APPLIED RESEARCH PROJECT - MASTER IN INTEGRAL PRODUCTDEVELOPMENT - 2009
INNOVATION OF NGOS, A CASE STUDY OF NGOS IN RIO DE JANEIRO Jente Minne
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1 Artesis
Hogeschool Antwerpen, departement Design Sciences, Product Development, specialisation Design Research.
ABSTRACT (250 WORDS MAX)
The last decade, development work has been undergoing a new evolution where NGOs and civil society are experiencing pressure to act more efficiently. The professionalisation of the NGOs is considered to be an important issue, and innovation is becoming a main aspect, vital for the sustainability of NGOs. This project is an exploratory research project that focuses on challenges related to innovation local NGOs have to deal with and the way they overcome these challenges. The project contains a literature study, desk research and 2 in-depth interviews with 2 innovative NGOs in Rio the Janeiro. Which resulted in a list of challenges and criteria that influence innovation and an overview on how these 2 NGOs are dealing with these issues. This project also highlights the areas in which both of the NGOs are innovative.
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INTRODUCTION
The West has invested 3000 billion dollars in development aid, and in a period of 50 years, NGOs and civil societies have followed a lot of different discourses. At the beginning of the new century, we got evaluations from many institutions about the work they have executed. [1] A topic of general agreement is the fact that the development goals are far from being fulfilled, and further investments are necessary to reduce poverty, hunger and violence. [2] But the evaluations go beyond this theme; many organisations argue that a lot of development work is done very inefficiently and sometimes even contra-productive. [1] Some experts argue that the Millennium Goals are a big step forward to come to a more unified and efficient solution and leads to a structured network of governments, companies and civil society. Although other specialists question the idea of “development aid” as an instrument, They believe an inclusive capitalistic system with many bottom up projects are a more efficient way to come to sustainable development. [4] According to Prahalad, a lot of potential of poverty reduction lays in designing products and services for the poorest people and obtaining profits while eradicating poverty. In his book “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” a methodology is drawn on how to design and implement products for the people below the poverty line and how this can drastically improve their living. [5] Private initiatives, which invest in development work, are also getting recognized as an important and substantial contribution to the development aid and are given the name (the 4th pillar) in Belgium. [1] Innovation isn’t only considered to be crucial for the development of the western markets anymore, but also in the non-profit it has become crucial to survive: “non-profit institutions need innovation as much as businesses or governments” [6] Furthermore, many experts mention the comparative benefits of NGOs compared to governments and official donors because of their innovation related characteristics. [6] Although, criticism on the innovation management of NGOs is raising and sometimes NGOs aren’t as innovative as their imago presents them. [6] And the experts in favour for more market focused development aid recognize problems with the innovation management of NGOs. [5] In this context, this project is an exploratory research on the challenges of the innovation management of local NGOs and the way they try to deal with these challenges. This research should be the base for further research, prior to a master thesis.
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METHOD
For this project innovation is defined as: “The successful creation, development and application of new techniques and ways of working� [6] In this project, innovation is reconsidered in the areas of: fund raising, product development, project development, management and media. The first part of the research contains an extended literature study about the new achievements in the development aid, the challenges that still have to be dealt with, and also more specific the problems related to NGOs and their innovation management. Afterwards the different types of NGOs were mapped, based on a literature study. This literature study resulted in a list of problems and specifications that influence the innovation of NGOs and a list of criteria for the selection of the NGOs the in-depth analysis will be executed on. Afterwards the most appropriate NGOs in Rio de Janeiro were selected and contacted. Rio de Janeiro is chosen because of their reputation of having innovative NGOs and a stable political situation [7], and because of practical reasons. In Rio de Janeiro, informal interviews were done with local inhabitants and also an indepth interview with Krystian Oppenheim was executed. He was a student at the FGV University in Botafogo (RJ), who made a 2 years project about the management of NGOs. Further contact with the FGV University was rejected. The interviews were necessary to understand the local factors, which can influence the innovation of NGOs, and to understand the socio-political context in which the NGOs were operating. Afterwards 2 in-depth interviews were executed with Ibiss and Viva Rio and several projects of Ibiss were visited. The output of the in-depth interviews resulted in a better understanding on how local NGOs deal with common challenges in relations with innovation, and which other factors have an influence on their innovation. The technique of depth interview was chosen because of the complicated matter of the subject, the nature of the project and practical restrictions.
