What is SOF? The Short Run Strategic Opportunities Fund Initiative (SOF), is designed to facilitate platforms for demand and supply side actors to influence policy which have implications for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.
Why SOF? The Coalitions for Change programme (C4C), aims to accelerate Nigeria’s progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). From its inception in 2007, C4C’s issues of engagement have increased from one to eight; yet, issues requiring attention are still on the increase. Being an initiative concerned with creating spaces where voices connect to drive development, C4C is making efforts to deepen and strengthen its ongoing coalitions rather than facilitate the evolution of more coalitions. This deepening process has crystallised into a new initiative called the Strategic Opportunities Fund (SOF).
How does SOF work? The fund works as an urgent action, quick win, and quick intervention resource, strengthening policy and advocacy windows that could lead to institutional change, where such openings exist. The concept is based on the fact that openings for change are often unpredictable. However, when groups are able to take advantage of unexpected openings, the chances of delivering institutional change are enhanced.
What are the Criteria for accessing SOF? SOF responds to a real need and closes funding gaps often experienced when unexpected openings to influence change are identified. Initiatives to be considered under SOF aside from deepening C4C’s other issue-based projects (IBPs), will broadly meet some of these criteria: • Contribute to socio-political change through effective use of human and material resources • Enable greater demand (CSOs) and supply (government) side partnership • Have traction with the public • Have a visible impact in the short time of engagement • Work with the grain in building on work that has largely advanced and merely needs a strategic catalytic action to complete it • Has value for community or national concerns • Address inclusivity, i.e. create space for voices of women and other marginalised groups • Be capable of delivering on its outputs within a 4–9 month timeline • Respond to a clear monitoring and evaluation plan, which will map the present state of the issue, the desired intervention and steps in C4C intervention • Show strong progression on its inputs, outputs, outcome and impact
Six proposals were reviewed between July and September 2009. Three have been approved and project implementation is ongoing. Although SOF initially aimed to support 2 or 3 medium-term projects for a period not exceeding nine months, it has supported small once-and-for-all initiatives which help IBPs deliver on their Purpose Statements.
What type of initiatives does SOF support? SOF supports issues where there are clear policy windows to do short-term interventions that can have long-term impact. It will provide technical advice and support strategy meetings, development of communication plans, crafting of memoranda and policy briefs. The fund does not support the development of new coalitions, but it does support aspects of the work of existing coalitions and organisations. In a nutshell, interventions focused on key discourses emerging on the horizon, either from the supply or demand side, which if further interrogated or nudged in the right direction, could lead to the effective use of resources and formal accountability.
Initiatives and organisations supported so far:
• Strategic Community Based Organisations Meeting on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability in Abuja by the Theatre for Development Centre, of Zaria, Kaduna State • Empowering CSOs on Fiscal Responsibility Law through training and publication of a manual by the Centre for Social Justice and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung • Sustaining CSO Advocacy in the Nigerian National Assembly through strategic development of a CSO liaison office by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, Abuja • Concert for Change – a design to reach young people on democratic governance culture, by New Wave Production, Abuja • 3-Year Strategic Plan Retreat – A Stakeholders’ Meeting by Global Call to Action Against Poverty/Millennium Development Goals Nigeria
