Aligned with USAID’s Localization initiative, Connexus’ team worked on USAID/Cambodia’s Capacity Building of Cambodia’s Local Organizations (CBCLO) program in partnership with VEGA/IESC. We used our Impact Strengthening for Development (ISD®) Toolkit to assess and strengthen multiple local organizations to ensure they were ready to manage direct funding from USAID.
The ISD® Toolkit systematically addressed development and commercial challenges by vetting and building organizational capacity to manage USAID funds effectively and compliantly. ISD® mitigates risk and strengthens capacity, focusing on internal controls as well as capacity action planning. We worked with local partners to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and priorities, and then collaboratively develop a transparent roadmap to scale their management capacity, strengthen their sustainability, and improve their performance. In the assessments, we observed that local firms often have gaps in financial management and lack human resources policies and procedures as well as procurement processes needed to be USAID compliant.
The ISD® assessment aligns with USAID’s Non-U.S. Organization Pre-Award Survey (NUPAS) and Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA) Tool, but goes broader and deeper by covering 10 pillars related to management processes and service delivery. By identifying the current realities, ISD® starts wherever the local organization is along the capacity continuum and guides management through a collaborative process toward sustainable improvement and readiness to be a USAID prime contractor.
Connexus’ overall approach and the ISD® toolkit are reflective of USAID’s commitment to collaboration, learning, and adapting (CLA) in the context of capacity strengthening, as progress is regularly tracked, lessons extracted, and adjustments made in response to evolving situations and data. We have observed that local organizations, when receiving substantial funding, must swiftly scale up, causing their internal control processes and procedures to lag. We worked with local organizations to position themselves for success by conducting the ISD® assessment and then implementing a co-created Capacity Development Plan (CDP) to prepare them to manage USAID funding and maximize input