Alliance in collaboration with WINGS has been commissioned by Propel Philanthropy to conduct a 10 part interview series on the work of Social Impact Infrastructure Organisations and the benefits they bring to the sector. This interview series is aiming to collectively galvanize a significant change in how funders and others think and feel about building infrastructure, unlocking global resources, and establishing robust ecosystems.
Over the course of the coming weeks, these interviews will be published here. In this instalment of the series of conversations with the representatives of social impact infrastructure organisations (SIIOs), Andrew Milner talks to Jackie Asiimwe at CivSource Africa.
AM: Looking at your website, you’ve got so many strands to your work, it’s a whole ecosystem in itself. Could you tell me how it got started and what was the rationale for it?
JA: CivSource Africa started in October 2017. We emerged on the heels of a transition that was happening when the private LLC whose Uganda office I was leading was morphing into a public foundation. Considering the socio-political context at the time, they decided not to have a field office in East Africa, but they still wanted to support the philanthropic efforts of their back-donors in the region. It was then that they offered me an opportunity to start an organisation to continue the work in an advisory role. That’s how CivSource was born.
Our ambition and vision was always the continent, even if we are located in one particular geography.
You’re doing more than simply what a foundation would do. How did that come about? Was there a gap you identified?
I and most of my team have worked in civil society for a long time and noticed various gaps. CivSource opened officially in October 2017, and we took 2018 as our think-year, talking to donors and civil society leaders and thinking among ourselves about what to do with this opportunity of an organisation like ours. One of the gaps we identified was that there wasn’t enough money going to community-based grassroots organisations because most of the funding in Uganda is bilateral. Yes, some of it is private funding, but many organisations can’t meet the requirements of most donors, so we thought why not start a fund which is called CivFund to do just that, a fund where we can show what it’s like to do grantmaking with dignity, where we can simplify the processes as much as possible, but also experiment with a wide range of ways of grantmaking. With regard to our leadership work, again, because we’ve been in civil society and we’ve been involved a lot in capacity-building efforts over the years, we’ve experienced capacity-building that was sometimes mismatched with needs or didn’t go far enough, so we decided to build on people’s strengths and from there, do something that supports leaders. About the narrative-shaping work, no one hears about African philanthropy even when we live and do it all day every day. So we thought, thought, why not research giving, why not tell stories; which we do through our podcast, reports and stories on our website? It’s little known and little acknowledged, so why don’t we contribute to being part of that telling that story of African generosity and giving? Our advisory work is shaped by the fact that many people that fund in Africa really don’t know the context and the nuances of the cultures. As an organisation that does, we decided to play this broader role within the ecosystem.
You have these different strands to your work, but is there some overarching way you see your work or some particular thrust that’s more important than the others?
I think the thing that unifies the work is the vision – philanthropy that works. So whether it is local or international, whenever and wherever and however in Africa philanthropic resources are deployed, that they work. And on the other side, the creation of a thriving civil society.
The second question coming out of your very varied work is does that give you something of an identity problem when you present your work to other people?
Yes and no. Maybe sometimes it’s hard to find one neat way to put it, but it’s like a buffet. It’s a set of offerings you can choose from. CivSource is not one thing but several things having these two aims: Philanthropy that works and civil society that thrives.
What’s your main constituency? You talked about the advisory work. Is that mainly with donors?
The advisory work is mainly with donors who are mostly Western-based and are funding in Africa. Those are our clients. But the big constituency for us is civil society. We serve civil society in its breadth and length.
Is that pan-African, or specifically in Uganda?
We have a footprint in East Africa and Southern Africa and our aspiration at some point in the next 2-3 years, is also to have a footprint in West Africa. Our ambition and vision was always the continent, even if we are located in one particular geography.
How do you see your most important contribution to the sector?
On the one hand, we are influencing philanthropy and philanthropic practice, and on the other hand, supporting a vibrant, thriving civil society in Africa.
Which of your initiatives to date do you think have been most successful?
I don’t know that I can pick and choose. I think all of our initiatives have made significant progress in various areas. We have made inroads in advising our major donors on culturally responsive ways of grantmaking and advised them on context in terms of how they want to deploy their philanthropic resources. We’ve also done interesting things around enabling the local ecosystem of philanthropy by working with community foundations and supporting them to grow and to be better through researching what local philanthropy looks like. And on the leadership side, we do retreats, we do mentorship and coaching for young leaders because we believe that a thriving civil society depends on leaders who are doing well, not just today, but for a lifetime once they come through our programme. That also involves supporting organisations that are going through succession and transition processes because, if not managed well, these can set back organisations and their work.
