WHAT IS STAKEHOLDERS ANALYSIS FOR CSOs STRATEGIES

? Get Ahead of the Game

To avoid coming up with an endless list of stakeholders, we have to define the criteria for stakeholders...

Stakeholders are?individuals,?groups,?organizations,?donors,?authorities, and?professional bodies?who can influence or impact the effective spreading of your organization's values and work as a civil society organization in your country or are affected by it.

???Stakeholders Identification

Before analyzing your CSO stakeholders, you should identify them as accurately as possible. However, accuracy here means the highest level of predictive, considering that our approach is adaptive and the stakeholders could be changed during the strategy execution given several factors.

???What to do:

The stakeholders' identification is not only naming the stakeholders; you should also profile them in order to understand them well. In this step, you need to brainstorm, research, track their activities and projects, and collect information from their media platforms and websites.??

??Once you develop the stakeholders' profiles, you are ready for the stakeholders' analysis.

???Reflection:

In the profit sector, they categorize stakeholders into four main categories:

1. Investors
2. Employees?
3. Customers
4. Suppliers

As we know, they sell products or services.

We sell ideas, values, beliefs, capacity-building, and empowerment services as a nonprofit sector.

Reflecting on corporate stakeholders' categories and thinking about how to manage the relationships with our stakeholders, we should understand the following:?

1. CSOs investors are mainly the donors.??
2. CSOs employees are primarily entity employees and project teams.
3. CSOs' customers are target groups and beneficiaries.?
4. CSOs' suppliers are service providers, trainers, experts, consultants, third parties, and other CSOs that could be allies.

???Stakeholders Analysis?

Most CSOs analyze stakeholders based on?interest?and?influence. ?? Is this enough to have the whole picture, understanding of stakeholders, and readiness to strategize their engagement and your relationship with them??

After identifying stakeholders, we should examine their potential in several aspects. We look at different criteria and rate them based on our knowledge, and this judgment is an error-prone process. So, even if you find ratings, look at them critically and with doubt -?as we said, we are adaptive.??

The different characteristics are:

• Competence: the competence in the field of your work. How much do they know or understand your work?
• Experience: if the respective stakeholder has had any experience with your field.
• Professionalism: how professional the stakeholder is in its work area.
• Effectiveness: the stakeholder effectiveness in its area of work. How well are they organized? Are they quick? Do they act flexible and agile?
• Power: is the ability to affect policies, institutions, and behavior through political power, voting power, and economic or legal power; to define power as the extent to which a party or organization has or can gain access to coercive (physical means), practical (material means) or normative (prestige, esteem and social) means to impose their will on your activities.
• Influence: the stakeholder's power to facilitate or impede the achievement of an activity's objective. The extent to which the stakeholder can persuade or coerce others into making decisions and following a particular course of action.
• Interest: to which degree has the stakeholder interest that your work succeeds?
• Dynamism?(of their stance): refers to the changing attributes, roles, and perceptions of stakeholder individuals and groups throughout a project life cycle.
• Receptiveness: is the willingness to receive messages about your work. Your organization must not necessarily be the sender, and it’s more about acceptance of information or values which might not always correspond with one's own.
• Legitimacy: how genuinely involved a stakeholder is with your projects.
• Support: we can view it as a supportive attitude towards your work (no action).
• Willingness: the stress on attitude and action.
• Relationship?with your organization

???Out Of The Box

The term we always use in the work and strategies of CSOs is "STAKEHOLDERS." Have we ever thought about "SHAREHOLDERS"?

Shareholders are only one type of stakeholder. All stakeholders are bound to an organization from some vested interest, usually for the long-term and reasons of need. A shareholder has interests as well, but a shareholder can also leave their position, presence, participation, involvement, or engagement in the organization; they do not necessarily have a long-term need for the organization and can usually get out at any time.

For example, for volunteers who are assets and part of an organization's success and growth, if the organization is performing poorly regarding the volunteers' engagement and motivation, the voluntarism advisors in that organization might suffer if the organization limits its services and no longer uses the advisors' services. Similarly, some employees of the organization might lose their jobs; however, shareholders (outstanding and dedicated volunteers) of the organization can leave and limit their losses of time and effort if they no longer gain knowledge, skills, and benefits.

Have you identified and profiled the stakeholders of your organization? ??Very good!

Have you analyzed them? ??Excellent!

???Well, stay tuned for the next article because I will discuss the stakeholders' engagement strategies.

Thank you for taking the time to read this content.

YOUR OPINION IS IMPORTANT.?