Over the past four years, Geneva Global has been helping one of our clients invest in the development of China’s nascent social sector through partnerships with some of the country’s most pioneering local nonprofit organizations.
The China Social Sector Pioneers Initiative (CSSP) encourages a stronger nonprofit sector by:
- Strengthening leading NGOs by building their capacity, improving their operating practices, and expanding their scope of work
- Supporting communities of practice and peer-learning networks
- Building capacity among start-up organizations and providing skills-development to emerging leaders
- Sponsoring sector research and disseminating findings
Our management of philanthropic giving to grassroots organizations throughout China gives us a rare vantage point from which to observe how trends in NGO funding sources and related priorities are shaping the sector’s focus and direction.
These insights support our ongoing work of refining the CSSP Initiative based on what we see are the key leverage points where small shifts among top performing organizations can produce remarkable changes across the sector.
To shed more light and offer a range of perspectives, we are partnering with Dr. Andreas Fulda of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham on a project to uncover emerging development trends in civil society engagement in China.
Dr. Fulda interviewed 18 leading funding and implementing organizations, asking questions related to funding modalities, partnership models, perceptions of China’s civil society, philosophy of change, outreach on the national and local levels, and impact and sustainability.
Interview participants include leaders from top domestic funders, including One Foundation, Narada Foundation, and China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, as well as international players, such as Save the Children and Oxfam.
Fifteen of these full-text interviews have been published on China Development Brief, a leading resource site for civil society in China.
We hope that publishing these important perspectives will increase transparency and accountability and encourage more collaboration among sector stakeholders, all with the goal of enabling quality nonprofits in China to succeed in the important work they are doing.
