DEFINITION OF FINANCIAL AUTONOMY #
We focus on the organization’s ability to maintain its strategic and programmatic independence from funders. This is a demanding and highly relevant definition. It requires us to look beyond simple numbers (amounts received) to analyze the quality of funding, relationships with donors, and the real impact on the organization’s room for maneuver. This therefore implicitly includes the ability to refuse funds or conditionalities that would deviate the organization from its mission or locally defined priorities. It’s a rich angle of analysis.
TARGET ORGANIZATIONS #
We target African NGOs and CSOs (Civil Society Organizations), locally initiated and formally registered, regardless of their size. This is a wise choice because it emphasizes endogenous actors. The inclusion of all sizes (from small grassroots organizations to large national NGOs) is ambitious and may require structuring the analysis to compare realities, but it will allow for a more comprehensive view of autonomy issues on the continent.
ACADEMIC OBJECTIVES #
- Developing an analytical framework: This means that our review should not be a simple compilation. We will seek to identify key concepts, relevant theories (if any), recurring factors, different strategies, and tensions or paradoxes related to this quest for strategic autonomy. This framework should help organize existing knowledge and guide future analyses.
- Bibliographic mapping: We will therefore structure our research and our results in such a way that other researchers can easily identify the major sources, key authors, schools of thought, and geographical or thematic areas already well documented (or on the contrary, neglected).
OPERATIONAL OBJECTIVES #
- Identify innovative and replicable economic models: Here, the challenge will be to find concrete examples in the literature of strategies or combinations of resources (diversified subsidies, own revenues, local philanthropy, public-private partnerships, etc.) that seem to promote strategic autonomy (not just financial survival). The “replicable” aspect will have to be analyzed with caution, because the African context is very diverse. We will therefore look for principles or conditions for success that can be transposed, rather than turnkey miracle solutions.
SYNTHESIS AND IMPLICATION #
Your framing is coherent. The operational objective (innovative models) will directly feed into the academic objective (analytical framework) by providing the raw material for conceptualization. The definition chosen for autonomy will push us to pay particular attention to the literature that discusses power relations, negotiation with donors, the alignment (or misalignment) of agendas, and the impact of funding modalities (multi-year funding, core vs. project funding, etc.) on organizations’ freedom of action.
We should also be vigilant that strategic independence is not always explicitly the main subject of the texts, but can be deduced from the analysis of financing models, challenges encountered, or governance strategies.
- For us, financial autonomy will be the organization’s ability to define and implement its own priorities without being (too) constrained by the agenda or requirements of funders.
- We will focus on formally registered NGOs and CSOs, particularly those created locally, regardless of their size.
- As an operational objective, we aim to identify innovative and replicable economic models for African NGOs.
