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10 March, 2010

The King III report on Governance Principles for South Africa unintentionally overlooks the distinctive values on which the South African non-profit sector is based. It is not true that the King III report covers for profit and non-profit entities regardless of their founding constitutions. The non-profit sector should explore the development of a Good Governance Code or Charter that speaks to the specific governance and risk management needs of NPOs. Integrated reports, audit committees, corporate citizenship policies and business rescue proceedings will be meaningless to community-based organisations (CBOs) since they do not have the resources or the technical-know-how to distinguish which of the King III principles apply to them

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The State of ICTs in the South African NGO Sector 2009 survey was conducted in 2009 by World Wide Worx, on behalf of the Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT). Decision-makers at 800 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) spread across the country and representing organisations of all sizes and interest groups were interviewed.

Things are looking up but we can expect some bumps ahead writes Ann Bown in her annual NPO forecast.  The first signs of economic green shoots are showing - a growth of 2.4 percent for this year is predicted by AfriFocus. Although this is encouraging it will take some time before companies are able to replenish corporate social investment (CSI) budgets, so don’t get too excited

The relevance of social media for South African NGOs was the focus of the 5th Annual SANGONeT “ICTs for Civil Society” Conference. Held for the first time in two parts - from 15-16 October in Johannesburg and 20-21 October 2009 in Cape Town - the conference attracted more than 250 participants.

In the final article in the series on organisational development (OD), Stuart Allen shares the practicalities of implementing an organisational development process. Allen offers a number of reasons why OD processes fail including loss of interest by the leadership team because of other ‘crises’, losing perspective of interventions versus programmes, poorly managed consultants, and leaders who hijack the process

Diagnosis was described as key to addressing organisational effectiveness in the first two articles of this series. This week Stuart Allen explains that by executing a number of interventions over several years further improvement and strengthening of the organisation will come about. Considerations that should be made in the intervention process would include: a programme, time frame; and levels, management and choice of the intervention

In the second part of the series focusing on organisational development (OD), Stuart Allen turns his attention to the OD diagnostic process. He writes that diagnosing the problem properly is key to being able to address and improve organisational effectiveness. The diagnostic process must follow a logical sequence: identify the problem, explore probable causes, and then find solutions

Organisational development is the systematic practice of improving an organisation’s effectiveness in an orderly and thoughtful manner. This should make sense to committed and experienced leaders who know that it usually takes persistence and long-term effort to achieve anything of real value. Leaving it entirely up to human resources consultants is a mistake, rather NGO leaders need to be involved, and understand the principles of this important practice

The global financial crisis makes it essential that we focus on the need for donors to meet their targets; ensure that available resources are optimised, that the priorities for expenditure are right; and that we look at ways of saving money and at neglected sources of financing. As is the practice in many African cultures, if your fire burns out, you fetch some from the neighbours

High staff turnover due to a lack of adequate subsidisation by Government, plagues many South African NGOs, which struggle to provide the necessary services to communities in need. In the Eastern Cape subsidies used to pay social workers have not been increased in two years, while social auxiliary workers are subsidised on the Department of Social Development’s 2002 scales

I want to express my frustration at the fact that the people at Lotto are allowed to be so chaotic and unprofessional. We are willing to undergo rigorous selection, and to deal with being rejected with good reason. What I am not willing to do, is to sit by and tolerate the incompetent antics of a group of people who are short changing the NPO sector

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