Building capacity for change
Sarah Lock, Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation explains that they are more than just a funder.
Why does the Nuffield Foundation fund international development work?
The Africa programme is jointly funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the Commonwealth Relations Trust (CRT). The Nuffield Foundation Trustees are also the Trustees of CRT.
The Nuffield Foundation’s overall objective is to improve social well-being through education, research and innovation, through capacity building and support for research. Over time, the Foundation extended and then switched its overseas support to developing countries, but retained that focus on higher level capacity building. The CRT’s focus is on building links between the UK and other Commonwealth countries through partnerships between academics and professionals.
Nuffield’s international work combines the key elements of the two sources of funding but, most importantly, sites the capacity building and partnerships within a planned initiation or improvement of service provision. So, for instance, we supported the development and delivery of in-service training for Kenyan primary care health workers on mental health, under a partnership between Kenya’s Ministry of Health and the Kenyan Medical Training College and the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London.
What are the key findings from the review of the Commonwealth Programme in the ‘Capacity for Change’ report and how have they influenced your thinking?
It was clear that our support of professional and/or academic capacity building projects is unusual amongst other UK funders and that there is a continued need for it, but our wide thematic scope led to large numbers of applications in a diverse range of fields resulting in a low ratio of success to application.
For the funded projects, the key success factors, unsurprisingly, turned out to be those that we had asked applicants to address in their applications. Although we checked that applicants had addressed the factors that would influence the success or otherwise of their projects, we did not present them in any kind of clear theory of change, so they risked becoming individual boxes to tick rather than part of a shared strategy for success.
Another issue, one that I know is being much debated and discussed, was that although we found plenty of evidence about outputs - the establishment of courses, training of trainers and numbers of people trained - we found less information about the outcomes of the projects, such as any improvement in service provision.
The review made clear that we do more than just provide funding. In general the grant holders appreciated the support we provided in addition to the funding itself – the mid-term assessment processes that played a role in strengthening projects, our flexibility in helping grant holders respond to changes in the project environment – and welcomed further interventions that would enhance their work. Beyond these project grants, our experience of funding in collaboration with other European foundations was positive, with scope for further collaborations in the future. We are one of the lead foundations working to encourage others to support international work.
How do you see Nuffield’s funding of international development work progressing in the future?
The Africa Programme takes on board the findings from Capacity for Change, maintaining its focus on professional and/or academic capacity building but concentrating on science and health projects. It will run for the next five years and we will endeavour to provide more support to grant holders with a clearer theory of change.
I can see us seeking out ways of co-funding and funding collaboratively with other funders so that we combine our focus on professional and/or academic capacity building with complementary foci of others.
How do you think UK NGOs can best contribute to development?
I am not at all sure that UK NGOs are homogeneous! I do think though that an important role for NGOs, which they share with other concerned organisations, is to build understanding amongst the UK public of what keeps people in poverty.
What do you see as the future challenges for Nuffield’s funding in Africa?
Our main challenge, especially as a relatively small contributor to international funding, is not to become isolated. We need to ensure that we fund work that contributes to improving the well-being of people in Africa, in an area that does not currently receive much support from larger funders. We hope that Bond members will be one of our sources of information for this.
