The Path to Self-Sufficiency

Posted: 11 August 2005

by Chris Hufstader

With help from Oxfam America, AJA takes an entrepreneurial approach to serving the community.

Increasingly, nonprofit organizations are expected to operate like businesses, earning the money they need to keep their doors open through entrepreneurial strategies—while still meeting their social missions. It's a tall order, and most nonprofits in the US are still struggling to figure it out.

That's what makes AJA, one of Oxfam America's partners in Mali, all the more remarkable: it is gradually weaning itself off grant funds by developing in-house "businesses."

"AJA has increased its self-sufficiency to 80 percent of its total budget," explained Mamadou Biteye, Oxfam's senior program officer for West Africa. "Our next grant is helping AJA develop ways to cover the last 20 percent."

So just how are they doing this? Working with Oxfam, AJA set up a three-step initiative. First, it required trainees benefiting from its education programs to contribute a modest amount to their own education. Currently, student fees cover the cost of all training materials; as AJA increases the number of students participating, they anticipate funding the majority of the education program's costs—including teachers and administration—through fees.

Second, AJA set up an online business to help the artisans it has trained market their crafts. Oxfam kicked off this effort by bringing a group of AJA staff and artisans to the US to make contacts with e-commerce specialists and fair trade buyers. Then AJA launched a website last year that is now connecting the artisans in its Fèrè Kèné workshop with buyers overseas. In the first year online, they sold nearly US $11,000—with 15 percent going to AJA to fund its artisan training program.

"The sale prices are about double what artisans would get in Mali, so it is very profitable for them," said Biteye. AJA expects sales for artisans, and revenues for AJA, to grow.

Third, AJA partnered with the British organization Digital Links, which reconditions computers. AJA is now selling the computers in Bamako, Mali's capital city—grossing US $36,000 to date—and is preparing to expand to other cities. It also set up its own computer training center, which has so far trained 200 people, generating additional income through student fees.

As with the other components of this sustainability initiative, the computer program is about more than just making money: since AJA can charge about half the going rate for a new computer in Mali and still make a profit, it is expanding computer access to a whole new group of consumers in Mali—helping close the country's digital divide.

Oxfam's West Africa program has been funding AJA since it was established in 1996, helping it to evolve from a pilot project to help unemployed youth to a well-established leader in alternative education.

"Our objective is to build strong organizations. We use our support to help them become sustainable, so we can then turn to other organizations in Mali that need our support," said Biteye.