Preparing Civil Society Organizations for Leadership.

The Office Depot Foundation. A report on the importance of Civil Society Organizations (CSO) and the challenges they face. The report also offers recommendations for helping the civil society sector build capacity. The report reveals that one of the main problems for these organizations is that funding can be challenging and, too often, CSO leadership gets distracted by fundraising efforts rather than focusing on the needs of clients and beneficiaries. There is a growing consensus that "business-like" practices need to be used (i.e. measuring performance, sophisticated information systems, leadership development programs, etc.) CSOs do have many strengths, including the ability to build strong human networks between people who have a great passion and commitment to the cause. Additionally, these people tend to be very creative in their problem solving skills and have the ability get a lot done with little resources. In order to address some of the challenges for CSOs, there needs to be more accountability and new ways of defining performance excellence. Download PDF ((488.80KB; 23pages)