Local Organizations—Movement Towards Self-Reliance ResiliencyCambodia Impact Evaluation

The ResiliencyCambodia program implemented under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Cambodia’s Local Organizations—Movement Towards Self-Reliance (LO-MTSR) is designed to increase the organizational resiliency of Cambodian civil society organizations (CSOs) across the health; education; food security; agriculture; and democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) sectors. Organizations will increase their capacity to expand their networks and tap into new markets and revenue streams, thereby decreasing their reliance on aid from foreign donors. The LO-MTSR Impact Evaluation (IE) seeks to assess the outcomes and impacts of interventions that occurred as part of the ResiliencyCambodia program, primarily the implementation of an innovative ResiliencyCambodia Framework, which uses adaptive strategies, more effective narratives, alternative organizational and funding models, stronger mechanisms of transparency and accountability, and wider networks across the public, private, and non-profit sector to increase organizational resiliency. Interventions include trainings, toolkits, networking events, and financial resources. The IE utilizes a randomized control trial (RCT) designed to estimate the impact of an intervention by comparing outcomes for treated units with outcomes for a “counterfactual” group that was randomly selected to not receive the treatment. The IE is designed as a tiered intervention with two treatment cohorts, one receiving a low-intensity (LI) treatment and the other receiving a high-intensity (HI) treatment. A third group serves as a control. Treatments include attending training sessions in social media use, training in financial diversification, and a stipend to pay for leadership development. The IE will test three research hypotheses that follow from the evaluation objectives and LO-MTSR theory of change at the organizational level. Specific hypotheses in this IE include: Organizations participating in the ResiliencyCambodia program will: ● Increase organizational, administrative, and financial capacity. ● Decrease the organization’s reliance on funding from USAID and other interventional donors, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), and large international donors at odds with USAID’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) objectives. ● Increase the size of the organization’s CSO network within and across sectors.