Following the comprehensive work on the development of the relevant methodology and tools, DevCon has carried out the assessment of preparedness of four enterprises operating under the umbrella of one company for the use of domestic and international development funding. The assessment, which took place between February and May 2023, involved the next steps:
- Carrying out introductory meetings with the leaderships of the enterprises;
- Performing self-assessment of the capacities and readiness for the use of development domestic and donor funding;
- Performing analysis of the self-assessment results deepening its preliminary findings;
- Organization of individual meetings with the managers of relevant enterprise departments to collect additional information and validate the self-assessment findings;
- Drafting reports on the level of prepardness of the enterprises for the use of development domestic and donor funding through 6 functional areas (1. Strategy and planning; 2. R&D, innovations, processes, changes and standards; 3. Organization and HR, 4. Digital readiness, 5. Project management and 6. Partnerships and resources);
- Presentation of the findings of the reports to enterprise /company leadership;
- Provision of feedback, improvement and finalization of the reports;
- Preparation of yearly action plans for implementation of the selected improvements.
Working with the representatives of CSOs, private sector and institutions, it was noticed that approach in the use of development funding is reactive. Companies usually became interested only once the donors / domestic institutions launch calls and then seek for assistance and hurilly prepare project proposals and collect necessary documentation.
With the use of the methodology and tools for assessment of the preparedness of companies for development funding developed by DevCon, we try to make companies more proactive helping them to identify their deficiencies, improve internal capacities and better prepare their management and operating structures. So far, the approach has been succesfully tested on the sample of 4 enterprises and was developed to be equally applicable for the needs of CSOs and public sector.