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SET UP
The selection of the NGOs was based on the hand of several criteria, which were obtained by executing a literature study: • • • • • • • • •
The NGOs have to be situated in Rio de Janeiro or Niteroi and they have to be reachable in a safe way; The in-depth interview and observation have to be held in the period between the 10th of August and the 4th of October 2009; The in-depth interview has to be held in English or in Dutch (Portuguese aid possible); The NGOs must have a certain recognition and experience; The NGOs must be recognized as innovative; The NGOs must have a project based approach; The NGOs must focus on fulfilling needs of their target group by offering them services or products; The NGOS must be transparent and willing to cooperate; The NGOs must focus on sustainable project, Humanitarian aid is beyond the scope of this project.
Based on these criteria, 3 NGOs were selected and contacted: “Ibiss”, “Viva Rio” and “the 2 irmãos institute”. The informal interviews and the in-depth interview with Krystian Oppenheim were executed respectively in Portuguese and English, and recorded with an MP3 player. The final research report of Krystian Oppenheim was also consulted. The in-depth interview and project visit with IBISS took place on the 10th of September 2010 and took 7 hours. The in-depth interview was held in Dutch and recorded with an MP3 player. 2 projects in Gringôlandia en Vila cruzeiro and an informal interview with an exsoldado, who now works for IBISS, were executed The in-depth interview with Viva Rio has been executed on the 30 of September 2010 and took 5 hours. The in-depth interview was held in English and recorded with an MP3 player, visiting the projects wasn’t possible because of practical reasons. The contact with 2 irmaos ended because of non-response of the local head quarter, and the difficulties to reach the head quarter.
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RESULTS
4.1 Problems with innovation for NGOs according to a literature study
1 The wishes of the target group aren’t known well enough NGOs tend to have a paternalistic method and don’t focus enough on the demands and wishes of their target group. Sometimes it is very hard to get to know what these specific wishes and demands are because of socio-cultural differences. [1, 5] 2 Wrong goals set by donors or governments Donors, partners or governments have difficulties setting up criteria for NGOs. Sometimes, criteria work contra productive, and NGOs may focus on these criteria instead of on the needs of the target group. [10] 3 Fund raising implies dependency To receive certain funds and aid, NGOs in the south have to meet certain criteria. These criteria have an influence on the project, furthermore impedes economical dependence the sustainability of long term project [4, 10] 4 Bad evaluation of the projects Also the evaluation of the projects causes some issues. Biased project results or evaluations from locals are noticed, because of the fear of loosing funding. Sometimes socio cultural differences complicate the evaluations. Also finding the right evaluation criteria seems to be problematic. [10] 5 Lack of direct feedback Unlike the free market principle, there is a lack of direct feedback on a service or a product. Because the target group isn’t the payer of the product, and the socio cultural differences and distance between the founders and the target group, it’s hard to get an adequate feedback about the quality of certain products. [5] 6 Instability and safety issues A basis of stability and “good governemance” is necessary to implement new ideas and to be sustainable. [10] 7 Underestimation of the target group In certain literature the underestimation of the target group was considered to be an issue. Because of the lack of recognition of the capabilities of the target group, they are not involved in the design of the project. Some practical issues as illiteracy and lack of formal education, enlarges this perception. [11] 8 Ownership To realize sustainable innovative projects, there has to be an emotional connection and sense of responsibility between the target group and the project. [10]
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Claire Fyvie claims that innovation with NGOs depends on certain intern and external factors. [6] 4.1.1 Internal factors
As internal factors, the lack of personal and financial resources and the high influence of the NGOs headquarter can be a burden for the innovation management of NGOs. Low centralisation, high competition and low formalisation can improve the first stages of innovation but can be a burden for the implementation. A Multidisciplinary team is considered to have a positive impact on the innovativeness of an NGO. [6] 4.1.2 External factors
A high grade of heterophily, a high impact of failing, unstable and dangerous political context and a big dependence of donors is a burden for the innovation of NGOs. A high grade of competition has an influence on the information trade between NGOs, high donors competitions implies more company secrets. [6] 4.2 Problems with innovation in Rio de Janeiro
According to Krystian Oppenheim, corruption was a big issue for NGOs in Rio de Janeiro, although last years, a big improvement has been maid, because of the attention of the media. 4.3 Case study: Ibiss (insituto brasileiro da innovação em saude social)
All information in this chapter is extracted from an in-depth interview with Nanko van Buuren, if no other sources are mentioned. 4.3.1 Mission
In a sustainable way, IBISS wants to contribute to the development of a society in which social sicknesses such as leprosy and tuberculosis are eliminated, social inequality is combated and human rights are respected. IBISS aims to stimulate its target groups, in a way that motivates them to improve their current situation on their own. [8] 4.3.2 Innovation at Ibiss
The abbreviation IBISS stands for "Instituto Brasileiro de Inovações em Saúde Social" or "Brazilian Institute for Innovations in Social Health care" In order to improve the situation of its target groups, new and daring methods are experimented through a number of different pilot projects. If a particular approach seems successful, IBISS lobbies to have it absorbed into regular policy guidelines. [8] According to Nanko, Ibiss gets most his innovative ideas from the target group. By continuously observing projects of inhabitants of the favelas, and by selecting the ones that have potential. In this way, there is a guarantee that the innovation is useful for the target group. Ibiss recognizes innovation as an essential strategy to sell their project to the government or sponsors.
