Alternative approaches to capacity building – emerging practices abroad

Third sector capacity building: Alternative practices abroad

Australia: funding brokerage model

Section A

This is a place-based non-government funding brokerage partnership model with

built in community development roles which have played out predominately as
organisational capacity-building roles due to a high degree of flexibility in the funding.
Lead non-profit provider organisations become contractors of other non-profit
providers and, in some cases, provider government organisations against a
community derived strategic and services plan. The intermediary organisations and
capacity builders are themselves larger non-profit provider organisation or
consortiums of small provider organisations.

Context
In recent years, Australia has seen the introduction of managerial and market
reforms of the public sector, leading to a shift towards a contracting relationship with
the third sector. There has been a subsequent resurgence of the idea of ‘partnership’
between government and the third sector, recognising the value of long-term,
collaborative relationships between the ‘purchaser’ and the ‘supplier’ of services. This
suggests that currently the contracting relationship in Australia is rhetorically more
partnership than market model. Government has also promoted networking within the
third sector through informal encouragement or through contract specification, such
as in the case of the Child Care Support programme and the Communities for
Children programme1, which is the case discussed here.

Section B: Logic of the approach

Third sector capacity here is defined as the capacity of TSOs to deliver services to a
particular client group – young children and their families. The basic principle
underlying this initiative is that the coordination of services and community
engagement are crucial for the effective provision of services to children in their early
years and their families. The capacity of local providers of children’s services is built
through intermediary Facilitating Partners, which are funded by government and who,
1
See the government department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
website for information on the national evaluation:
http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/families/pubs/SFCSevaluation/Pages/evaluationpubssupport.aspx

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in turn, engage with frontline service providers (third sector or government). This
model introduces the role of nonprofit agencies as purchasers creating a three tier
approach of government as funder, nonprofit as purchaser and nonprofit, for profit
and government (other levels) as providers.2 The Facilitating Partner facilitates the
identification of local needs and planning, and then supports smaller local
organisations to establish services, or establishes contracts with other non-local and
larger non-profits with expertise to support the delivery of specialist services locally.

The initiative is described as a ‘layered funding brokerage model’ in which the

Department of Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) has
contracts with nonprofit agencies (called Facilitating Partners) to manage site-specific
Communities for Children (CfC) initiative funding. The Facilitating Partner is required
to establish contracts with local agencies, called Community Partners, to deliver
specific activities. Community Partners can be non-profit or governmental. The
intermediary or broker organisations are funded to build the capacity of local
community partners, partly through funding and partly through networking and joining
up. The Facilitating Partners develop and implement a strategic and sustainable
whole of community approach to early childhood development, in consultation with
local stakeholders.

According to the logic model of the Initiative, service effectiveness is dependent not
only on the nature and number of services, but also on how seamless the service
delivery is. Thus much of the CfC effort has been devoted not only to providing new
services, but to ‘joining up’ existing services by increasing service coordination and
cooperation. While the programme did not explicitly plan to build capacity through
networking, the creation of local groups of Community Partners developed
organisational networks for peer support and collaboration around early years
services.

The framing discourse is that capacity can be built from the top-down through
channelling resources effectively and providing resources for capacity development
(funding, training, the creation of space for networking etc). The approach is one that
encourages learning on contracting for services and partnership development across
the locality, rather than the more arm’s length experience of contracting with the
state, and enabled smaller organisations to develop capacity to compete for funding.

2
Baulderstone and Earles, 2008. Changing Relationships: How government funding models impact
relationships between organizations. Paper presented at ISTR Conference.

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Alternative approaches to capacity building – emerging practices abroad

Capacity for what?

The Stronger Families and Communities Strategy aims to help families and
communities build better futures for children; build family and community capacity;
support relationships between families and the communities they live in; and improve
communities’ ability to help themselves. It contains four strands: Communities for
Children (CfC), Invest to Grow (ItG), Local Answers (LA) and Choice and Flexibility in
Child Care. Under the CfC initiative, third sector organisations are funded as
'Facilitating Partners' in 45 community sites around Australia, which have been
selected on the basis of high levels of economic and social disadvantage (DFaCSIA
2006). They partner with local organisations to increase their capacity to deliver
services to children aged 0-5 and their families. The sites have high population risk
factors and low organisational infrastructure and processes.

