@Tim

Reviewing a full of insights RG reference is recommended as a start point !

You may find a comprehensive picture on various aspects related to NGOs from RGers point of view.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_real_influence_of_NGOs_in_your_country_Are_they_really_politically_and_financially_independent

Hi Tim

This is a good question and comes back to what do you mean by 'sustainable'? Unfortunately sustainability is often used for financially independent of government support (ie their funding comes from sources other than government), however I would argue that there are other measures which may be more important, these include could the organisation continue if the paid staff left and you needed to employ new people, is the organisation supported by the community, is there a structure in place for good governance, etc. So to answer your question you would need to look at benchmarking the NGO against other similar NGOs both within and externally to the country, you should explore the system of governance and ability for the organisation to adapt if there is change, you will also need to look at funding, however a return on investment model is often a good way to explore this issue, explore what auditing and reporting measures are in place, etc depending on what the NGO was set up to do.

Sustainability can be loosely defined as not exceeding the thresholds. There two perspective to look sustainability of NGOs. One is from the farmers angle where the primary indicator is the net earnings or benefits accrued from the agricultural activities meaning that farmers would want to continue with the venture. Secondly is from the NGOs perspective which boils down to capacity to meet their day today obligations. Capacity covers financial, human resources, technical know how required to sustain their operations to meet their objectives

You can refer to the following resource http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/guidelines.pdf

I suggest you look at the agricultural livelihoods strategies of international NGOs with long presence in African countries: CRS, HKI, OXFAM.  They have approaches that can take communities from vulnerability through periods of self-help to resilience (sustainabilitiy) through market engagement for inputs and sale of outputs.  They have tools appropriate for each stage and good M&E.  If your communities become sustainable then the NGOs will be sustainable as well.

Of greatest importance to sustainability is demonstration of impact and value of an NGO's message over time. While there are many measures of sustainability, as have been noted in emails above, strength of message and impact would be high on my list. Once the key messages and impact are determined, then one may measure whether or not such interventions have proven the test of time. Without such measures and impact, merely looking at staffing or economic resources is a hollow exercise.

Hi Tim, Great question, i think it is really around how to measure any program or project contribution to a community (M&E). I have contact with this German M student who has an easily administered method to evaluate a landscape through community stakeholder engagement, of multiple programs. eg. each one net 'worth' and then the gross impact. She is looking for a study area now, over the next few weeks- to 2 months. Shout if you have any ideas or research requirements/requests, pop me an email- [email protected]  All the best!

I would like to add to Crystal's response. Since we are speaking of sustainability, some type of time horizon in such landscape measurements would seem important. Also, NGOs can be policy, research, stakeholder, or participatory oriented. I was not sure which direction those following this discussion are going, but all have their value.

Hello,

There are a lot of interesting answers and suggestions in the above comments. There is a major difference between the 'sustainability' of an NGO (or any other organization, private, public, NGO ...) and what the organization brings to the community, i.e. what its impacts are (and in relation to what they were intended to be). There is no simple answer as far as I can determine. One needs to be able to assess the sustainability of an NGO in relation to its objectives, and inevitably this means understanding its impacts on the community (farming community as well as other segments of the community), and the level of support (not just financial, but real community support) the NGO and its project(s) is(are) receiving. 

I think it's also useful to understand how the NGO's project was constructed, whether there was citizen input of any kind as well as support (moral and in terms of expertise ...) for the NGOs project. This means that PROCESS, including how communication is undertaken with the community, can be as important in affecting the success of a project as much as the coherency and structure of the project.

Chris Bryant

Hi,

I would just like to add that (1) the 'sustainability' of an organization such as an NGO and (2) its contribution to the sustainable development of the community/territory through the actions it supports, are not independent of each other.

Just a few comments on the organization itself. Obviously as an organization an NGO needs to have access to the necessary financial resources. But there is also the question of the human resources in the organization and how these human resources are implicated in projects in the community. This raises the question of 'leadership'. Leadership of an organization from a sustainable development perspective does not necessarily imply that leadership functions are concentrated into one person who is at the 'head' of the organization. One of the responsibilities of a leader (at the head of an organization) from the perspective of sustainable development is to encourage other people in the organization to take on responsibilities for managing certain activities of the organization and even to transfer leadership roles to other members in the community and especially those associated with different projects that the NGO may have had an important role in instigating. 

The requires some capacities of a leader from a sustainable development perspective that are not the same as the characteristics of more traditional leaders. This relatively new type of leader must be prepared to recognize the capacities of other people and not to try and control. One of the sayings I have used frequently in working with community organizations over the last 30 years is that "If you want to control development, you must learn to lose control" ... the idea being that this more flexible approach is more likely to give rise to innovation in terms of strategies (and the 'innovation' may simply be to draw more effectively upon traditional knowledge and local knowledge).

A leader in an organization also needs to be able to let go and not see his or her position as a sinecure. It can be a major challenge, but we have seen so many NGOs collapse simply because inadequate efforts were made to ensure that new blood was brought into the organization. Indeed, it is not uncommon to suggest to a 'nre leader' that one of his or her obligations s to ensure that by the time his or her mandate ends (e.g. in 3 years time) several other people will have been  'trained' to take over or she various responsibilities. 

Chris Bryant

Thank you for you all for your valuable point of views.

You can measure agricultural NGO sustainability by some  questions about:  Number of members, capital, years of activities, variety of activities, the rate of government support , etc and making a combined index by weighting to variables.

Assessing the environmental sustainability of local agricultural systems: How and why

This paper focuses on the quantitative assessment, on a local scale, of the environmental sustainability of agricultural activities. To compare the supply and demand of natural resources in a local agricultural system, a methodology based on the ecological footprint approach was adopted...

The viability of this methodology was tested in the agricultural area of Viterbo municipality (central Italy). The results of this study provide interesting points of departure for further research regarding the possibility of defining an agricultural production system as “sustainable” and of introducing a regional sustainability brand as a key for local development...

Article Assessing the environmental sustainability of local agricult...

Gordon Conway (1938–2023) was passionate about agriculture and sustainability long before they were fashionable topics...

Gordon Conway was an inspirational interdisciplinary scientist who was passionate about agriculture and sustainability long before they were fashionable topics. Throughout his career, he worked to achieve sustainable agricultural development, improve food security and reduce poverty worldwide. He was one of the designers of the sustainable livelihoods approach — a framework for development that paid close attention to local farming practices by listening to and learning from farmers. This approach has since been embraced by many development organizations...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03321-x

Hello timothy and Ljubomir, I read with interests your questions and results. They bring up a key point seen, but not really highlighted. That being, does sustainability, and hence its measure, be limited to the localized setting in which the experiment is being conducted? Can we say that sustainability is equivalent in South Africa as in a part of Italy? In the international settings, we use that word casually, without indicators. Is this because we are left with a gap of interpretation when it comes to the phrase, "leaving all intact for the coming generations?" I say, let's start with well-defined, proven (that is over multiple years and multienvironment testing), indicators of sustainability, and then consider which can become global.