Building Healthy Northern Communities Through Strengthening Capacity (original) (raw)
2012, Journal of Comparative Social …
This study examines and evaluates the effects of one-time funding on capacity building of health and social welfare organizations in a remote and northern section of British Columbia Canada. The Province of British Columbia awarded a two million dollar grant (Canadian) to the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC). Organizations applied for funds through a competitive process that was managed by the School of Social Work at UNBC. Twenty-five different community organizations and agencies received funding for a period of eighteen months. The organizations and agencies delivered a range of services and activities located in remote First Nations communities as well as the natural resource-based single industry towns of northern BC. A reporting mechanism allowed UNBC to evaluate the use and application of the funds by the organizations and agencies that qualified for the capacity building project. Six years after the funding ended, the organizations and agencies were contacted and interviewed to see if the one-time funding had any lasting impact. Fourteen of the funded projects terminated; three continued to operate but at a greatly reduced level of activity; seven projects continued to operate after the funding ended; and one project was able to continue operation after acquiring a new source of funding. Case study examples are used to illustrate the outcomes of this project. The projects that were able to continue in a sustained manner used volunteers or had an organizational structure that allowed the project to be incorporated into existing resources. The sustained projects also depended on collaboration with other organizations and support from the community as well as other health and social service providers. While this type of funding had some short-term benefits in capacity building, sustained delivery tended to rely on residual systems and resources, calling into question its usefulness.
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