In September, SCS conducted a Learning Forum with USAID, International Center for Not-for-Profit Law and Aga Khan Foundation to explore methodology innovations for the Civil Society Organization Sustainability Index. As a result of the forum and feedback from stakeholders in the 71 countries creating the Index each year, refinements in FY 2019 will enhance the scoring and writing guidance, provide IPs with additional data-use guidance, and add topics to the Index, such as philanthropy, crowdfunding, civic technology, informal movements, government-dominated CSOs, disinformation campaigns, and ‘uncivil’ society groups.

In addition, SCS will pilot three innovations in FY 2019: 1) inviting greater amounts of stakeholder input through an electronic questionnaire; 2) partnering with a local university to conduct a peer review of the report; and 3) recalibrating select scores that either suffered from inaccurate baselines or became inaccurate over time.

The 2017 Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia was released in September and may be found at https://www.fhi360.org/resource/civil-society-organization-sustainability-index.