Community Connect 2026
Background & Rationale
Early-stage NGOs often operate with small teams where individuals manage multiple, overlapping responsibilities—compliance, fundraising, monitoring, communications, and organisational planning. Support for capacity building continues to remain limited. there remains a gap in structured, practical learning spaces that help teams translate knowledge into organisation-wide systems and strategy.
This initiative aims to strengthen both individual and organisational capacities by enabling different team members from the same organisation to engage with thematic learning and collectively integrate insights into a tangible organisational strategy.
Objective
To support early-stage NGOs in building strong internal systems and a clear organisational direction through a structured, cohort-based capacity-building programme.
Programme Design
The programme will consist of different thematic capacity-building sessions conducted once every two months, starting in April.
Key Themes include:
- Compliance and Due Diligence requirements
- Fundraising and Grant Management
- Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning
- Communications & Narrative Building
- Organisational Strategy & Systems Strengthening
Note: additional sessions might also include other themes on programs, safeguarding etc.
Sessions will be led by experienced resource persons, combining learning inputs with practical exercises and peer exchange. The sessions will be held either monthly or on alternate months depending on Resource person availability. Sessions will have different formats like – workshops, master class style. The session durations will range between 1.5-2.5 hours; while some sessions may require a 30 minutes pre-workshop session between participants.
Time expectation from participants to attend each session: Max 3 hours/month when sessions are held.
Cohort & Participation Model
- Each session will host a maximum of 30 participants.
- Participants may vary by session (e.g., fundraising staff, programme staff, leadership), reflecting the realities of small NGOs; or it can also be 1 single person from the NGO throughout all sessions (depending on the NGO staff capacity).
- Participating organisations are expected to continue across sessions, creating a cohort that carries learning forward.
- Organisations are encouraged to bring different team members to relevant sessions and then collectively reflect and integrate learnings internally.
Learning to Practice
To ensure application of learning:
- Participants who are able to, will develop short, theme-linked documents such as:
- MEL Framework / Theory of Change
- Communications Strategy
- Fundraising or Compliance-related tools
- These documents will be reviewed by resource persons, offering light-touch feedback and guidance.
Cumulative Outcome
After completion of five sessions, participating organisations will come together to “stitch” learnings across themes. This final integration will support the development of a clear, tangible organisational strategy, grounded in improved systems, shared understanding, and cross-functional alignment.
Expected Outcomes
- Improved functional capacities across key NGO operational areas
- Stronger internal coordination among small NGO teams
- Practical organisational tools developed and refined
- A clearer, documented organisational strategy for participating NGOs
Who can participate:
- New organisations between 1-10 years operating and registered in India.
- Organisations which work with children and young people.
- Organisations which are youth-led or have young people in their leadership teams.
For more information, write to us at: info@foundationforrebuildingchildhood.org
To learn about our past capacity-building workshops, you can read the FRC journal here.