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4.3.3 Fields of innovation
Ibiss is innovative in the following fields
Product development: Ibiss doesn’t exercise a lot of innovation in the field of Product development. There was 1 project, where they worked on a product in co-operation with Tu Delft. This product hasn’t been developed yet.
Media: Ibiss has contacts with the biggest media producer in South America [O Globo] and they have plans for a co-operation for a new television show.
Project development: the majority of the new project Ibiss implemented, are “new for the market” innovations. Their goal is to provide basic needs to a target group that is deprived from the formal market. Because the big difference with the traditional market, function innovation is necessary.
Fundraising: Innovation on the field of fundraising hasn’t been detected yet, although some plans were mentioned to implement a sponsoring system to their project visits in order to get a steady income.
4.3.4 The way Ibiss overcomes the challenges.
1 The wishes of the target group aren’t known well enough: According to Nanko, most innovative ideas are extracted from the target group itself. By continuously observing projects of locals. This guaranties that these project are needed and wished by the target group. One of the strengths of Ibiss is the sustainable relation they have built up with the local population. 2 Wrong goals set by donors or governments: Ibiss recognized this problem. One of the examples that was mentioned was the sponsoring “per capita”. This is a common way of getting sponsoring aid. Also the adaptation of radical innovation of the sponsors, is an issue for Ibiss: “We started in 92 with “centro de saude comunotario”, everybody said that we were crazy, that it was ridiculous to detect diseases in an early stage. We experimented 3 or 4 years with the idea, It took until 98 until it got implemented in the legislation, we are happy at least it got implemented” (Nanko G. van Buuren) 3 Fund raising implies dependency An analysis of the income of Ibiss teaches us that more than 50 percent of their funds are coming from the Brazilian government. This implies a big dependency of the Brazilian government. Ibiss can only spend 10 percent of their budget without accountability. Thus Ibiss didn’t recognize this as a problem, they recognize more the advantages. “ Fund raising is hard, especially with the economic crisis, but Ibiss is known as a successful organiser and our advantage is that a big part of our funding come from the Brazilian government. Not only because of the money they put in our project, but also because they implement our project in their legislation” 7
(Nanko G. van Buuren) Furthermore, he mentioned the need to stay innovative, because every project needs to be sold individually. Nanko didn’t recognize a dependency in the way they work out the projects besides some restrictions. They can’t divide their funds over the projects and sometimes, good ideas can’t be implemented because aren’t recognized as interesting by the donors. Other funds as VN funds, Funds from Holland and Europe have a lot of formalities. Ibiss wants to expand their own fundraising, to obtain more freedom and sustainability. 4 Bad evaluation of the projects: The biggest issues with evaluating projects according to Nanko is that the impact of some projects only can be measured on a long term base, because the results are only measurable after 15-20 years. The second problem is to divide external factors from the influence of the project. The fact that the target group would bias evaluation in order to not to loose funds wasn’t considered to be a problem by Nanko. 5 Lack of direct feedback: The lack of direct feedback was considered to be a problem for certain projects, but is inevitable according to Nanko. 6 Instability and insecurity: They experienced some issues with instability and unsafe environments. About a project to integrate young favela kids in public schools: “Because of daily based shootings in the favelas, the public schools had to close, and the project ended in a failure” 7 Underestimating the target group: Because of the close co-operation and the fact that 70 percent of the employers are part of the target group, an underestimation of the target group isn’t considered to be an issue, Ibiss know their target group very well. 8 Creating ownership: Ownership is an aspect that is integrated since the idea phase of the programs, since they cooperate with the favela population. With small, target focused projects the target group is addressed and motivated to take initiative. Informal leaders from the favelas are continuously addressed to cooperate. This is also the same for health care employers and legislative. Awareness is an important issue in every project. [8] To guaranty the sustainability of the project, Ibiss doesn’t hire volunteers. This improves the professionalism and reliability of the employers 4.3.5 Internal factors
