Some of our work on civil society support
Commit Global has been developing and maintaining solutions dedicated to the internal health of any CSO. Our growing ecosystem of civic infrastructure meant to ease the lives of every organisations currently has:
CSO Hub
Not all CSOs have enough specialized and diverse technical, material or human resources that they need to be able to carry out their activity in good conditions. And the NGO sector needs specific, simplified and centralized solutions. CSO Hub will be the platform where the non-profit sector will be able to access from one place all the infrastructure of digital solutions in the ecosystem.
Built as a single-sign-on system, CSO Hub allows organizations free access to a centralizer that helps them identify and use the solutions provided pro-bono by Commit Global. The system is a simple dashboard from which a CSO can either access both simple platforms or request support for customized systems such as Website Factory or the database manager and so on. Also, here, the organization will be able to maintain a unique updated profile, based on which he will have access to all the services. The data stored by CSO Hub about the sector, anonymized and aggregated, will be open to the general public.
Website builder
Most CSOs don’t have a simple and easy to use solution for people without technical skills or a solution adapted to their specific needs. Website Factory allows any NGO to easily build a website that provides the main types of content that organizations need, solutions for reporting, fundraising and communication with target audiences, etc. Website Factory is a unique solution, developed as a unit, which can be reused by any organization. Thus, each association will have the opportunity to build a website containing essential and relevant information for good communication with donors and the general public. Made of simple, accessible modules that facilitate the publication of information, code of conduct, official documents, with annual report templates and integrated with online donation collection modules, this solution supports pro-bono the entire sector and help CSOs communicate more effectively, increasing their fundraising capacity.
Database manager
Depending on its specificity, each organization works with multiple tools and databases that do not communicate with each other, making it difficult for those who operate with this data to extract useful information and be able to have more clarity in the management of target audiences, donors and all other stakeholders.
The need for fast access to information, ease of navigation through many locations where information about one single person or item can be found as well as many other export, graph generation features should be at the fingertips of every non-profit organisation. This tool is a CSO assistant, specialized in working with databases, and as an open-source tool easy to use and adaptable to the needs of each organization.
Budget manager
Due to the lack of specialized services, many CSOs' budget management and planning can be a time-consuming issue. The budget manager solution we maintain is the open-source assistant who helps civil society better manage its financial resources. Each organisation will be able to keep separate accounts for each sponsorship contract and have the opportunity to easily report expenses.
The tool is structured to keep track of the different models of grants and sponsorships that organizations receive and integrate the standard models of account statements. While helping the organizations keep a clear record of all financial transactions and funds, the platform also allows for storage of scanned documents. Another very important feature is the possibility to set up notifications that allow you to be alerted when you are running out of funding for any of your expense categories in order to better manage your sustainability strategy.
Volunteer manager
In their everyday life, NGOs work closely with many volunteers with diverse abilities and skills. Volunteers are an essential component in the life of civil society, but only their management can be a time-consuming and valuable resource. Teo is the open-source assistant who helps civil society better manage its volunteer communities, volunteer contracts and the databases that contain them. Built as a two-component system - one web and one mobile, Teo helps organizations keep in touch with volunteers, keep track of them and the hours they work pro-bono, and the volunteer contracts they manage.
Moreover, the solution allows also for synchronized notifications, record keeping on activity and data collection on the ground. This building block may be integrated with emergency intervention solutions in order to facilitate the deployment of volunteer support on the ground where their help is needed.
The Civic Centre
The Civic Centre is a platform built on the backbone of CSO Hub. Gathering data about all CSOs and the services they provide also calls for the necessity to open up information to larger audiences to better understand the immense dimension of their work. Every citizen in a specific geographt should have access to relevant information about all services provided by the CSO sector in his area, to be able to easily access that specific service and to also review the experience they had while interacting with it. On a larger scale, the platform should showcase and bring to light the huge number of programs and projects directly helping beneficiaries and complementing the public sector, which, unfortunately in many cases rarely manages to support its most vulnerable communities.
CSO Vote
CSO Vote is a platform that allows CSOs to elect their representatives. It is quite often the case that civil society in itself needs to design its own internal mechanisms to make sure they, as a group, are properly represented either in relation to the state authorities they are working with or even within their own coalitions and federations. More often than not, due to the nature of CSO work, there is always little time, resources available or capacity to organize such debates, elections or to set up a democratic process inside the sector. CSO Vote is a system that reduces the geographical barriers and allows for CSOs to jump online, organize elections, allow candidates to create profiles and to support their mandates. Built having flexibility and accesibility in mind, this tool can increase both participation, collaboration and fair representations for all civil society organisations.