Leadership’s obviously important, because, as you know from your experience in civil society. donors will often look at leaders of organisations for their strengths.
Yes indeed.
What have been the highlights for you?
Our grantmaking work has enabled us to experiment with various ways of doing grantmaking so that we are able to make grants to individuals, which many donors are averse to, all the way to making grants to organisations that are not necessarily NGOs, because again, that was the gap that we were filling. A lot of funding was going to structured forms of civil society, and we’re saying that civil society is organised differently. So, rather than try and fit people or organisations into a box, how about we meet them where they are and support what their vision is for their community? That’s another thing that has worked amazingly. The other beautiful thing that we do as a fund is intervene in emergencies. Given the context we work in, which is a highly constrained civic space, we know that deploying some of these resources at critical moments is very helpful to civil society. Our website is full of stories of these organisations and people who have received a grant from us, many of whom say, ‘it’s great to be trusted. It’s great to be given a chance to do the work that we want to do without feeling like you’re bending over backwards and contorting yourself into a thing you’re not just so you can get money.’ When we talk about influencing philanthropy, power sharing, shifting power and so on, what gives us the edge is being grantmakers ourselves, so we can ensure that we’re not reproducing some of these pain points. It also shows those we are advising that we are doing it, so it’s possible.
I know that getting African funds to African-led initiatives is very important to you. Are you seeing that moving more in the right direction?
You know how they say that when you’re wearing blue, you suddenly see everybody else who is wearing blue? Now that we’re in this work of strengthening the local ecosystem and we’re trying to ensure more funding flows to civil society in Africa, it appears like there’s a lot. At the same time, organisations are still struggling to access the money, so there’s still a gap. The tap is still not as open as one would hope. A lot of donors say they now understand that long-term funding that is unrestricted is the way to go, yet many donors still fund within a constrictive frame. So what is happening? How is the conversation happening, and yet the money is still restricted? It appears the tap is open, but there are still some things that are blocking the flow.
Does the fact that you’re a grantmaker and, at the same time a mediator and an advisor ever cause you problems?
I think it’s an interesting space to sit. It’s like you have two heartbeats. You’re trying to interpret for donors that are not from your continent, from your culture, the nuances of how to give in dignified ways. At the same time, you are caught up in raising your own funds to do the work that needs to be done and you’re in the very system that you’re trying to change. It’s also very powerful because we get to sit at tables that many of the organisations that we serve don’t and that access gives us a responsibility to speak up for those groups and, when people are saying, ‘that can never be done,’ you have to say, ‘no, I know it can be done and these are the people who are doing it.’
There are so many conversations about sustainable ways to do development, and we need to ensure that African philanthropy is part of that conversation, part of that solution.
What is your structure? Are you a network or a free-standing organisation?
We are free-standing, but we do participate in networks. For instance, we are part of the East Africa Philanthropy Network, the Africa Philanthropy Network, and WINGS, because we recognise that, being in family with others that are trying to advance some of the things that we would like to is very critical.
What does it take to get into that position you occupy where you’re listened to by all sides? Is it simply having been around for a long time or do you work at it?
It’s both. We’ve earned it because most of my staff have worked in and with civil society for many years. Some have been donor advisors in their previous career lives and so understand the space of grantmaking. But at the same time, trust is a daily thing. You can’t always depend on yesterday’s trust for today and that’s why we work with leaders, not just through our offerings, but for example, here in Uganda at a time when the country is struggling with having passed the anti-homosexuality bill, it’s picking up a phone and listening to or being in conversation with leaders of LBQ movements. We’re not necessarily funding them, but we’re listening. Like I said, at the end of the day we serve civil society, so the trust has to be continuously built. And because we also stand in an interpreter role, we do the same with our donors. Especially through CivFund, we’re able to sit in networks of donors and in spaces where donors are meeting and there again, we need to continuously build that trust that we not only know what we’re saying, but we’re also learning alongside you, because you cannot know everything about a continent as vast as Africa.