Ibiss is working with a small interdisciplinary staff, which exists out of sociologists, doctors … and with 600 paid employers, of whom 70 percent is from the favelas. These employers received education from Ibiss by one of their education projects. Ibiss has 8
few or no accountability towards his headquarter in the Netherlands. Ibiss is a NGO that is organized in an informal and decentralised way and it has a high complexity. This improves the first phases of the innovations but can causes issues for the implementation. Ibiss recognized implementation as their greatest weakness: “The implementing of new projects is always a lot of work, because of the specific matter of the projects, we have to search a lot“ (Nanko G. van Buuren) Nanko main activities contain: coordination, verification and communication. All contact was informal and personal. Often they contact him directly even for small issues. He is always up to date about all the project of the NGO. Ibiss also decided to only operate in Rio de Janeiro and Niteroi, to simplify the management and evaluation of the project. Some of the projects are also taken over by the government of Rio de Janeiro. 4.3.6 External factors
Ibiss has a low degree of heterophily because of their co-creation philosophy. Unsafe an unstable political context has been addressed in issue 6. To avoid a high impact of failure, Ibiss implements the project first on a small scale and if the results are satisfying, the project is expanded. A higher dependence of the external donors is sometimes considered as a problem: “What often goes wrong in the planning is the fact that the innovation has to be implemented in 2 years. It doesn’t mean you only have to develop a good project and obtain good results, but also that the political lobby is done and that the project is sold to policy makers. Afterwards the implementation can start. Sometimes the government demands unrealistic time limits for such a project.” (Nanko G. van Buuren)
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4.4 Case study: Viva Rio
All information is obtained by an in-depth interview with Mayra Jucá, the responsible of the communication at Viva Rio, if no other sources are mentioned. 4.4.1 Mission
“To integrate a divided society and develop a culture of peace interacting with civil society and public policies, working at the grassroots and internationally through: Consultancy, advocacy, trainings campaigns and communication” [9] 4.4.2 Innovation at Viva Rio
Viva Rio describes itself as an innovative organisation; they are pioneers in dealing with taboos. At the start of Viva Rio they challenged violence, and more specific arms control. Now they focus more on the drug abuse. They implement innovative Ideas based on research. New ideas are generated as well bottom up as top down. They are coming as well from field workers, their target group as from office workers and researches. Other Ideas are obtained by international meetings. Sometimes innovative ideas are coming from an investor or the government, and they outsource the project using an open competition. There’s not really a policy on how to decide which projects are being worked out or not. New ideas are proposed in the meetings and mostly during the annual meetings for the strategically planning. According Viva Rio a lot of ideas are coming from existing projects or existing markets; continuing and renewing projects in certain favelas or expanding certain projects. “We try to keep this project going on or we try to be present in the same community or to continue working in the same topic because of the knowledge. This also counts for persons; if a good professional has to leave because a project is ending we are trying to keep this professional with us, in another project. So we find some new ideas.” (Mayra Jucá) Also technology is one of the sources of innovation According to the international labor agency in Geneva (ILO): “Viva Rio is unique because its projects combine social solidarity with the market in its various forms, including new technologies.” [12] The end goal of Viva Rio is to implement their innovations in the legislation of the government. 4.4.3 Fields of innvation
Also Viva Rio is innovative in several fields
Product development: Viva Rio isn’t very active in the field of product development. The only example found in this area is the development of an Internet kiosk in the favelas. This is an interesting product–service combination because of an innovative business plan. It will be explained further in “fundraising innovation”. [12]
Media: Viva Rio used innovative ways to attract the attention of the media. Now they can use their networks to proclaim messages. 10
Project development: Most of the innovations here can be considered to be “new for the market” innovations. But they include radical innovative ideas. A micro finance system was designed while grahmeen bank wasn’t famous yet and other projects like comunidade Segura 1, is innovative because of their network abilities.
