Organizational Sustainability Planning

Through customized interventions Pact has fostered the development of resilient and enduring organizations across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As a result, financial health and strategic focus have been highly improved allowing enhancements in the technical approach, service delivery, and impact of a wide array of organizations. Committed leadership, wide participation, and process engagement from participants NGOs, CBOs, and networks have been critical to craft and execute successful sustainability strategies.
   
What are the ingredients for long-term viability? How can we balance mission achievement and financial stability? To what extend our strategy addresses organizational sustainability? No easy answers emerge for such inquiries that head the agenda of most development organizations. Instead practitioners face complexity and ambiguity when it comes to sustainability; an elusive, evolving concept that not only deals with finances and resource mobilization but also with quality services and high-impact interventions.

By approaching sustainability from a holistic perspective, leading development organizations have managed to align financial strategies with strategic aims, streamline internal processes for better service, and foster continuous innovation through human capital development. Such results are grounded in a balanced sustainability strategy that unveils viability drivers, builds upon the organization’s core competencies, and harness contextual opportunities.

Introduction
A sustainability strategy, framed within the organization’s mandate, deals with improving short-term stability and securing long-term viability. A sound strategy targets the organization’s resources gap, uncovers the chain of success, fosters value creation, and weights financial and programmatic priorities. By approaching all activities through the lens of sustainability, organizations act more strategically, develop tailor-made initiatives, and implement value-added processes to boost organizational continuity. Long-lasting entities have learned that sustainability is a key topic in organizational development which not only enables mission accomplishment but also underpins high-impact.


Sustainability Strategy Framework
To deal with the sustainability challenge, development organizations have to come up with bold, creative, and customized schemes. A sound strategy should address programmatic, financial, and managerial issues both from a short and long-term perspective. Based on extensive experience, Pact has identified the following components of a solid sustainability strategy.

• Strategic scanning; identifies key trends, rising patterns, and emerging changes in the organization’s external and internal environment. As a result, major sustainability issues are selected and defined.
  
• Niche assessment; reviews how well the organization is using its capacities and assets both to creatively meet the needs of its working sector and to continue creating innovative revenue-streams.
  
• Value Analysis; uncovers the linkages between primary and support activities within the organization’s value creation process. Unique, innovative responses are crafted to meet key stakeholders’ needs and expectations.
  
  
• Financial evaluation; looks at the key capabilities, processes, and systems needed to manage the organization’s financial operations, to support decision-making processes at any level, and to comply with funders’ requirements.
  


• Products and services identification; selects the more promising, viable solutions that the organization can produce and offer based on its core capacities, sector opportunities, funders’ priorities, and financial potential.
  
  
• Income diversification; consists on a careful identification of revenue mechanisms to expand the sources of funding. This process fosters the selection of a customized set of strategies which include funders diversification, social entrepreneurship, and partnerships.
  


• Cost Mapping; permits to identify all information needs related to cost management. Financial information is organized by geographic region, source of funding, projects, cost type (direct or indirect), branches, etc. to meet internal and external requirements.
  


• Organizational positioning; facilitates the selection of the organization’s strategic posture and corporate image. Through this process the organization’s working approach is encapsulated according to its mission, core capacities, and the sector’s conditions.
  

Methodology
Pact’s sustainability methodology fosters process ownership, organization-wide participation, and active learning. Through a set of diverse techniques inspired by the learning-by-doing approach, participants engage in creative thinking, individual reflection, collective synthesis, and consensus-building around key sustainability issues.

Generally, three phases make up the sustainability strategy process: a) Readiness (Information gathering and identification of key organizational issues), b) Training (workshops and coaching activities), and c) Accompaniment (technical assistance for sustainability strategy completion). Pact’s sustainability methodology includes:

• Dissemination of relevant knowledge resources to contribute to skills development
  
• Development of customized questionnaires and templates
  
• Participatory presentations on the concepts and tools discussed during workshop sessions
  
• Working groups that stimulate reflection and knowledge sharing
  
• Plenary sessions for discussion and technical assistance
  

Outcomes
Through Pact’s facilitation, development organizations engage in a thorough analysis and design a tailor-made sustainability strategy. In addition, key staff is trained to manage and follow-up the implementation of such a strategy.

Overall outcomes derived from a sustainability process are:

• Strategy for Organizational Sustainability
  
• Developed capacity for strategic analysis and decision-making
  
• Enhanced financial stability
  
• Transfer of tools and techniques
  

For further information, contact:
Guillermo Rivero  |   grivero@pacthq.org  |  Tel.: 202-466-5666  |  Fax: 202-466-5669