We know there are very pressing global problems. How do you support your constituency to address those problems and how effective do you think that work has been? Have you got some way of measuring that or feeling that it’s working?
For now, we gather the stories of the people that we work with. That’s our main way at the moment, but we know that at some point we have to have more scientific ways of measuring the work that we do. But even before climate justice was a thing, four years ago, when we were starting CivFund, we did a study to ask the communities what they needed and Zishaye, which was our very first fund, is a climate justice fund coming out of that. So, in a sense, our climate justice partners are slightly ahead because we heard them four years ago. One of the stories I love is from Gulu in northern Uganda. A group of women that we worked with are helping to grow local seed banks and to enable other women to access this food. You’re talking about food security, you’re talking about nutrition, you’re addressing climate justice issues. Another community is working to protect and defend the shea tree that has been previously been cut for charcoal and is helping to train their communities in more climate-friendly ways of getting energy. Those are the stories that we glean from the work we are supporting. We also have an art fund. Very few people support individual artists. We enable talent sourcing, and enable artists access funding that allows them to propel the work that they do. Another one that I absolutely love is the resilience fund. Donors often ask organisations: how are you being sustainable? We saw that sometimes you need to fund this, so through the resilience fund, we’re giving organisations money that they can grow and we’re partnering them with financial advisors that help them think about various investment options so that they can grow the money because we want them to succeed and stand long after we can’t fund them.
You also act as a fundholder and you’ve created a fund of funds. How do you go about raising the money for those?
It’s mostly outside donors and again, it’s us providing a solution because many of the fiscal hosts people work with are based in the North and I guess you give your money to who you know. But it’s important for us to show that we too can be holders of money, we can churn it out faster than you. We are also growing the field of African-led, African-owned fiscal sponsors. We see ourselves as part of growing the leadership in that field.
For your own organisation, how hard is it for you to fundraise?
Oh, my goodness! Sometimes, I wake up thinking nobody told me fundraising was an all-day everyday job, because it is! We have been able to raise funds for projects. but the thing that we still need to crack is how do you raise more long-term unrestricted funding? Some of the restricted funding has been people opening doors to us. Some of it is doing the hard work of building relationships, but, like I say, it’s all day, every day – hoping I can keep the lights on today. We are thinking very seriously about our own sustainability and about how we use the resources we have wisely and efficiently, how to grow the money that we have so that we can be in this business longer, but it’s not easy at all.
You’re in the same position of the CSOs you’re working with?
Very much so. That means that even when you’re working with them in that kind of relationship, they absolutely know that you know their struggle. You understand their fragility and their vulnerability so, when we are co-creating solutions, it’s from that perspective.
In the next few years, I’d like to see us have a footprint in West Africa and to be continuously strengthening the ecosystem of African philanthropy.
Funders are often reluctant to support infrastructure organisations. What would you pass on from your experience to help them better understand the kind of impact you have and the work you’re doing?
I don’t know if I know the answer to that question, but here is an attempt to answer it. We stand in that place of enabling resources to move to the right organisations, the right people, the right issues and we enable educating of the donors about our context. It’s not only one end of the question we’re working on, it’s both. And the context is shifting. One of the products we have is a bi-weekly context tracker, so our ears are on the ground in ways that donors’ are not so there are things that we’re able to raise before they become big issues. That how I see the role that we play. But a midwife, for example, will tell her story by talking about the babies she delivers even though they aren’t her children and sometimes it’s better to point to the babies – to point to funding coming to organising, or to donors who are starting to think of capacity building in different ways, or to changing language. All those are little things that over time, because we’ve been in this field and done this work, are shifting.
You talked about curated conversations. Can you tell me a little bit about them? Is that when you bring donors and organisations together?
It’s an initiative we started last year. At the moment, we are having those conversations separately – with donors and with organisations. This year, we hope to bring them together. They’re separate because of the question of trust. As a donor or quasi-donor, we’re able to have honest conversations with donors on the ways our practice is not dignifying the people we work with and that needs a safe space. And similarly with civil society organisations, in the conversations we were having last year we talked about how they experience donors, about how some of those attitudes might seep into the ways that they work in and with community, so what about our practice might need to change? But this year, we want to bring these two streams together to say, ‘you’ve both been having these conversations from your vantage point, but when we bring it together, what do we hear and what are the ways that we can begin to be better, do better because we’re each listening to each other?’
