China NPO Network Will Launch Training and Capacity Building Program (2002)
China NPO Network

1. Goals and Objectives
    Training programs should be designed to achieve the following goals and objectives:
    (1) provide NPO professionals with a solid knowledge base and theoretical foundation;
    (2) to enhance and strengthen their competence and capacity; and
    (3) to improve their management skills in order that they may me more qualified for their work in NPOs in China;
    (4) to enhance and strengthen NPOs' capacity building with focus on how to build, operate and develop the organization. The first three are related to individuals who work in non-profit organizations, while the last one is concerned with the organization itself. However, the two aspects are closely related to each other because the development of an organization depends heavily on the solution of its people problem.
    As practitioners in NPOs, their understanding of an organization's vision and mission is a decisive factor in how well they are able to perform in the organization because only in this way can they have a correct attitude towards their responsibilities for the organization and ultimately for society in general; and their practical skills may determine how well they can do their jobs. Therefore, NPO training should be focused on "people" with emphasis on the development of the organization. Training programs should be effective and efficient. That is to say, there should be take-away value in every program in that participants should be able to apply (at least some of) what they have learned to their work. Learning is life long, and we are learning and exploring while conducting training programs. The development of a localized NPO training system to suit the specific situation in China is what we are determined to achieve.
     We have come to the above conclusions on the basis of our thorough understanding of the development of non-profit organizations in China and our analysis of the training need of NPOs in China and our own experience in training NPO practitioners in China and experience provided by practitioners from other countries.

2. Positioning
    In recent years, some organizations that have foresights and training strength have already started NPO training in China. Providers of such training can be classified into the following types:
     (1) government;
     (2) academic institutes and universities;
     (3) non-profit organizations; and
     (4) management consulting companies.
     Given the urgent demand and the great market for NPO training in China, the China NPO Network, as a support organization for NPOs in China, is facing great challenges because we consider it our responsibility and task to provide quality training to NPOs in China. We have the following advantages over others: first, as a non-profit organization, the China NPO Network that is not controlled by the government authorities (that is why we have been registered as a corporation) has deeper understanding of the nature of NPOs in China, their needs, how they are operated and what problems they have in their operations. Secondly, we have established relationships with NPOs in China in the form of network and have more channels of communications and cooperation with them. Finally, we have already accumulated rich experience in providing training to NPOs in China and we take a networking approach in our work. NPO training in China should be conducted in accordance with the following principles:
     ·Short-term training should be supplemented with mid- and long-term training.
     ·Some ready-made programs which are adapted to the China situation should be designed, but they should be customized before delivery in order to provide our clients with best training and advice and suggestions they need to help them to cope with challenges they are and will be encountering.
     ·We are going to set up bases for training in partnership with NPOs in China and overseas. However, we will mainly rely on our own resources.

3. Participants
    Our training programs will be targeted at NPOs run by civilians, not at official NPOs and NPOs which are under the direct control of government authorities at present time. Our target participants are:
    ·Decision makers
Programs designed for decision makers are mainly used to develop leadership skills of leaders who work either part time or full time for their organizations. We also want to provide training to those who have potential for being a leader in order that sustainable development of an organization can be guaranteed.
    ·Management
They include persons in charge of a specific section in the organization and those who are responsible for a project.
    ·Employees
These include people who are responsible for specific jobs, volunteers and others.
    ·Volunteers
Strengthening the leadership of the decision makers and management is vital for future development of Chinese NPOs, which is also the key issue in NPO Capacity building.

4. Training Models
    We are going to design some programs and courses which are targeted at different types of participants with different objectives. The following are some possible models:
    ·Skills training
Within this category are included:

    ¶ Training programs relevant to a specific topic
These are designed for decision-makers and the management to meet their key needs. The duration of such training programs should be short enough in order not to interfere with their normal work. Training should be delivered in modular form.

    ¶ Case studies
Case studies are effective and efficient because the simulations, games and projects used are life-like, thus proving participants with models and best practices which can apply in their work.

    ¶ Field tours
Our survey shows that this is an approach that is liked by most participants. Participants may go to a successful organization either in China or in another country. For leaders, tours to successful organizations are the most rewarding learning experience.

  ¶ Personnel exchange
Participants may go to another organization to work for a period of time in order to have direct experience of how the host organization is operated, thus providing them with the opportunity to put to use what they have learned. Considering that there might be language barriers, exchange of personnel may initially begin with Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and then with other countries.

    ¶ Forums and conferences
Regular conferences and forums will be held where some practical problems emerged in operation will be put forward and discussed among NPO practitioners and experts via face-to-face communication or on the Internet.

    ·Courses with theoretical orientation
Our survey also shows that participants have strong interests in new ideas of NPO and developments. Therefore, basic theories of NPO are required in order to raise practitioners' awareness of their responsibility for society and to gain more knowledge of NPOs. Only in this way can practitioners grow and become more competent because two types of knowledge of know-how and know-that are quite different. We plan to cooperate with institutions of higher education for this purpose.

    ·Seminars and workshops
We plan to periodically organize seminars and workshops to discuss some important issues encountered by NPOs. We decide to ask those who have theoretical knowledge and rich experience of managing NPOs to carry out some research studies or give lectures in order that better courses and training programs can be developed.

    ·Organizational Capacity Assessment
We want to help NPOs improve their accountability as well as management through importing some mature internal and external assessment tools.

5. Training resources (trainers)
    Shortage of training resource is the bottle neck for NPO training in China; resources now available are not enough to meet the ever increasing demand for more training in China. Solutions to this problem, we think, are: first, inviting some experts, scholars, now working for organizations and institutions of higher education in China and elsewhere in the world, who are well versed in this field and are committed to the development of NPOs in China to give lectures; secondly, setting up a trainer training program to train more qualified trainers in a systematic way. We are going to set up data base of training experts in order to make better use of the resources now available both in China and in other countries.

6. Textbooks and materials
    Textbooks and training materials are another important issue that plays a decisive role for training success. The China NPO Network has already had a series of textbooks and materials for use. However, they are far from enough. We have decided to solicit both internal and external help to solve this problem by either asking some Chinese scholars to write some textbooks or translating some textbooks from other languages into Chinese (making some adaptations if necessary).

7. Training Organization
    We are going to set up a training department and designate some special persons to coordinate and organize training programs. Specifically speaking, we are going to set up an expert panel which will be made up of experts from both China and foreign countries. They will serve as our advisors and our resource. We are also going to set up some training bases both in China and in other countries. We hope that we may partner with relevant organizations both in China and in other countries through this meeting. This is one of the purposes of our present meeting.
    We are going to set up a complete evaluation system to evaluate the effectiveness of training programs through using questionnaires and/or follow-up interview, and/or the organization's performance appraisal results.

8. Budgets and sources
    Tight budget is one of the biggest problems facing most NPOs in China, so they will not invest a lot of money in training. To meet the training needs of NPOs in china, we are considering the possibility of solving this problem in the following ways:

    ¶ Organizations who have enough funds are required to pay the expenses of training.
    ¶ Sharing resources with other organizations in China (government, companies, NPO support organizations) to reduce the cost of training.
    ¶ Soliciting international help in the form of joint-projects and/or programs.

    The present framework, imperfect as it is, is our initial attempts for achieving our purposes. It is put forward to guide our training programs for NPOs in China. I sincerely hope that all participants who are experts in this area will contribute your expertise, knowledge, ideas and suggestions to the improvement of this framework in order to make it "perfect".