Third round of Capability Investment Resource fund open

Applications for the third distribution of the Ministry of Social Development's (MSD) Capability Investment Resource funding are now open. This fund is part of Investing in Services for Outcomes (ISO), which aims to improve outcomes for children, families, whānau and communities, through a "streamlined and consistent contracting approach".

A $31.65 million fund, the Capability Investment Resource is to be distributed over four years from 2012/2013. The third round focuses on supporting collaborations and collectives, in recognition of broader sustainable social development stemming from improving cross-sector coordination and collective vision.

The key priority areas are:

• NGO collaboration – involving building strong relationships with existing and new partners, and initiating shared and joined-up activity, particularly around fresh and innovative approaches to service development and delivery;
• the development of learning organisations – involving building a sustainable ‘culture’ of continuous improvement, supported by NGO peer support, mentoring, sharing of knowledge and experience, and joined-up problem solving; along with
• maintained support for organisational capability; and
• continued investment in information and communications technology (ICT) capability – both general ICT, and ICT concerning provider capability for working with outcomes (including managing related data, and associated frameworks eg Results Based Accountability).

The third distribution of the CIR follows the pattern of the first two. From the fourth distribution the CIR will begin to refocus.

Applications are open from 13 January 2014 and close at 4pm on Friday 28 February 2014. Updated application forms, guidelines for applicants and outcomes from the first and second funding rounds are available on the Ministry of Social Development website.

Image: New Zealand money by Kiwilad. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)