NAUA can pave the way for more intelligent giving

Despite limited successes, civil society in Jordan has fallen short of its promise. Marred by a wide range of limitations, the sector remains occupied by community-based organisations, with a modest geographic definition and mission scope. Most civil society actors tend to focus on the provision of basic relief assistance, with some, mostly Royal non-governmental organisations addressing broader development issues. Only a few organisations in the sector are concerned with upholding citizens’ rights and have some promising capacity to scrutinise the actions of government and develop policy alternatives.

Various studies have underscored the sectoral ailments that limit civil society’s role, including the general dissonance between what the sector is working on and what Jordanians really need. In fact, the sector’s limited contribution to meeting local needs and priorities betrays its main flaw. Its fragmentation and the weak capacity of its main actors have stunted its growth, rendering much of the sector’s efforts tangential to the development process.

These challenges have in turn bred ambivalence towards the sector. Most Jordanians do not fully understand its role beyond charity giving and seldom choose to engage or support it. Their strongly-held conviction cultivated with decades of government sponsorship is that the sector is ill-matched to advance solutions to national problems. Such solutions, citizens believe, have to be solely generated by the government. The result has been a dynamic that sees financially strapped civil society actors relying heavily on foreign donors who determine a big chunk of their agendas and terms of accountability.

Yet, the sector remains critical for the creation of a more inclusive political, economic and social agenda in Jordan. Recently, the Crown Prince Foundation launched an online platform that allows civil society organisations (CSOs) to showcase their work, and private citizens and organisations to support them. NAUA hopes to connect high-impact CSOs with private donors looking for purposeful initiatives to support. The initiative rightfully recognises the scattering of energy and resources in giving circles and wants to channel support to Jordan’s struggling non-profit and voluntary sector and help donors evaluate giving decisions.

NAUA is certainly not a panacea for the sector’s ills and as a new initiative, will need a long time to build itself and tailor its support. However, its potential is exciting. If successful, the platform will vet organisations, support them to be more closely connected to their constituents and nudge them to reframe their causes in ways that create resonance with Jordanians. It will also track the results of supported projects and systematically capture learning that can be ploughed back into new projects. If NAUA grows in scope, it can more proactively determine which social problems to go after and how to create systemic change, building on what would hopefully be a strong foundation of collective action between public and private stakeholders.

The online platform holds promise for local change makers. However, its ability to grow consequential initiatives will depend on its terms of engagement with these organisations and how well it tailors its support. Once NAUA has had time to unpack its own intent, it may want to develop a more nuanced and multipronged approach for supporting CSOs; one that provides differentiated capacity building, core funding and grading and accreditation services similar in type to support traditionally provided to for-profit companies. This could go far in attracting local and international donations. A good model to consider is that of venture philanthropy organisations (VPOs), which marry grant-making with high-engagement at the strategic and operational levels to achieve impact. Instead of just giving grants and funding projects and programmes, VPOs invest in the long-term viability of organisations, encouraging them to be innovative and sustainable.

In this way, the platform can help identify, nurture and launch social entrepreneurs and help them maximise their impact and sustainability beyond one-off projects. By providing incubation and acceleration services, ensuring a creative choice of capacity building and financing instruments and models, as well as  mobilising innovation and technology, the platform can support the evolution of cutting-edge non-profits and stimulate various forms of social enterprises.

In the meantime, NAUA will need to create a level playing field to ensure organisations in governorates other than Amman are able to access its services and support. Larger national organisations, such as Jordan River Foundation (JRF) and Noor Al Hussein Foundation (NHF), that have for years served as intermediary organisations channeling assistance and supporting community-based organisations and their ecosystem, can facilitate this. JRF and NHF’s standard assistance packages and NGO classification systems can be leveraged to close the capacity gap with Amman-based organizations.

Governments are usually slow, bureaucratic and generally unimaginative. Initiatives like NAUA can more nimbly create the necessary space to power the growth of solution models. This will take time, but by remaining adaptable and open to learning, NAUA has the potential to accomplish that.

The writer is co-founder of INTEGRATED, a development consulting firm based in Jordan. She contributed this article to The Jordan Times