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MGMishqah Gous

Funders & CSI

7 Questions Every CSI Funder ShouldAsk Before Funding Another Training Programme

By Mishqah Gous7 minute read

South African companies invest heavily in education.

That matters.

It also creates a responsibility to ask whether money is funding activity or movement.

Trialogue’s 2025 research found that education remained the most popular CSI cause, supported by 91% of surveyed companies and receiving 44% of average CSI expenditure. Source: Trialogue

When that much attention and money flows into education and skills development, “How many people attended?” is not a strong enough question.

The more useful question is:

What changed for the people because the programme existed?

I have spent much of my career close to the point where funder intention meets participant reality. That includes learning design, facilitation, recruitment, onboarding, programme implementation and support.

From that position, these are seven questions I believe every funder, foundation and CSI team should ask before approving another training programme.

1. Who helped define the problem?

Every proposal has a problem statement.

The question is who shaped it.

Was the problem defined by the funder?

The implementing organisation?

A consultant?

A community leader?

The participants themselves?

The strongest programmes usually have more than one source of insight.

Trialogue’s recent M&E research found that companies and nonprofits increasingly collaborate with one another on programme and measurement design. But beneficiary involvement was still weaker in programme design and M&E methodology than in interviews or feedback. Source: Trialogue

That gap matters.

If participants only enter the process after the programme has already been designed, they are being asked to fit the intervention.

Sometimes the intervention should fit them.

For a Cape Flats programme, for example, I would want to understand practical realities such as transport, data, family responsibilities, local opportunity networks, language, confidence and trust before deciding what delivery should look like.

That is why my working belief is:

Understand before you design.

2. What happens after the training?

This is the question I would put in bold on every CSI proposal.

Training ends.

Then what?

If the programme teaches employability, where are the employer relationships?

If it teaches entrepreneurship, how will participants test customers and access markets?

If it teaches digital skills, what can participants do with those skills next?

If it teaches financial literacy, what behaviour is expected to change?

A programme can be well run and still stop too early.

South Africa is already seeing funding models that push harder on post-training outcomes. The Jobs Boost Outcomes Fund links payments to milestones that include job placement and employment retention, rather than paying only for enrolment. Source: Trialogue

Not every CSI initiative should become an outcomes fund.

The principle is still useful:

fund what you actually care about.

If the goal is employment, training completion should not be the final measure.

3. Is the programme connected to real demand?

There is a painful version of skills development where participants are trained in something that has nowhere to go.

Everyone does their job.

The trainer delivers.

The participant attends.

The funder reports.

The market does not care.

That is why CSI training programmes in South Africa need stronger demand logic.

Ask:

  • Which employers need these capabilities?
  • Which sectors are hiring?
  • What does entry actually require?
  • Is the training recognised?
  • Is practical experience needed?
  • Are there enough opportunities for the number of participants?
  • If enterprise is the pathway, who are the customers?

A 2026 longitudinal study of South African youth employment programmes found strong associations between job matching and employability outcomes. Source: Evaluation and Program Planning

That is an important reminder.

A programme cannot only prepare people.

It should understand what it is preparing them for.

4. Are facilitators properly resourced?

This is the question that is often invisible in the budget.

Funders see delivery hours.

Facilitators live the hours around delivery.

Preparation.

Research.

Content adaptation.

Learner communication.

Assessment.

Feedback.

Administration.

Follow-up.

Emotional labour.

If the funding model only recognises the visible facilitation hour, the programme may quietly depend on unpaid commitment.

That is not sustainable.

A facilitator who understands the community, holds institutional knowledge and continuously improves the learning experience is not simply “delivery capacity”.

They are part of programme quality.

Before approving a budget, ask:

  • Is preparation funded?
  • Is facilitator development funded?
  • Is administration realistic?
  • Are travel and communication considered?
  • Is there time for reflection and improvement?
  • Who supports facilitators when participant needs become complex?

Cheap facilitation can become expensive programme failure.

5. What will be measured beyond attendance?

CSI needs numbers.

Boards need accountability.

Funders need to know what happened.

But the measurement model must be proportionate to the claim.

If a programme claims to “transform livelihoods”, attendance cannot be the only evidence.

If it claims to improve employability, measure something about employability.