Your work has a big social justice perspective. How does that affect these conversations?
With donors, we have found some that are not shy about that approach, or sometimes it’s about curating the language. If we don’t call it by this name, how do we still name what you’re doing in ways that resonate for you, or resonate with the communities that you work with? Sometimes, that involves creating new language which is what we’ve done around, African philanthropy – we’ve called it generosity because really it’s the act of giving that’s important and that is recognised, so let’s talk about that so we’re not too constrained by the lexicon.
As you said earlier about interpreting, it’s making sure everybody understands what you’re talking about, and isn’t put off by an alien form of words.
Yes.
Are there any disappointments where you look back and think ‘I wish we’d done that better’ or ‘I wish we could have done such-and-such but couldn’t because of funding or some other constraint’?
I don’t know if I can call it a disappointment, but as I mentioned before, it’s that issue that, while there’s a lot of conversation and understanding that transformative funding needs to be long-term and unrestricted, what continues to happen is more short-term project funding. What else do we need to do? How else can we say it? I often ask, are we seen by the right people, do we have access to donors for whom we can provide these advisory services or with whom we can build trust in order to provide these advisory services? For me, a project like this is absolutely critical in elevating the work that we do, because sometimes, the nuanced value that we add is not always known or understood.
A more general question here, but what do you see as missing from the ecosystem in Uganda?
Part of it is just the counting of it. There’s no one helping us to aggregate all that philanthropy is in Uganda, whether it’s time, treasure or talent. We want to have a meeting with the Ministry of Finance to explore how we aggregate this giving. The other missing piece is connecting it and, through the Uganda Philanthropy Forum, we are trying to connect community foundations, individual givers, more organised giving like through alumni associations, rotary clubs, lions clubs, just to have a space where people that are doing generosity or giving back to community through generosity can come together. And then, there’s the research. We’ve done some, but we can’t do it all. So part of the vision and ambition for us is to interest our universities in the idea that philanthropy is a worthwhile field of inquiry, like CAPSI has done in South Africa, because it’s from research that we can build better and do better.
Is it important to have a channel to government to represent the importance of philanthropy in the country?
Very definitely. As I said, even counting it as part of local development is critical, and it’s a missing piece because while we count what we receive from foreign aid, there’s this whole area of people building schools, giving land to widows that is happening that we’re not expressing in the balance sheet of our country so we don’t tell the full story of development. The other thing that we’re involved in is creating an enabling environment. We have had a few of those conversations, for example, with the national planning authority, with Ministry of Justice, and we’re also trying to find the right parliamentary committee to start having these conversations.
Where would you like to see CivSource in five years’ time and what would you need to get there?
What do we need? Money, money, money! Where do we see ourselves? I think it’s tripling our impact. We have a footprint in eastern Africa and southern Africa, it’s growing, but we want to see our work spread throughout Africa. In the next few years, I’d like to see us have a footprint in West Africa and to be continuously strengthening the ecosystem of African philanthropy as a viable alternative because there are so many conversations about sustainable ways to do development and we need to ensure that African philanthropy is part of that conversation, part of that solution. And tripling or quadrupling the number of leaders because everything rises and falls on leadership – how do we continue to strengthen and reach more leaders who are leading great organisations and great work in their community?
Andrew Milner is Features Editor at Alliance.
This interview is being shared free-to-read as a part of the Propel Philanthropy interview project. In addition to this article series, Propel Philanthropy collects stories demonstrating that modest grants can drive but results. You can learn more here.
Comments (1)
I applaud the two-sided mission of Jackie Assimwe of CivSource Africa: "Philanthropy that works and civil society that thrives!" CivSource grasps that philanthropy works best by creating INFRASTRUCTURE that links donors together as investors in various funds, that links civil society organizations together for mutual support and capacity building, and that ultimately brings the two halves together in a greater spirit of trust. These linkages enable donors to better understand the contexts of the organizations they seek to serve while meeting organizations "where they are." As Board Chair of Network of Engaged International Donors (NEID Global) I know that funders are grappling with how to localize their funding, but know that ad hoc, disconnected, localized funding will sacrifice impact. Effective localization needs the bridge-building infrastructure that CivSource provides. Bravo, Jackie and team!