Management: because of their size and a good fund raising, Viva Rio has a complete and multidisciplinary team of employees, and it has a broad network of influencing persons. According to the ILO, Viva Rio improved their structure to improve implementation of innovation of services: “But as Viva Rio became more of a service provider a new form of organization was consolidated that better met the needs arising from greater planning and follow-up projects. Still, this structure is light enough to allow for an expansion of its activities in a simple way” [12]
Fund raising: The goal of Viva Rio isn’t to become economically independent:
“If we are sustainable we deal with something that is inserted in some market, we offer a service. And our philosophy is to be oriented to find the topic where nobody is working or [where there is] a lack of attention”. (Mayra Jucá) Although, ILO pointed out a case where they succeeded to be economical sustainable. About the Internet project in the favelas it mentioned: “The project has an extensive area dedicated to e-commerce (both B2C and B2B). For B2C there are already over 30 shops under partnership contracts. The goal is to reach 150 by the end of the year, creating a broad virtual shopping mall. In these virtual shops, all purchases made by computer will include a credit percentage for the gateway. Since Internet shoppers are from classes A and B, they constitute the target public; the attraction is that if they purchase using the gateway, they will be contributing to a project aimed at social integration, which is advertised as such.” [12] 4.4.4 The way Viva Rio overcomes the innovation challenges.
1 The wishes of the target group aren’t known well enough Viva Rio tries to overcome this challenge by working together with many civil organisations and smaller NGOs. Furthermore Viva Rio bases their project on research they execute themselves; this results in more reliable information. 2 Wrong goals set by donors or governments Their most important donor is the government (50 percent of their budget). Although it’s not considered to be an issue for the implementation of their projects.
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comunidade segura is an international forum that seeks solutionsfor the prevention of street violence. This forum is being used by favela inhabitants, police officers, researchers and other persons, interested in this problemacy. 11
“The government usually has a public policy, guides; sometimes [they] define it very much. What makes us working with the government is the fact that most of the projects with the government are based on methodologies and concept we used to promote. Some of Viva Rio’s strategies and small scale projects became public policy. The content is very close [similar]. So we are really well prepared to implement their policy without restrictions and some people [with] whom we were working here, are working now for the government. We have 2 researches and project coordinators who are developing public policy. They are implementing the things we have been working on.” (Mayra Jucá) Although the issue that it’s hard to get enough money for certain projects because of a lack of interest of the donors, has been mentioned. Viva Rio tries to solve this issue by implementing these projects into other projects that have more funds, if this doesn’t influence the other project in a negative way. On the other hand there was mentioned that the dependence of funds is a stimulation to act in a more innovative way. 3 Fund raising implies dependence The biggest concern of Viva Rio is the sustainability of the funds of the government. Changing government can imply budget cuts.Viva Rio always tries to stay political neutral. On the question how the elections will influence their funds : “Yeah that’s a big problem, we know everything can change. We try not to create a big tie [dependency]. Having such a good connection with the government offers us chances and threats. You know, even if you don’t have a political preference, and you want to work with all the governments, of course a lot of governments are closed to us. Although we don’t have a preference, we are interfering with the politics”. (Mayra Jucá) The influence of donors on the content of their projects isn’t considered to be an issue: “We propose a project to different investors, and some will give us money for it and other ones won’t. We can see more and more that the companies want to anticipate actively, but normally, the investors are respecting our way of working and at the end, we have the proposal without a very big difference. We have another way of fundraising, which is the “edita”. It’s a kind of award system where you propose your project, and you can get funding for it. There are some international agencies who works this way, as well as the government” (Mayra Jucá) About the dependency on the government they also mentioned the advantage that they are able to implement some of their projects into legislation. 4 Bad evaluation of the projects Evaluation of the projects wasn’t considered to be an issue: “We have the attention and the impact in the media, this is measurable.