The initiative provides funding to third sector ‘facilitating partners’, who in turn will
mediate/translate between the federal funding agency and community partners. The
facilitating partners are responsible for managing the consultation and planning
process, tendering and contract management and managing the reporting between
the funding department and the community partners.

The government’s criteria for identifying third sector organizations to take on this role
are: -
• experience in delivering large and complex programmes;

• ability to draw on existing organizational infrastructure and resources;

• connection to the community and community experts;
• existing relationships and community trust (where demonstrated presence
and profile);
• necessary governance structures to effectively administer public money on
behalf of the government;
• capacity and resources to engage in flexible and responsive planning and
project management in order to respond to changing community need;
• and ability to work towards sustainability of outcomes, processes and funding
beyond the duration of the initiative.

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 Alternative approaches to capacity building – emerging practices abroad

Hence they are working on the basis that the capacity-builders have the necessary
capacity to act as brokers and partners, but require funding to carry out this work. In
practice, some FPs needed support or training to fulfil this role (see below).

The Facilitating Partners provide a range of capacity-building services to front-line

organisations (see below), assited by Local Evaluators. These varied across sites: in
some they were university researchers on contract, in some they were private
consultants on contract and in some the TSOs created part time positions and
employed a person directly. The FP had discretion in this and in how the local
evaluator was employed and in what they did, which lead to the variation across
sites. The level of embeddedness of local evaluators also varied with some acting as
more arms’ length evaluators and others as “researchers in residence” or “evaluative
capacity builders”3. The number of Community Partners varied widely across sites. In
one regional area it was eight, while in one Metropolitan area lots of very small grants
were funded to a greater number of partners. The number was not prescribed and
was anything from 5-25 roughly. The only requirement was that the FP could only
have activities (so act also as a CP) of up to 10% of the available funding.

The Facilitating Partners model has potential for local definition of priorities but is as
a whole a prescriptive initiative, defined at the macro-level, and with its structures
and processes pre-established. Central government funding goes to contracted
TSOs, who in turn contract community partners to deliver services, but also partner
them and support them to join up their work in the locality. The target populations in
the CfC sites appear more disadvantaged on most of the relevant indicators. More
than half of the sites (23) were amongst the most disadvantaged 10 percent of areas
in Australia. CfC sites had higher proportions of children aged 0-5 who live in lone
parent households than the national average, higher proportions with a parent
unemployed, and higher proportions who live in low-income families. Families with
children aged 0-5 years in CfC areas were also more culturally diverse, and there
were higher proportions of children in CfC sites with mothers who don’t speak
English very well. CfC sites also had higher proportions of children who were
Indigenous, compared with Australia as a whole. Populations in CfC areas were also
less likely to have attained Year 12 or equivalent levels of qualifications.

Section C: Methods and processes

3
Personal communication with Wendy Earles, June 2009.

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In implementing their local initiative, Facilitating Partners establish a Community

Committee with broad representation from stakeholders in the community. The
Facilitating Partner oversees the development of a four year Community Strategic
Plan and annual Service Delivery Plans with the Committee and manages the overall
funding allocation for the community. Most of the funding has been allocated to other
local service providers to deliver the activities identified in the Community Strategic
and Service Delivery Plans. There is an emphasis on joining up existing services by
increasing service coordination and cooperation.

A whole-of-community approach that builds on existing services within the local

community optimises the use of local institutional and human resources. A number of
practices have translated this whole-of-community approach through co-location,
resource sharing, referral protocols, consultations, as well as through innovative
community partnerships and inter-sectoral collaborations. In some instances, service
locations such as schools and child care centres are used as venues for service
delivery. Schools in particular are the site of a considerable number of programmes
and activities, including training courses, orientation classes, playgroups, “pre-prep”
classes, family support services and community hubs, similar to Extended Schools in
the UK.

Community hubs and co-located services are effective vehicles for meeting the
needs of families with multiple and complex needs, such as newly arrived refugee
families and other CALD groups. They also offer benefits for the services involved,
such as sharing of information and resources and collegiate support.

