Internationalization for voluntary organizations

This strategy is the complete opposite of a multidomestic strategy. It sacrifices responsiveness to local requirements within each of its zones and regions in favour of emphasizing efficiency. This does not mean that minor modifications or adaptions in the activity will be made regarding those zones/regions/countries, but in general terms a global strategy will be adopted, and management decisions will be taken following global objectives, without taking local necessities into account.

As previously stated, this strategy aims at achieving the greatest possible levels of efficiency in the use of resources and finances, by deleting the costs of researching and adapting the activity to the needs of specific zones of the world. This reduces the complexity of managing the organisation, but also creates a lot more risks: the lack of adaption to local necessities reduces the reaction possibilities against events on those zones, as well as compromises the usefulness of the activity and service provided by your organisation.

Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash

When we conclude that this strategy is easier to manage than others, we are not stating that it is an easy task at all: Making global decisions and managing an organisation spread into several countries without much information about each of those projects is really complex. A global following and analysis of the organisation situation is mandatory.

This strategy best fits big organisations that want to spread their activity globally, into dozens of countries, and already having the capability to do so (a good network of donors and funders, installations, access to resources…)