If it claims to improve enterprise capability, track application.

If it claims to strengthen financial behaviour, look for behaviour.

Trialogue’s 2025 data shows that outputs, outcomes and impact are increasingly part of corporate M&E conversations. It also shows how much implementation detail sits behind those claims, including limited M&E budgets in many organisations. Source: Trialogue

A funder should therefore ask not only:

What will you measure?

but:

Who will pay for good measurement?

If measurement is required but not resourced, the implementing partner may be forced to choose between delivery and evidence.

6. Can the programme adapt when reality disagrees with the proposal?

Proposals are written before programmes happen.

Communities are experienced during delivery.

Those are not the same information environments.

Good programme governance needs enough accountability to protect funding and enough flexibility to respond to what is learned.

Maybe recruitment assumptions were wrong.

Maybe participants need more time.

Maybe a digital delivery model is excluding people.

Maybe facilitators are seeing a barrier the original design missed.

Maybe an employer partner changes its hiring criteria.

A rigid programme can meet the proposal and fail the person.

Ask the implementing partner:

What are you allowed to change without being punished for learning?

That question tells you a lot about whether the programme is designed for compliance or effectiveness.

7. What should remain after the funding ends?

This is bigger than “sustainability” as a proposal buzzword.

What capability remains?

What knowledge remains?

What relationships remain?

What resources remain?

What can local facilitators continue?

What does the organisation know now that it did not know before?

What can be repeated?

What should never be repeated?

Sometimes the most valuable output of a pilot is not the number of participants reached.

It is a stronger model.

That can include:

  • facilitator guides
  • a programme playbook
  • local partnerships
  • evidence about what works
  • participant pathways
  • stronger delivery systems
  • a trained facilitator pool
  • community trust
  • an improved curriculum

Funding should leave more than a final report.

A better CSI funding conversation

I do not believe the answer is to make every funding application more complicated.

It is to make the questions more honest.

A useful sequence is:

Context → participant → design → facilitator → delivery → application → opportunity → outcome → learning

That sequence keeps the person visible all the way through.

For me, social investment is strongest when the funder, implementing partner and community can all explain how the programme is supposed to create movement and what each party needs to make that movement realistic.

The goal should not be fewer training programmes.

The goal should be better-connected ones.

For funder strategy and programme support, explore Social Impact Programme Consulting and Funders & CSI.

Related services include Programme Design Consulting and Programme Implementation Consulting.

Related reading: the nine signs a skills programme is measuring reach instead of impact.

Frequently asked questions

What should CSI funders measure in a training programme?
Measures should match the programme’s intended outcome. Attendance and completion are useful outputs, but funders may also need to track learning, behaviour, application, employment, enterprise activity, progression or other relevant outcomes.
Why should funders involve participants in programme design?
Participants can reveal practical barriers, strengths and local context that may not be visible from proposal documents. Their insight can improve recruitment, delivery, accessibility and relevance.
Are outcomes-based funding models always better?
No. They can be useful where outcomes are measurable and attribution is reasonable, but they can also shift risk onto implementing organisations. Funding models should fit the problem and programme.
How much should a CSI programme spend on monitoring and evaluation?
There is no universal percentage that fits every programme. M&E should be proportionate to programme scale, risk, claims and learning needs, and should be properly budgeted rather than treated as an unfunded requirement.
What makes a training programme sustainable?
Sustainability can include local capability, facilitator development, repeatable resources, strong partnerships, evidence, institutional knowledge and realistic post-funding delivery options.

Sources

  • Trialogue, Overview of CSI spend on education in 2025
  • Trialogue, Overview of monitoring & evaluation practice in South Africa
  • Trialogue, Jobs Boost Outcomes Fund: Youth Employment through outcomes-based funding
  • Evaluation and Program Planning, Program design and youth employability outcomes in South Africa

About the author

Mishqah Gous is a Cape Town-based Learning, Skills Development & Community Impact Consultant. Her work sits between programme intention and participant reality, helping organisations think through learning design, mobilisation, facilitation, implementation, participant experience and responsible scale. Her experience includes work across youth, skills, entrepreneurship, employability and community programmes. She believes funders should be able to see both the numbers in the report and the person behind them.

More about Mishqah Gous

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