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And here you can see how the media, who unfortunately sometimes guides the agenda from the congressmen, how they are open for some questions. There is another way. We have networks, we have a lot of different partners, [and] each time we do a manifestation we have to call them to mobilize them. So we have to do a lot of networking. We have to raise volunteers...” (Mayra Jucá) According to ILO, Viva Rio has a rigid evaluation system: “For each kind of project that it develops, Viva Rio develops its own institutionalized evaluation mechanism, including rigorous control of data on school dropout rates over time and in comparison to students in the public school system. However, the NGO Institute for Religious Studies (ISER) also participates in monitoring Viva Rio’s projects and helps solve problems in the processing and final evaluation of the products.” [12] The fact that Viva Rio is evaluated by an extern organisation can contribute to the objectivity of this evaluation 5 Lack of direct feedback The lack of feedback has been recognized as a classic problem of NGOs, but she counter argues that investors and founders invest more and more in methods to evaluate their projects, and they improve their evaluations. 6 Instability and unsafety Instability and unsafe conditions can be an issue for local projects, but their biggest concern is the availability of funds after the elections. 7 underestimation of the target group Viva Rio is funded by their target group, and thus the connection with their target group is very high. Besides that Viva Rio works together with civil organisations and smaller NGOs. 8 Creating ownership The networking skills with civil societies help Viva Rio overcome this problem. Further was mentioned that they don’t put to much confidence in volunteers, since the unreliability of volunteers can influence the sustainability of certain projects and can damage the confidence of the target group. Volunteers are only deployed in small projects with limited responsibility. 4.4.5 Internal factors
Viva Rio doesn’t have a lack of resources, and it has a multidisciplinary staff and a high grade of formality: “The work of Viva Rio is guided by a 19 member advisory board that brings together leaders from diverse backgrounds, including representatives from the business community and labor unions, artists, community leaders from favelas, influential members of the press, as well as catholic and protestant priests. Because of Viva Rio’s commitment to non-partisanship, no board member may hold any government position. All of the board’s decisions are by consensus. [9]
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The importance of independence of the government and to consist out of employers with different ideological backgrounds is the key to success. Especially because the council has as well a financial as a strategical rol. [12] According to Mayra this consensus results in a council that is more pragmatic in the way they solve problems and the ideas are more based on research instead of ideological thoughts. Viva Rio doesn’t have a headquarter to whom they have accountability. We might consider Viva Rio highly centralised, high complex and high grade of formality. This can difficult the idea generation phase, but it creates advantages for the implementation and control of innovation. “Viva Rio develops projects that can be multiplied, thus it uses standardized procedures that can be evaluated and measured. No matter what project, it has these same characteristics. For such multiplication to occur, structural flexibility is crucial. The institutional structure is proper to the nature of a service organization that is set up as a “holding company” for projects.” [12] Also, the NGO itself makes the comparison with companies, and they acknowledge that it is a key to their success. According to Mayra, the future of sustainable NGOs lays in the professionalisation and in laying the focus on resolving concrete issues. The biggest issue on ideological aid is the conflict of interests: “Even if the cause is good, like black rights parties, women rights parties. But even then the good causes become more like a relationship, like buying support. The problem is that the main goal here isn’t improving the life of the beneficiaries, and if you really work for the goal, you should be able to work together with several groups and not being linked to only 1 party. These parties also start fighting against each other and loose the real goal. By keeping neutral we are more able to build long term strong relationships with all the parties: the communities, the government, the partners, etc.)” (Mayra Jucá) 4.4.6 External factors
Since Viva Rio started as a manifestation group, we can’t consider a high grade of heterophily. Also because its biggest strength according to them, is their ability to network with all layers of the population of Rio. To avoid the high impact of failure, Viva Rio implements and tests their projects first on a small scale and expands them if they are succesful. Viva Rio has a big dependency of donors, especially from the government, but this has only a minor influence on their innovation. Although it recognises to have to overcome some issues to implement certain, less popular, projects. Viva Rio remains their competitive advantage because of their broad networks and their research based approach. Viva Rio shares easily information with other NGOs and stimulates them to follow their path. According to Mayra the future of Viva Rio can evolute more towards international consultancy.
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CONCLUSIONS
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For both of the NGOs, networking is an essential part of their activities, for Ibiss it is mostly focused within the favelas; Viva Rio has networks within all layers of the society.
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The system where they have to find sponsors for every project stimulates both of the NGOs to innovate. Innovation is used as a strategy to obtain economical sustainability. And it improves the direct feedback on their new ideas.
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Both of the NGOs came to a good strategy to develop in a sustainable way Rio de Janeiro. Although here we have to remark that their strategies can’t be blindly copied in other contexts. Not every government has so many funds, or is as stable as in Rio. Both NGOs recognized the importance of a safe and stable society for the successful implementation of innovative projects.
