in Israel.

Convening Structures

Members are convened via the General Assembly. Email lists and a Facebook page also serve as convening vehicles or at least communication vehicles. Courses offered by CVO also serve as forums in which members convene.

The main convening vehicle of CVO is the clusters. Clusters are groups of member organizations that are convened in order to do the work of CVO. Clusters are composed of representatives of member organizations who are interested in a particular area. For example, one such area is Employment. Member organizations are connected together while also maintaining their specialness.

Clusters and the sub-teams within them are the key vehicles for doing work in CVO. Sub-teams work on specific action areas within the main focus of the cluster. Organizational members bring in a lot of ideas. Clusters learn together, discuss issues and share knowledge. Small teams work on issues that the clusters want to work on. Teams are set up and people choose which the team they want to work on.

Members in the clusters choose how they want to be organized. In each cluster, CVO gives them time to define what they want to do and how they want to do it. The Special Needs cluster finished the whole process in two days, Each cluster has a facilitator to help them organize the cluster.

 

 

 

The CVO Network: An Innovative Approach To Leveraging Resources In The NGO Sector, Part 1

This begins a several part series.

Introduction

The CVO Network in Haifa, Israel is an innovative approach to leveraging the limited resources that exist in the NGO sector. CVO succeeds in providing services to NGO's that are often not in a financial or resource-rich position to provide these services for themselves. CVO, by aggregating individual NGO's within its umbrella of organizations is able to actively support the growth and development of individual NGO's and their members. By doing so, CVO provides benefits to the individual NGO's as well as to the municipality of Haifa and funders that support these individual NGO's. CVO lessens the financial burden on funders who need to support the individual NGO's as well as on the NGO's themselves.

CVO is a voluntary affiliation of individual organizations into a network. The individual organizations retain their own legal and organizational entity. However, they participate together with other organizations in the Haifa area to engage in specific activities. In carrying out these activities, the individual organizational members of CVO work collaboratively together to develop and implement new approaches to their work.

This article will explain how CVO succeeds in doing this. This article will explain the details of how CVO operates as a network. It is hoped that other sectors of NGO's defined by geography or professional orientation can profit by the example of CVO.

Brief History and Purpose of CVO.

 CVO was founded in 1983 by several well-established organizations. It was originally operated by volunteers. The second phase of CVO began when CVO started hiring staff. The Director of CVO is Yael Abada.

The purpose of CVO is to coordinate between organizations working in similar or parallel fields and in developing thinking and activities among these organizations. CVO focuses on community organizing, developing collaborations and arranging forums. It is especially interested in professional training. Overall, CVO seeks to promote community and civil society.

Value Provided by CVO

CVO provides value to its member organizations, to individuals who are a part of these member organizations and to itself as a network. By virtue of these efforts, it enables its member organizations to provide enhanced value to the surrounding community.

There are many ways that CVO provides value to its member organizations. There are many things that small organizations cannot do on their own. CVO identifies common issues that most organizations are interested in. Examples of this are lobbying and working on employment issues for people with special needs. CVO works on issues that single organizations cannot work on by themselves. According to CVO Director, Yael Abada, "Even organizations have little knowledge about rights and services they can get around issues of employment." CVO helps provide a fuller picture on these topics.

CVO collects and provides data for the benefit of its member organizations. CVO provides workshops and training in specific skills that benefit member organizations and individual members of these organizations. Smaller organizations do not usually have the time or money to obtain training. CVO has also provided a consultant to these organizations.

CVO helps individuals develop competencies in areas of value to their own organizations. Training is provided in specific skill areas such as project development, public relations, communications, facilitation and how to be a team leader. CVO tries ot instill a willingness in its members to share with others and to take responsibility to do things.

Interacting with others, making connections and building relationships is important to the members of CVO. CVO meets the need of people to feel more connected. Members develop social connections and become friends. This increases the job satisfaction of members of the individual NGO's. They continue to grow and learn. One assumes that this helps the individual NGO's retain their staff.

In the next post, we will begin to look at how CVO operates in order to attain these accomplishments.