The Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association (KWCA) and Maliasili, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) with support from the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG) held a dialogue on Strengthening Partnerships within Kenya’s Wildlife Conservancies Movement, hosted by the African Wildlife Foundation in Nairobi on July 4, 2018. It explored partnerships between local actors and national as well as international partners.
Read MoreIn May 2018, the second cohort began the programme at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, where seventeen leaders from nine African organisations working in Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia and Zambia. Facilitated by the Maliasili team, the first week laid the foundations for personal learning and leadership - delving deeply into self-awareness and the impact of personality on leadership style.
Read MoreRecently I listened to a conservationist tell the story of how he had founded a very successful conservation organization, only to be eventually fired by the board he had himself built up over the years. What had occurred was that his organization had established a strong track record of achievement and impact, and resulting growth in its funding, staff, and board.
Read MoreHuman resources (HR) plays a critical role in shaping organizational culture. African CSOs face a complex internal challenge: how to balance the passion and commitment of individuals with an entire organization whose achievements are greater than the sum of its parts.
Read MoreWhat’s needed to achieve conservation impact? In April, Maliasili brought together a unique group of leading African conservation organizations and funders to start talking about just that. Below provides the key recommendations coming out of the participants’ discussions at the Conservation Impact Forum (download the entire conference summary here).
Read MoreOrganizations need money to run, which is why fundraising is one of the foremost challenges and priorities they face. While there isn’t a simple solution to fundraising – unfortunately, it’s always going to be a challenging part of the job – there are ways to approach it to be more effective, efficient, and successful.
Read MoreHere we lay out a simple set of five questions that provide the backbone of any strategy or strategic plan. If an organization can answer these five questions clearly, it has a sound underlying strategy, even if it is not written down anywhere.
Read MoreCommunications units aren’t innocent in the information deficit dilemma. In fact, communications should play a major role in helping to shape, design, and evaluate an organization’s M&E system. This doesn’t often happen as the two are often considered distinct and separate functions of an organization.
Read MoreAs we frequently find ourselves emphasizing at Maliasili Initiatives throughout all our work with our partners, the single most important question any organization needs to answer is: What do we want to achieve? The key to answering this question, and in building the systems and plans to help an organization achieve its core purpose and mission, lies in setting good goals.
Read MoreFew places have a more urgent need for vital and dynamic leadership on conservation issues than Africa. Across the continent societies and communities are undergoing a range of changes where locally rooted leadership is critical to solving a host of growing challenges.
Read MoreOrganizations are both complex and simple. They are complex in that they are made up of different people, working together to solve difficult social problems that often operate at multiple scales and over long time horizons. Successful organizations tend to grow, which adds to the scope of work, level of resources, number of relationships that must be managed and so forth. Thus growth and success only increase an organization’s level of complexity.
Read MoreTo be heard, you need to listen, learn, and think like the person you’re trying to reach. Five tips to help you get through and make the most of your communciations.
Read MoreMaking hard choices may be the most important factor in organizational performance. The core and chronic challenge for most mission-driven organizations is attempting to address a vast and often multiplying array of problems with limited human and financial resources.
Read MoreThe Board of Directors sets the tone and direction of an organization, thus effective board leadership and governance is critical in helping to ensure that a civil society organization can operate to its fullest capacity. Creating an effective board is a continual process that includes recruitment, engagement and development, as well as striking a balance between providing oversight and support to the organization’s leadership.
Read MoreBy Elizabeth Singleton, Maliasili Initiatives Board Member. Elizabeth recently carried out two weeks of workshops with some of Maliasili’s partners, focusing on annual budgeting, financial management, and board governance.
Read MoreCollaboration, innovation, benefits, and urgency were key themes that emerged at the launch of a new USAID-funded project known as “Endangered Ecosystems of Northern Tanzania” (EENT). The launch took place Monday at the Tarangire Safari Lodge in northern Tanzania, but the initiative itself, known as the Northern Tanzania Rangelands Initiative (NTRI), has been in the works for years.
Read MoreCivil society organizations are under assault around the world. As recently described in The Guardian and by networks such as CIVICUS, the past several years have witnessed a surge in government efforts to restrict local organizations’ ability to operate or access external funds. At the same time, development aid often exacerbates constraints placed on civil society organizations by favoring short-term, restricted funding, curtailing investment in salaries and overheads, and imposing onerous reporting requirements.
Read MoreWe find that outstanding organizations, focused on results and achieving large-scale impact, also tend to be hedgehogs. A focus on solving a particular problem, and refining a specific methodology that produces consistent results, is in line with the ‘hedgehog concept.’ This kind of focus characterizes an organization like Lion Guardians, with its rigorous approach to resolving conflicts between people and lions, or Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative, which its replicable methods for community forest management.
Read MoreFrom fundraising to advocacy, communications has the potential to enhance the growth and performance of an organization (this recent article explains how). Yet, communications is a chronically underinvested area within an organization, especially with small to medium sized organizations working in the natural resource sector in Africa. Therefore, it’s not surprising that many of the organizations Maliasili Initiatives’ works with identify communications as one of their weakest areas and one where they see our support as having the potential to lead to significant change for them as an organization.
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