Develop a Real Non Profit Project. Learn more about program fees and how to enroll here:

6 weeks. Courses are offered every two months. Current dates are in the column to the right.
To enroll, simply go to the bottom of this page.

Prerequisite for this course:
OL 203
Why are there prerequisites?

Design and Fund a Non Profit Project 4: Sustainable Implementation. How do you launch and implement a community based project? The importance of community engagement and project co-management. Developing skill sets for your community to use in the project. Learning tools: monitoring & evaluation. Community empowerment during project hand-over. Sustainability, follow-up & mentoring.

To learn about course fees and to register please go to the bottom of this page.

Designing & Funding Nonprofit Programs 4: Sustainable Implementation
This pair of courses, OL 203 and 204, are a continuation of OL 201 and 202 where course participants worked on-the-ground with communities to develop real projects.

In the last course, OL 203, we assessed community vulnerabilities and investigated what potential solutions showed evidence for solving these challenges.

We worked with our communities to incorporate these solutions into our projects. And then we set up a leadership committee within the community to be our partner and to participate in project management after we’ve gone.

These projects are for the long-term. So we need to plan our project management to take that into consideration and to make sure that the community is fully engaged in the process. We also need to make sure that we sucessfully deliver a set of skills to the community so that they will be able to implement the project activities along side us.

One of the most important things that we need to be doing is to be monitoring the outputs and outcomes of the project for two reasons. One is as a short-term learning mechanism in case we need to adjust the project in-process. And two, since we did a baseline survey, we have the opportunity of deciding if we want to design a long-term impact analysis.

As we begin wrapping up our portion of the project implementation, we need to make sure that we properly orchestrate the project handover to the community. We need to begin this process of community ownership at the very beginning. But there will come a point when we officially hand them the baton when our grant cycle ends.

But we can’t simply desert them, they need to understand that we’re still available — even from a distance.

Course Syllabus OL 204

	Week 1: Project Management – the community perspective. Managing a project whose outcomes are projected in terms of decades needs to be carefully planned. If we play too large a role in the project process, it will make it more difficult for the community to take over when we leave.
	Week 2: Engaging the community in project launch. If we’ve planned the project properly the community will think that this is their project and that we’re just there to provide the service they requested. We need to maintain that relationship in order to ensure that the community is fully engaged in the process.
	Week 3: Skill Sets. Design a family of workshops on the solutions your community will use in the project.  The solution activities we select need to be able to be implemented by a broad range of people types.  These workshops will provide the community with all the information that they need to continue these activities for decades.
	Week 4: Project Launch. Lead the participatory workshop and introduce the community based  skills designed to address the community expressed needs. Continue to  encourage community feedback to develop lessons learned and to continue building community ownership of the process.
	Week 5. Learning tools: Monitoring and evaluation. In the last course we conducted a baseline survey. We now need to do two things: determine what information we’re looking for in order to evaluate short-term outputs and long-term impact, and manage the process of collecting this information.
	Week 6. Community Empowerment: Project hand-over. Our 3 years is up, our budget spent & it’s time to leave. Have we empowered the community to participate in outcome continuation at this point?  Have we worked with them to identify milestones that will allow them to stay on track? Can we provide follow-up without taking the project back? Have we introduced supporting partners where they can seek future technical support?

The Course also Provides the Following Resources

Documents on course topics by contemporary experts.
Books, posters and manuals available online for download.
Internet development links organized by sector.
Class forum for posting questions to your classmates.
There are no books to buy—all course materials can be linked to, or downloaded from the course site.

Course Fees
The 6-week course is $150.00.

Enroll by clicking on “Enroll Now” at the bottom of the page.

We will send you a confirmation letter upon receipt of payment and your Login username and password, and instructions for starting the course on the Monday before the course starts. We look forward to meeting you online.

The online course will be led by Tim Magee, CSD’s Executive Director, who has over 30 years experience in both working with nonprofits and leading training workshops. Mr. Magee is the author of A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation published by Routledge/Earthscan.

If you have a question don’t hesitate to contact us at: Online.Learning@csd-i.org .

Space is limited.