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Both NGOs try to minimize the risk of failure by implementing first on a small scale and expanding if the project is successful and the needed funds can be found.
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Both NGOs compare their management with the one of companies; this has an influence on their innovation management and the importance they attach to innovation. According to Viva Rio, the key element of their success is their professional, company oriented and neutral approach.
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Multidisciplinarity in the teams was considered to be an important issue for both NGOs also the literature study recognized the importance of having multidisciplinary teams.
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According to Viva Rio, ideological factors can be a threat for the wishes and demands of the target group, and thus can cause a threat for the sustainability of the NGO. Viva Rio prefers to attract employees with different ideological thoughts.
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Both NGOs recognize that depending on external donors can result in difficulties according to the implementation of certain projects. Although both of them argue they aren’t changing the content of their projects to receive the funds. The problems are situated in the fact that some projects don’t get enough funds to be implemented. Viva Rio remarked here also the problem of economical sustainability when depending on 1 big donor, in their case, the government. Although both of the NGOs also mentioned some advantages linked to depending on the government.
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According to the evaluation of their projects, Ibiss mentioned the problem of a late feedback and the difficulties to separate the effect of the project with external factors.Viva Rio didn’t mention issues for the evaluation of their projects
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Both of the organisations don’t consider working with volunteers as a sustainable solution. Viva Rio mentioned the unreliability of some volunteers and the fact this can harm the target group as an issue. Ibiss doesn’t allow volunteering in their local NGO.
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This study is an exploratory study, done within a limited time and with limited resources. More information could be obtained by doing an extended desk research, more in-depth interviews and observations. Thus this wasn’t the goal set for this research projects. Also more research is needed to make extrapolations. Geographical differences will be a big issue here.
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Other interesting topics which can be further researched are the influence of stability and safety on innovativeness of NGOs, an observation research on the evaluation techniques Viva Rio uses. Or when talking about design research: Research on how the skills of product developers can create extra value for the innovations of NGOs, the extra value of co-creation or Human centered design techniques to the development of services and products for NGOs
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’m very grateful to Krystian Oppenheim, Nanko G. Van Buuren and Mayra Jucá for the time and effort they invested in me. Without them, this research project wouldn’t have taken place. Besides them I would like to thank all the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro, who helped me to get some understanding in the working of NGOs in Rio de Janeiro and who supported me in solving practical problems.
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REFERENCES
[1] Develtere, P., (2007). De vrije markt van de ontwikkelingssamenwerking, Belgium: Davidsfonds ISBN 978 90 5726 596 7 [2] Onbekend, United Nations Millennium development goals, UNEP. Available: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf [Accessed on 2008, 5 Mei], (2007). [3] Sachs, J.D., (2007). Welvaart voor de wereld, Amsterdam: Business Contact ISBN 978 90 470 0118 8. [4] Easterly, W., (2007). The white man’s burden, Amsterdam: Nieuw Amsterdam uitgevers ISBN 877 80 467 0301 1 [5] Prahalad, C. K., (2006). The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Upper sadly river, NJ: Pearson education.inc. ISBN 0-12-177728-1 [6] Fyvie, C. & Ager, A., (1999). NGOs and Innovation: Organizational Characteristics and Constraints in Development Assistance Work in The Gambia. World Development, 27(7), 1273-1285. [7] Troina, M., Degradação noticiada, Cidade enteira. Available: http://www.cidadeinteira.blogspot.com/ [Accessed on 2003, 1 Decembre], (2009). [8] Hooft, S.V., Stichting braziliaanse straatkinderen Available: http://www.ibiss.info// [Accessed on 2009, 20 Mei] [9] Jucá, M, Viva Rio Available: http://www.vivario.org.br/ [Accessed on 2009, 25 Juni], (2009). [10] Minne,G., (2007). Cursus internationale samenwerking, Mechelen: Hogeschool Mechelen [11] Gardetti, M. A.., (2007). A Base-of-the-Pyramid Approach in Argentina: Preliminary Findings from a BOP Learning Lab, Greenleaf publishing, 65-77. [12] Heredia, B. M. et al., (2004). Viva Rio: Rio de Janeiro- Brazil, [PDF] International labour office Genva. Available: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/ses/download/docs/rio.pdf [Accessed on 2009, 20 juli]
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