Several programmes highlight the value of other intersectoral collaborations in terms

of recruiting hard-to-reach families and communities, by using existing services to
engage with hard-to-reach populations (e.g., immunisations with literacy experiences,
health services with English language lessons, child care as a context for
intervention). Intersectoral collaborative networks that work together to respond to
multiple issues confronted by one particular population (e.g., newly arrived refugee
families) or to address a common issue (i.e. teenage pregnancy and parenting) are
also promising.

The first phase of this approach involves building a stakeholder network in the locality
which was institutionalised as the Community Committee.

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The second phase involved tendering for community partners to be contracted to

deliver CfC services.
The third phase involved delivering the tendered projects.

The programmes in the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy aim to

strengthen the capacities, skills and knowledge of service providers and enhance
service provision in the communities they serve4. Capacity building activities in the
CfC initiative included:
• One to one group/organisational support in developing EOIs for services
• Grant application training
• Development and support of local community champions (volunteers) to
gather and provide information (fostering social capital)
• Supported negotiation of contracts
• Support for service establishment (e.g. worker recruitment and induction,
worker training, support for reflective practice)
• Reflective monitoring
• Sustainability planning
• Worker/organisation network meetings and a funded network officer
• Linking workers to critical friends (specialist mentors)
• Local evaluation partnership (funded) with regional university

Learning and professional development activities are common programme

components, although the mode of delivery varies. In-service training includes visits
from specialist staff, as well as programmes and initiatives administered by a staff
member. The style and content of these programmes vary, from workshops and
information sessions to more hands-on approaches.

Other forms of professional development include experiential learning, mentoring and

dialogue meetings, as well as formal study at university or online study through a
university. In respect of training to Indigenous workers, consultation, negotiation and
careful consideration of programme content, manner of delivery and who delivers the
training are all important. Other forms of ongoing support offered to workers include
individual telephone support, peer support, regular dialogue meetings with staff,

4
See: Promising Practice Profiles, Final report. A report prepared for the Department of Families,
Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs as part of the National Evaluation Consortium
(Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW and the Australian Institute of Family Studies) Grace Soriano,
Haley Clark & Sarah Wise June 2008.

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Alternative approaches to capacity building – emerging practices abroad

interagency meetings, quarterly community newsletters, regular de-briefing sessions,

“drop-ins” at partner services and the establishment of learning hubs in regional
areas for delivering formal training and peer support to rural and regional
practitioners.

“Reflective practice” is a key ingredient for enhancing service provision. This process
involves purposive planning, data collection and analysis and reflection/evaluation. A
good understanding of local needs is another ingredient in responsive service
provision, particularly for those working with Indigenous or ‘culturally and linguistically
diverse (CALD)’ communities, and this is achieved in some programmes by
undertaking a community asset inventory or needs analysis, as well as liaison and
networking with key community members.

Across the programmes, creating networks and partnerships with other services is an
effective way to enhance service provision. Strategies in developing and maintaining
successful partnerships include: a single coordinator/contact person, a reference
group, regular communication (e.g., dialogue meetings between different services),
extensive preliminary and ongoing promotion, common goals, and a practice and
“solution” focus. Partnerships were reflected in a range of activities and initiatives,
from formal collaborative agreements, to joint one-off activities, informal time-limited
projects, or participation in community events organised by other organisations and
regular visits to other services for the purpose of information exchange.

The process lasted four years (an initial 3 years which was extended to four in some
cases: sites were rolled out in three stages, sites that had three year funding in the
first stage were extended for a further year so all sites finished at the same time), and
a further 3-4 years have now been agreed.

Involvement of marginalised groups

Target population are children in deprived areas, although these are not always the
most deprived areas in the country. CfC sites had higher proportions of children aged
0-5 who live in lone parent households than the national average, higher proportions
with a parent unemployed, and higher proportions who live in low-income families.
Families with children aged 0-5 years in CfC areas were also more culturally diverse,
and there were higher proportions of children in CfC sites with mothers who don’t
speak English very well. CfC sites also had higher proportions of children who were

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Indigenous, compared with Australia as a whole. Populations in CfC areas were also
less likely to have attained Year 12 or equivalent levels of qualifications.

Section D: Outcomes
Due to its community- facilitated implementation, CfC appears to have facilitated
some improvements in service delivery and quality in the sites. Local plans were
developed that gave stakeholders the opportunity to build on community strengths
and address some service gaps and put early years strategies in place that they felt
were most helpful for their site.

