The HORRIZON TA- A Unique Opportunity to Collaborate/Partner
Management and organisational development are moving from being inward facing to objective-project driven and oriented philosophy. Globally, projects (which involve the changing of organizations) are increasingly driving both short-term performance and long-term value creation through more-frequent organizational transformations, faster development of new products, quicker adoption of new technologies, and so on. In tandem with this, Horrizon-TA co-creates project centred solutions with clients through goal clarity, prioritizing strategic projects and adopting a project-driven structure. The solutions oriented approach builds a collaborative and empowering culture that reaches across silos. It also ensures that project management competencies are developed throughout the organization. This creates a clearer, simpler, and more comprehensive approach to project management through TA.
Horrizon-TA services leverage and catalyse proven, effective and affordable innovations and initiatives that are low risk and high reward. A see-saw balance between adaptation of new technologies and tools to project specific objectives and structures and the reengineering of existing systems and processes will help create exciting lean project management opportunities. Commitment to client value creation will be realised through sharing leadership, networks and strategic ideas on how the projects and partners can meet socio-economic development needs.
The Horrizon-TA is structured to help bridge the transition gap (structural and capacity) for private and public sector players including governments (national and devolved), local and international NGOs in the new normal. The Technical Assistance (TA) focusses on two levers of change: Custom Business Services and Programmatic Design, Implementation and Measurement. Horrizon-TA solutions leverage a Theory of Change (ToC) tool kit aimed at catalysing and accelerating development of policies, tools and techniques that help organisations define, plan and implement projects that meet development goals. The ToC based tool kit has effectively inspired flexible and agile organisations that are highly adaptive and responsive to the 21st century disruptive business environment. The Horrizon-TA project approach is built on innovation, building high performing teams and delivery of visible and tangible benefits and delivers value through three main levers; Custom Business Services.
Lever One: Custom Business Services
Many small to medium organisations lack sufficient resources to invest in the people, process and systems they require to accelerate growth; ensure programme effectiveness and organisational sustainability. Even when they have sufficient resources to do so, they would rather invest in developing core competencies and capabilities in their core service offering. The cyclical nature, restrictions and programmatic demands of grant funds means that the greatest investments must be made in technical staff and program activities leaving little to design and implement the governance, management, human capital, financial, compliance, data and evaluation systems. The Horrizon-TA initiative brings the experience of development professionals who have built, managed and assessed business functions that are fit for purpose from grassroots collectives to global organizations with more than $500 million in revenue.
Beginning with comprehensive assessment of client strategy, people, processes, and systems, Horrizon works with clients to develop a roadmap to achieve desired goals. Tailored for businesses from early to advanced stages, Horrizon TA targets growth strategies that help partners successfully complete pre-award assessments, optimize efficiency across core functions or isolate functions for strategic investment that optimize value. The business model for non-profit organizations is changing faster than ever, with thought leaders, first movers and elite boards looking constantly at diversification strategies, alternative revenue models, structured rate segmentation, informal strategic alliances/partnerships among other drivers of sustainable advantage. The root causes for these changes are vastly debated, but three things remain true. (1) There is more competition for resources than ever before, but these resources are restricted and siloed while development is increasingly more intersectional each day. (2) Organizations from grassroots groups to international NGOs must have diversified portfolios to achieve goals over time. (3) Strategic growth, innovation of programming and approaches, and resilient, scalable best-in-class business systems cannot be attained with restricted resources alone.
Lever Two: Programme Design, Implementation and Measurement
As implementing organisations grow, they venture into new areas of intervention where they lag behind in capability hence the need to develop new capacity. Governments that are implementing grant funded projects from the global fund, government to government projects among other sources are trying hard to keep up with implementation including setting up technical project implantation teams and structures. They also find themselves spread out too thin as they try to manage new multiple grants rendering them ineffective. Consequently, they are unable to effectively implement multiple projects simultaneously, slowing down absorption of funds and elongating project timelines. This coupled with the fact that the journey to self-reliance is underway as more and more actors in the development space seek alternative, sustainable sources of funds creates a greater need for strategic partnership.
There is increasing focus on programme implementation as more funds are sunk with less and less impact. Incidents of failure to absorb funds are on the increase whereas the problems and challenges that are targeted at continue. This has had serious ramifications including corporate failure, inability to reach development goals including MDG/SDGs, budget cuts, funding cuts/withdrawal, forensic audits of embezzled funds, among others. Simply put, very few direct recipients and sub-grantees are fully aware of and prepared for the challenges they eventually face in sourcing for and absorbing funds. At Horrizon, we dialogue with our clients and walk with them the journey from proposal writing, through grant management, to MEAL and reporting. Key services here include: proposal planning, development, theory of change project vetting; project design, start-up, management and close-out; scale-up; implementation support (tools, guidelines and policy); data driven monitoring, evaluation & learning; governance, leadership development, coaching and mentoring; partner and donor management.
Lever 3: Grant Application and Partnership
There is increasing need for focused and accountable partners to directly, effectively and efficiently implement projects against a background of shrinking donor funds and more stringent donor requirements. There is a growing concern and demand for local organisations to participate in co-creating and implementing projects. The development space has been dominated by a handful of non-local entities which over the decades saw limited transfer of knowledge and skills to local development organisations. Horrizon has offered consultancy and technical assistance services to a broad range of development organisations that has equipped the firm with programme design and implementation experience. The initial entry point into this space was consultancy services which helped us grow significantly in the areas of research, capacity building and social safeguards. With time, Horrizon entered into technical assistance arrangements for programmatic design, implementation and MEAL through ad hoc MoUs and teaming agreements.
This arrangement enabled Horrizon to rapidly gain development space experience in the core areas. However, social mapping, assessment and sustainability stood out as an exciting space from a development programming perspective. Consequently, Horrizon developed significant capabilities and experience in this area as a stepping stone for a deeper and wider understanding of the development and community service space. Horrizon has since then expanded the collaborative approach to include co-creation of solutions, collaborative writing of grant proposals, joint implementation and ultimately MEAL partnership with each partner’s role clearly defined in the project proposal and teaming agreements. This has enabled our partners win grants in areas where they were weak, but ultimately it has resulted in effective and efficient project implementation. We collaborate with development space organisations in co-writing grant proposals and participate in project design, implementation and post implementation throughout the implementation cycle.