Civil society capacity building, is a core area of our work cutting cross all our focal areas (health, education, agriculture and climate change and trafficking in persons).  The dRPC’s commitment to CSO Capacity building derives from its early days where the founders were engaged in NGO identification for health sector funding in the 1990s. Another impetus for the dRPC’s work in this area was our participation in the European Union Programming study upon Nigeria’s return to democratic government. Engaged in the EU Programming Study sub-research team, the dRPC’s founders were central to documenting civil society performance gaps and were pivotal to the design of a CSO capacity building strategy for Nigeria drawn up with the then EU lead implementing partner –  DRN. Other CSO assessments of the 1990s which informed the dRPC’s focus on CSO capacity building was the Action Aid UK’s engagement to assessment of CSOs in Nigeria and to develop a concept paper for the establishment of an Action Aid Office in Nigeria. Over the years the dRPC has conducted several researches including a national level landscaping of civil society organizations for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2014. The dRPC draws from the evidence of research reports on performance gaps and challenges of CSOs to develop projects to strengthen the organizational and technical capacity of selected CSOs we engage. The dRPC’s model for CSO capacity strengthen is a learning by doing one where mini-grants are critical to groups implementing new skills learnt. This is a development practice approach in which cohorts of 10 to 20 CSOs are taken through an inception  training and mentoring program in organizational capacity building starting with staffing planning, visioning, and fund raising. This is followed by inception technical capacity building training on strategic advocacy communication, monitoring and evaluation and financial management of donor funds.  The next phase in that sub-grant funds are then released and CSO performance monitored and CSOs supported through targeted training and mentoring. The dRPC’s experience in CSO capacity building is underpinned by a theory of change that – inception skills, knowledge and sector-awareness of  CSO, enabled by sub-grants and supportive supervision. Peer monitoring and evaluation is the final stage of the dRPC’s capacity building approach.