How can organisations become more sustainable? Understanding how organisations work and where their challenges and opportunities lie in the future will help us to develop a plan for future capacity development and sustainability.
There are many aspects to what makes an organisation sustainable with some common core elements. CDNZ believes the most significant needs will emerge over time from having a sustained relationship and support, but there can also be more immediate short term opportunities to improve sustainable outcomes.
Key elements include:
- Leadership development
- Mentoring
- Peer support and network development
- Sector development
- Funding models and financial sustainability
- Environmental sustainability
- Capacity development
- Building relationships and collaboration
- Organisational partnerships and integration
Our Approach
The outcomes from building an understanding of each organisation, its development needs and priorities will lead to an understanding of how to build sustainability. The key elements outlined above are some of the areas that may emerge as needing support and development over the medium and long term. Once identified CDNZ can work with organisations to create capacity development plans that address these areas.
The key elements link in with each other and to other modules and services outlined in this proposal, many of these areas can be supported by CDNZ through membership networks, mentoring support, long term relationships and seeking opportunities for collaboration.
For example one of the key success factors in the community sector is the ability of an organisation to build and maintain strong sustainable and positive relationships with service users, staff, stakeholders, funders and communities of interest. It is an area many take for granted and yet it can be critical to so many aspects of an organisation’s operations. Spending time considering relationships, mapping and planning how to grow them proactively, work on them where they need work and sometimes leave them where they don’t work takes time and focus. A focus on relationships links naturally into thinking about collaboration, co-operation and even partnership and integration. Some see this as a continuum of relationships and ways of working together.
CDNZ can provide useful and simple resources to support organisations think about where they are on the continuum, plan for relationship development and consider progression towards higher levels of engagement as above. In the current environment there is increasing dialogue and even pressure to consider if there are efficiencies in partnering or integrating with other related and like-minded organisations.
CDNZ offers a range of services from simple resources available through membership, to facilitated workshops and plan development, facilitated peer support groups and sector network development and the development of collaborative models.
Specialist Advisors are available through CNDZ to offer support and development in areas like environmental sustainability, financial management and leadership development. CDNZ also works collaboratively with specialist agency’s offering programmes in leadership and academic learning.
This range of services can be scoped with an individual organisation or group of organisations.
