CSO Partners has organized “Opportunities in Challenging Times – A Workshop for NGOs" on September 14 and 15 at The Grand Solitaire Hotel, Secunderabad. This is the second workshop of the series planned across six different cities (Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Bangalore) to reach out to approximately 500 NGOs with 10 of our partners each specialized in domains of services that are of relevance to them. The first workshop took place in Mumbai on May 2009

Soumitra Ghosh, Founder CEO, CSO Partners, said, “The primary objective of these workshops is to facilitate a common perspective of the context and support NGOs to not just cope but to proactively participate and influence change. The workshops are designed to enable the NGOs to have individual interactions with different domain experts and to draw organization specific action plans”.

A total of 24 NGO's comprising 45 participants attended this workshop. The NGOs who attended became aware of how the global economic slowdown is affecting NGOs, how there can be better collaboration and cooperation between corporate bodies and NGOs. The workshop started with a panel discussion on the theme of the workshop “Opportunities in challenging times,” that served to set the context by helping participating NGOs to develop a common understanding of the changing environment and how it could affect their organization. The workshop sessions which followed established not just the need and importance of fund raising strategy, fund raising events, volunteer management, financial management, start up support to NGOs, accreditation, and good governance but also how to use it to influence and capitalize on the changes happening in today’s world. The one on one session with each of the specialist organizations helped the participants to have a primary diagnosis to the symptoms indicated for identifying strategies for efficient and effective functioning.

In the workshop, CSO Partners also presented its online initiatives – CSO Partners website and NGO Markeplace - directed specifically towards Indian Social sector.

NGOs were informed how CSO Partners website (www.csopartners.org.in) would serve as a single window philanthropic solution by matching contributors and NGOs to expert support partners as per the information provided in areas in which they seek involvement or require support

CSO Partners also launched the beta version of its portal ‘NGO Marketplace’. This open platform for NGOs has been developed to facilitate direct interaction with contributors & service providers. Additionally, the platform would also enable NGOs to network amongst themselves and help them work in a collaborative manner