Who We Are

At AIDInc our mission is to reduce poverty and mitigate the impacts of social and health problems on our communities through innovative capacity building and public-private sector programming approaches. The organisation, after 10 years in operation, began to scale-down its operations towards the end of 2014 to reposition its business model and strategic approach, in response to a fast evolving international development landscape and market demands. Our decision to reposition was also fueled by the impending transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) towards the launch of the bold and transformative 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the newly emerging SDGs.

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AIDInc has since re-emerged in 2021,  with a new approach to making impact in its social empowerment, policy and programme development approaches. 

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The restructured AIDInc model is based on the proven belief that approaches to country technical assistance within international development initiatives must be underpinned with bottom-up development of leadership and technical capacity within grassroots organisations and beyond. This leadership approach will enable greater grassroots innovation and their more meaningful involvement in development projects and ownership of the outcomes over the longer term. We hear this leadership capacity-building promise all the time from international NGOs doing good and reportedly building sustainable approaches and sustained impacts in developing regions. However, the business models of iNGOs and international research institutions are not structured to support the innovative and cost-effective building of sustained capacity and skills,  as these leadership outcomes cannibalise their own offerings and reduce their revenue flows from their leadership participation in developing country projects .

 

A small handful of  iNGOs are changing their business models in response to this glaring development gap, to be better able to deliver sustained benefits to local civil society .  AIDInc's  aim  to examine and  showcase these iNGOs and work with them in in-country capacities  to achieve joint  goals of  increasing grassroots sustainability and  building strong public-private  networks that support the grassroots  

 

After many iNGO-led medium and long-term donor-funded initiatives come to an end, capacity built is not usually sustained at the local organizational level, exacerbated by lack of access to onward funding. As a result, local grassroots development organisations cannot survive and thrive. Another reason for the lack of sustainability of institutional strengthening within these organisations is the significant over-balance in management and technical inputs from international NGO counterparts to developing country projects,  compared with local grassroots organisations. Sadly, these local organisations receive funding only for expenses on direct inputs, while overheads are usually unpaid or underpaid. Local direct project staff often work significantly longer hours than contracted, in order to deliver the promised outputs, and absorb more fixed staffing overheads than is supported by the available and disbursed project funds. As a result, these cash-strapped organisations find that they are more responsive to the needs of the underfunded short/medium term project being delivered,  than to planning and meeting long -term needs of their vulnerable and affected communities and their organisations'  mission and goals.

 

The comparative advantage of such grassroots organisations over iNGOS and larger regional institutions is that they are most familiar with the needs of their communities and have access to sensitive primary data, which is often understated. In addition, such organisations have the potential to contribute cost-effectively and more integrally to designing, adapting, and delivering on culturally appropriate technical inputs and response models. As mentioned previously, their ability to maximise and expand on this advantage and potential is hindered due to their struggle with maintaining consistent revenue streams to retain in-house skills built, technical know-how and valuable local, regional, and international partnerships. So that by the time the next donor-funded initiative comes around,  their management and built-in technical capacities and knowledge are deemed insufficient to enable them to participate meaningfully and attain adequate direct funds in line with increased participation over time. 

 

This is why we have restructured: To tangibly build sustainability in all donor-funded grassroots projects and ensure that local NGOs and social enterprises meaningfully engage with the entire continuum of development responses and receive fair compensation and awards reflective of the value of their direct and indirect inputs.

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Inclusive,  meaningful, and sustained development action  at the grassroots 

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 AIDInc's restructured approach emerging in 2021 envisages a more resilient civil society, working side-by-side as equals and as leaders with international development NGOs.  As a result, as organisational technical and management experiences increase over time, they become less dependent on external management and technical skills required to deliver the proposal and grant-funded initiatives.   

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Our approach tackles the outdated and misguided overhead myth and develops new ethical and inclusive models and actions to ensure that the caps set on overheads for civil society organisations are no longer obstacles to achieving organizational missions.   Many donors and funders evaluate nonprofits' effectiveness by their ratio of overhead costs compared with direct costs required to meet project and organizations' goals and mission of their projects and their overall organisation. This inequitable practice promotes a virtual cycle that leads to inequities in funding and inclusiveness of local NGOs and Social Enterprises. 

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Our Transformational Leadership model is based on our belief and experience that transformational leaders serve and follow their team when needed to build leadership capacity from within. Our approach supports local organizations - NGOs and social enterprises -  by taking a hands-on and hands-off, back-office technical support approach that includes M&E, research, proposal and grant development, as well as mentoring in partnerships and network strengthening,  strategy improvements, leadership and management.  

 

Our approach recognises that the fastest, most sustainable route to increasing socioeconomic impacts that are felt at all levels of the economic pyramid, downstream to the grassroots and the hardest to reach communities,  are attained through increased access to essential goods and services, job creation, entrepreneurial skills building, and an underpinning  strengthening of the third and fourth sectors (civil society and social enterprises).  Coupled with tailored social and psychosocial empowerment initiatives,  we believe that these are the key factors required to catalyse and promote sustained livelihoods for communities and households to thrive from generation to generation.  

 

Our value proposition lies in the fact that we are a boutique research and consulting organisation and establish long-term partnerships with individual experts, small and mid-sized businesses, academia and NGOs that are lean and efficient in their operations. Together, with the right strategic partnerships, balancing regional and international expertise, we position ourselves to make value-added and sustainable impacts, seamlessly embedding social, participatory, learning and partnership-building approaches that ensure that once an intervention or project is completed, the knowledge, attitudes, structures and commitment to the goals remain behind, and ongoing actions are operational through well-informed networks and realistically achievable strategic partnerships. 

 

Why we are better As a result of our low overheads costs we are flexible enough to adequately tailor and adapt our approaches and inputs and  respond to evolving and newly revealed needs of demand-driven or high-risk projects by bringing the best minds and experts to the table at all strategic and pivotal  points in the process. We believe that together, this makes us stronger and better positioned to deliver exactly what our clients need ...plus more: We ensure that clients, through our ecosystems and expanded networks, can call on our experts through low-cost, long-term arrangements, for inputs or advice beyond our project phases. 

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