Tapping The Local Resources

Civil society organizations (CSOs) mainly rely on foreign grants from the northern NGOs or from bilateral donors. This dependence increased in the last decade due to increase in the grant money offered by International donors. However, in the long run it is likely that foreign funding will not be available to local organizations or there will be a substantial decrease in it creating more competition amongst CSOs for scarce foreign funds. The realization of this precarious situation is gradually increasing among local NGOs, but not many of them have managed to find alternate sources of funding. The reasons are a lack of awareness about the amount of local resources available and a lack of methods/tools to mobilize them.

The need for a book dealing in detail with the resource mobilization methodologies was being felt for a long time. The present book is an attempt to provide comprehensive guidelines regarding techniques/methodologies for mobilizing the local resources to CSOs that aspire to sustain themselves and their projects in the long run in the country.

The main issue this book brings out is how CSOs in Pakistan can become sustainable without funding from abroad. The issue of sustainability is crucial not only to the CSOs working in Pakistan but organizations in other countries of the south. Many southern countries have established formal programs to promote the concept of local resource mobilization. In Pakistan too there is a growing need of establishing such programs without which long term sustainability will remain a remote possibility. The present book tries to find answers to many questions relevant in this regard.