What We Offer
Mission
MainSpring’s mission is to strengthen organizations, institutions and individuals in an evolving development environment. Applying equality principles across multiple sectors, the company helps clients achieve their commitments to women’s empowerment, youth engagement and locally owned processes. Learn More
Who We Are
MainSpring is a women-owned small business providing high impact/low cost solutions for grassroots civil society organizations. MainSpring’s multi-cultural, multi-faceted and diverse experts advise emerging and developing organizations around the world. Learn MoreWhat We Do
MainSpring offers advisory services and easily accessible tools and resources to address clients’ development needs. The company helps organizations structure their operations effectively, resource themselves sufficiently, and focus on accomplishing their missions. Learn More
CSO Trending
Accepting the Challenge
I recently came across an article about USAID’s “Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) Challenge”. The challenge asks us to consider intentional and systematic practices to achieve our organization’s objectives using this CLA principle. Although this may seem like a straight forward concept it is easier said than done in the development world. In our experience, most organizations are driven by funding streams. They go from project to project scrambling between trying to achieve their missions within the confinements of donors’ priorities. For this reason, many organizations become short-sighted as they react and serve individual programs rather than integrating programs into the organization’s broader and longer-term strategy. This is one way in which organizations and their work become unsustainable over time. Unfortunately, development funding is structured in the same way military leaders described the war in Afghanistan “a one-year long war fought 16 times” instead of a war that has been fought over 16 years. This is because new military personnel get deployed every year after soldiers complete their one-year tour much like development programs end and others begin with new implementers sometimes recreating the wheel or even undermining previous efforts by not building upon already existing successes or connections with local partners. Therefore, as we try to “collaborate, learn and adapt” to fulfill our goals let’s not lose sight of our visions and the importance of building long-term relationships to become true drivers of change.
“Mainspring International has been a godsend for us. As a new non-profit organization, we have been greatly in need of guidance on how to navigate the grant-making world and Mainspring has generously given us wise steer in exploring opportunities and fine-tuning our strategies and approach.”
-Namaala Liebenthal, Kuvina Leadership Initiative, Zambia
“We came to Mainspring with a strong passion to combat illiteracy and bits and pieces of everything else; you helped us to clarify our vision and focus, and provided full scale support in every aspect of promoting our mission sustainably. Thanks for helping us fill in the blanks and connect the dots—from strategic planning to fundraising and implementation support. Mainspring is everything!”
-Bindu Jallabah, Karanso Africa
MainSpring is proud to partner with UNICEF, International IDEA and CSO partners across the globe. For more information on partnership opportunities, please contact us below.