Practice for Good
Bringing highly skilled human resources in the CSO space is not an easy job. In most countries the sector is underfunded and it is very hard for organisations to stay competitive with the private one. But aside from that, there is very little cooperation between the academic sector and civil society, in order to start engaging future professionals who might opt for a career in the non-profit area. Practice for Good is a solution that aims to bridge this gap by helping CSO publish their needs for students who may want to practice their skills inside a non-govenmental entity. Be they future accountants, human resource specialists or hold skills in communication and sales, younger generations can discover career opportunities while also contributing to a better society.
CSO knowledge Center
Sometimes it is very hard for people to even get the necessary knowledge to start a non-profit initiative. In most countries people who want to put together a CSO having all the information they need means spending resources on consultants, on research, on legal inquiries and much more. Most of the best initiatives are built by people who have had a hard time trying to solve an issue for themselves and later on they wanted to do better for others as well. And while they may be great at what they do, the administrative and operational side of building a CSo may be very discouraging and gets them to give up. The CSO knowledge center is built as an online learning point and will be able to offer written materials, videos, document templates, predefined templates and many other useful resources for young organisations.
Donors Platform
Donors Platform turns data on financing from the non-governmental sector into information. Having access to this type of data, and sharing it contributes to better strategic investment in programs that work and also shows which areas are most underfunded in order to better support the development of functional and sustainable funding strategies. The platform allows for collecting, processing and graphical visualization of data on funds for non-governmental organizations in all areas of interest. Donors in the non-profit sector benefit from such clarity, with the Donor Platform being a key information point on the allocation of financial support in specific areas of intervention, the identification of new funding opportunities in areas not yet explored, as well as co-financing and the discovery of new non-governmental actors and their projects.
Income tax collector
In several countries around the world CSOs benefit from various types of funding that are represented by tax deductions that people can choose to redirect towards a civil society organisation. This building block is a platform that allows for CSO profile building, bank transfer data setup and transfer options as well as a dedicated form generator that CSOs may use to collect this type of funding. This building block is flexible, allowing for specific forms to be created and exported, advanced search for individuals who want to research and choose the CSO they want to support and bulk downloads of filled in forms for the organisation. By using this tool we ensure a rapid deployment of such systems in countries where this fiscal facility is available in order to support all CSOs to collect financial support.
Funding call
Sometimes you just miss the deadline as a CSO and that is because funding opportunities are scattered all over the place. It is often the case that many grant calls are not found by organisations whose programmes and projects fit perfectly because there is little centralized information about them both on a national and international level. At the same time, funders spend a lot of money on building custom grant-making platforms that are used, at best, once or twice a year. Funding call is a grant making platform that allows every donor to configure their funding calls through the platform, starting from custom form building, application management, evaluation management and publishing results. For CSOs the due diligence process is easier as they build their unique profile, either through CSO Hub or directly in the platform and they can find all open calls in a single website. Even the calls not organized through the Funding Call mechanics can be published in order to have all date in a unique place to ease the research process for CSOs.
Civic Tech 911
Civic Tech 911 is an integrated regional capacity to relieve the pressure from the shoulders of CSOs and grow their impact through digital capacity building. With the exception of a few international non-governmental organizations, regular CSOs cannot afford dedicated digital expertise focused on capacity building and internal optimization of operations. This has not only resulted in the social sector lagging way behind the commercial and the governmental ones, but it has created some deep vulnerabilities and blockages in their activity.
Most CSOs do not even have the capacity to cover basic digital needs, such as building and maintaining their websites, crowdfunding online, securely managing their databases and communicating in real time with their volunteers. More complex matters such as assessing their digital needs or efficiently using technology to pursue their mission and multiply their impact are completely inaccessible to the social good sector. The high wages in the technology field make this type of human resource virtually unavailable given the little core funding granted to CSOs. Even more saddening, organizations are unable to access or efficiently use free digital resources made available to them through Techsoup or similar initiatives as they lack the capacity to identify, request and implement the tools themselves.
Civic Tech 911 solves this problem by creating a body of digital experts and making them available to the non-profit sector as a shared resource, administered and trained to understand the dynamics of civil society space and provide assistance specifically to this type of organizations.
Support this initiative
If you want to support the maintenance and further development of the Civic Infrastructure for civil society organisations or if you want to discuss a potential partnership with Commit Global please get in touch with our core team at info@commitglobal.org. Our team will get in touch as soon as possible.