The implementation of CfC was inhibited in some ways by the artificially constructed
boundaries of some CfC sites, which were contrary to locally defined communities.
The sites usually encompassed several suburbs or settlements, or even large rural or
remote areas which were not always one locally defined natural community. This
created significant obstacles to the FPs' ability in these cases to engage all relevant
stakeholders, improve service coordination long-term and deliver services to young
children and their families in all parts of the site.

CfC appears to have been useful as a vehicle for increasing the level of service
cooperation in the sites. Under the model, the FPs were required to establish the
Communities for Children Committee (CCC), a working group of child and family
services and other stakeholders in their site. Most interviewees regarded the CCC
very positively. They reported that the FPs had made a genuine effort at being open
and inclusive by inviting all relevant stakeholder organisations as well as community
members into the CCC. Many CCC members said how useful and rewarding their
involvement was, especially in sites where no other early years network existed.
Service providers could interact with others in the field and share knowledge. Most
interviewees felt that the CCC had reduced segregation and competition among
services and created mutual respect.

The degree to which CPs internalised change (beyond getting skilled up enough to
be recipients of funding) varied within each organisation. At the level of intervention
and individual worker (grounded) there was considerable internalisation of change,
through the capacity building interventions from the FP through training and
mentoring and from the CP group which developed collaboration and partnership
building. In the smaller organisations this flowed through to impact on management

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and governance, while in larger organisations this was not needed. Participants
developed a different understanding of intervention conceptualisation, design,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation: Community partner organisations were
not well skilled or experienced in conceptualising projects and carrying them through
themselves to design, budgeting and implementation. Their experience was more of
responding to government consultations to define the gaps and needs rather than a
strategic involvement in service design. The training and mentoring process helped
organisations to develop a more proactive approach to interventions and projects5.

Section E: Learning

The model works across different levels and aims to join up services locally. It also
networks third sector, government and private sector children’s service providers at
the local level.

Networking between sites was more limited. The Department held annual FP
conferences, and in cases where larger TSOs had branches acting as FPs in more
than one site, these organisations brought site managers together on a regular basis
for discussions and sharing across sites. However at FP level the ground is still very
competitive as they must tender to be FPs. One development at the end of the first 3-
4 years was when the government department decided not to fund and hold a
national conference, a group of FPs took the initiative to set one up and all FPs
attended and paid for themselves. The government department was then obliged to
respond and attend. This suggests that even in a competitive funding environment
there is room for collaborative action and TSO ‘think’.

Learning was shared mostly through the national evaluation and the mechanisms of
themed studies and ‘promising practice profiles’, plus some commissioned papers
(under the ARACY alliance for research about children and youth) on such things as
school readiness, collaboration and sustainability.

Capacity of the capacity builders

The model assumes capacity of the intermediary organisations, which was not
always the case since the role of fund broker was new to them, and the necessary
structures, skills, and expertise needed to be developed and values explored. In
some sites, the role of local evaluators was important for building FP capacity, when
5
Email correspondence with Wendy Earles, June 2009

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Alternative approaches to capacity building – emerging practices abroad

these individuals were skilled in organisational development and oriented this

towards capacity-building within the FP through action learning methodologies.

The model represents a shift in paradigm from service management for delivery, to
project management (to support others to deliver). In future rounds the funders are
recognising that FPs need to provide a capacity building role and a contract
manager role and that these may need to come from different parts of the FP
organisational structure. The new government has refunded the programme and it
the centre piece of its new early childhood policy agenda.

Cascade models
A top-down model can be effective if sufficient flexibility is built in to allow outcomes
and strategies to change along the way. The approach here was site specific, and
allowed for FPs to change from channelling funding to capacity development
interventions with Community Partners where appropriate. There are some parallels
here with the US case, where approaches are trying to change funder-CB recipient
relationships into longer-term partnerships.

TSO as funding broker

Does it make a difference having a third sector FP brokering between Federal
Government and local government and TSOs? How do the government providers
(CPs) take to getting funding from a TSO? Is it helping to break down the 'us and
them'? These questions have not been investigated, and our respondent agreed that
it is an area that needs to be researched more in subsequent rounds. Generally it
seems that this arrangement placed the government and nonprofit workers around
the table in a more equal way but this was at the implementation level not at any
strategic or policy and planning level.

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