Nick's corner: My hit on a growth strategy.

Now that I've been ranting about CISV being conservative, afraid of change, I owe you a constructive suggestion how to move forward. And here is shall be: I hope that by now most people would agree, that we need to grow, and growing the number of chapters or into new countries is not our focus. I also hope we agree that instead, CISV should put a focus in increasing the members of existing chapters and participation in our programmes, I would like to suggest a stragtegy that I think would work out (drums please:)

Focus on Interchange and Mosaic.

Why Interchange? Interchange is a very established programme that most chapters are familiar with. Promotion is simple, because non-CISVers are familiar with the concept from school and other exchange organizations. You may say, that Interchange is not our strongest programme educational-wise - but the International Interhcange Committee (ICC) would answer, that there have been some substantial improvements in the past years. You may also say, that Interchange is not a unique programme - but as mentioned above, that could be more of an advantage, and we could advertise it as a "high-quality-version". On the administrational side, it's fairly light on the chapters: No staff, no kitchen duties, no camp site. On the volunteer side, it has the best participant to leader ratio and financially - it brings in new membership fees as well as international participation fees. Furthermore, Interchanges span a big age-range, which will make you more flexible, in what you can offer. But probably the strongest argument in favour of Interchange is that it involves the families very intensly: With every IC-participant you don't get one, but at least 3 people involved in CISV during the period of the programme.

Why Mosaic? Mosaic is our most flexible programme that can be easily adapted to the resources and interests of a chapter. It can be fairly light on the organizational and financial, but very strong on the content side. In brings CISVs educational stuff to everybody in the chapter. It exposes CISV's core not only to the chapter members but also to the outside world. If Mosaics are run in partnerships with LMOs, the chapter also builds partnerships that it may be able to harvest later. Mosaic will not bring in funds for the international organization, but will make a chapter more attractive for a long-term membership of families. The strongest argument in favor of Mosaic, is that it offers the opportunity to expose and involve the biggest possible number of people to our content areas. In fact, it may change the whole nature of a chapter, that is focused on management and conduction of programmes, to a chapter that operates at the heart of our philosophy.


And what about all the other programmes? If we manage to stabilize them at the current numbers for now, they might grow automatically: Mosaics will most naturally stimulate the growths of IPPs. Interchange participants will logically be interested in taking part in the Summer Camp, and later the Seminar Camp programme. Youth meetings will also be interesting as a short-term international experience for those that enjoy CISV. Looking at villages from a sustainability/growth perspective, it's the only programme I would settle with staying at the current, already quite high number of camps hosted annually.

Both Mosaic and Interchange also have the advantage, that they are being neglected by many chapters these days, meaning: they have a huge potential. If we aimed for a growth target of 10-20%  annually in both of these programmes over the next 5 years, the impact of CISV would reach levels, we would never dare dreaming about today.