Members-Only

Thursday, November 12, 2026

16:00 Amsterdam / 10:00 am New York

This ARCS Roundtable shares a successful example of alternative resourcing for social change, yet one that still seeks to diversify funding sources. KLABU builds sports clubs in refugee camps around the world, and operates both a foundation and a social enterprise that sells merchandise. It takes an entrepreneurial approach to working with corporate sponsors and other donors. Yet KLABU views sports and play as an means to an end: to improve living conditions at refugee camps, support wellbeing and resilience among refugees, and increase acceptance and integration of refugees in local communities. To achieve its larger mission, KLABU seeks foundation funding that aligns with its values and overall goals.

Jan van Hövell, KLABU’s founder and director, will share about KLABU’s big adventure and learning journey since launching its work in 2019.

Public event

This public discussion explored constituency-based giving models and alternative resourcing strategies emerging across Africa from social movements and NGOs. Drawing on deeply rooted giving systems, African giving happens at multiple levels and via many channels simultaneously. We consider what lessons this may hold for organizations operating on other continents, specifically where groups are seeking to diversify their resource base, foster independence and autonomy and strengthen community ownership of their work.

In this conversation, Halima Mohamed, co-author of a recent report on “Power Building in Africa: Constituency-based organizing, resourcing & resistance”, is joined by Charles Kojo VanDyck, author, speaker, and Head of the Capacity Unit at the West Africa Civil Society Institute.

Moderated by Nicolette Naylor, co-author of the report and co-convenor of ARCS Roundtable.

Members-only roundtable

Strategic litigation is among the most consequential tools available to civil society for protecting human rights—yet it is extraordinarily resource-intensive, demanding sustained legal expertise, years of commitment, and financial reserves that traditional grant funding struggles to provide. This session will explore how the Good Law Project is built on a campaign-based fundraising model, mobilizing public support around specific high-profile cases to generate the unrestricted, flexible revenue that litigation work demands. We will examine the opportunities and limitations of this approach—including donor cultivation, reputational risk, the tension between public visibility and legal strategy, and the conditions under which such a model may or may not be replicable for other organizations. Participants will consider what lessons this case study holds for the broader field of human rights litigation funding.

Public event

How can human rights and social justice NGOs collaborate with creatives and artists to broaden their resource base, reach new supporters and rethink what “resourcing” really means? 

This session featured Artist Tomás Saraceno, who has been called "The artist ‘most likely to change the world’" (The Guardian), who shared his experience working with El Santuario del Agua (The Sanctuary of Water) in Argentina. It will also feature Coumba Toure, an artist and storyteller, and the founder of Kuumbati and Invisible Giants.

Moderated by Gastón Chillier, ARCS Roundtable Advisory Committee member.

Members-only roundtable

NGOs are faced with incredible and seemingly insurmountable political and financial pressures at this moment. When organizations are operating in survival mode, it may be difficult for them to envision alternative ways of working. On the other hand, an existential crisis might be the best moment to reprioritize, reorganize, and re-envision how to resource NGO work. This roundtable will learn from the experience of TV Rain, a Russian-language independent media organization that was forced to flee their country and reconstitute abroad, losing key equipment, staff, and access to bank accounts. Leadership will share their experience, the continued challenges they face in rebuilding, and their experiments with alternative revenue streams in order to fulfill their mission. We will examine the role of urgency in organizational transformations and how to learn from failures. Participants will consider what lessons this case study may hold for organizations facing considerable political and financial pressures.

Members-only roundtable

This ARCS Roundtable explored how strategic collaboration among civil society organizations can strengthen their collective impact and sustainability. It examined cooperative arrangements that go beyond traditional partnerships—including shared office spaces, pooled administrative costs, joint fundraising initiatives, and collaborative service delivery models.

Collective arrangements can help smaller organizations achieve economies of scale, reduce overhead burdens, and amplify their programmatic reach while maintaining their distinct missions and identities. We will discuss both the practical mechanics of resource-sharing and the deeper cultural shifts required to move from competitive to collaborative mindsets.

Sita Suporno shared her experience as part of Indonesia untuk Kemanusian (IKa), which supports grassroots groups to be more autonomous and sustainable, to transition toward a more transformative, resilient resourcing approach (“Akar Daya”). In particular, they are developing a prototype that draws on existing solidarity economy practices already present in Indonesian communities.

Moderated by Clara Bosco, ARCS Roundtable Member.

Members-only roundtable

Impact investing has transformed how capital flows to social enterprises, community lenders, and mission-aligned businesses. But for advocacy NGOs — organizations whose core work is shifting power, changing laws, and contesting political outcomes — the standard impact-investing logic appears to break down. There is no obvious revenue stream, no scalable product, and no exit pathway. The goal of this roundtable is not to solve the problem of organizational profitability for advocacy NGOs — a problem that may be structurally unsolvable. It is to ask a more targeted question: which programs, services, or assets within an advocacy organization have latent commercial potential, and what would it take to develop them as new revenue streams?

Jennifer Gaspar, Founder and Director of Araminta, a human rights organization working across eleven countries in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, will share her experience developing consultancy work — human rights analysis, supply chain claims verification, and digital security services to businesses and international organizations — that is fully mission-aligned and generates revenues.

Moderated by Louis Bickford, ARCS Roundtable Co-Convenor.

Public event

Many professional advocacy NGOs that depended on grant funding were busy advocating for policy change while not always connecting with the public at large. This was especially true in Central and Eastern Europe, until populist leaders began critiquing their advocacy work as unrepresentative. This session explored how to identify and build a community of supporters around a human rights or issue-based advocacy NGO that may not be accustomed to engaging individuals in their work.

Stefania Kapronczay shared the experience of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union. In 2012, HCLU began an effort to increase its support among the wider public through social media campaigns, merchandise, in person events, a changed communications strategy and staff structure, and a flexible funding stream to achieve its mission.

Marie Peřinová, Program Director of Open Society Fund Prague, gave a funder’s perspective of how to support other organizations to develop a social base. The Stronger Roots Program, undertaken by a consortium of foundations in Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, developed a methodology to support organizations to build a social base and funded three cohorts of organizations to make similar transitions.

Moderated by Merrill Sovner, ARCS Roundtable Network Manager.

Public event

The human rights and social justice nonprofit sector stands at a critical moment in its history. Where is it going? The traditional funding model—where organizations receive the bulk of their financial support from a small number of like-minded philanthropic foundations or government donor agencies—has revealed itself to be fundamentally unsustainable and vulnerable. Given both long-term issues as well as the especially difficult current global context, the need for new thinking, resources, innovative funding models, and fresh revenue streams is more urgent than ever. Human rights and social justice organizations feel pressure to resolve sometimes existential questions about how best to enhance their sustainability while keeping their autonomy and independence.

​Louis Bickford and Nicolette Naylor have been working and innovating in this space for decades. This event launched Alternative Resourcing for Social Change and Solidarity (ARCS) Roundtable, a global community of practice aimed at strengthening the resilience of social justice and human rights NGOs for the long-term. ​These alternative approaches include monetization opportunities and diversification of financial support, as well as a more expansive definition to ‘resourcing’ that includes multiple forms of non-financial support moving beyond money to, for example, leadership strengthening, sanctuary and security, convening spaces, connectivity, communications, allyship, membership, solidarity economics, and public support, and involves donors in the discussion to think through ecosystem-level changes.

Watch the video on YouTube