About Us: The Center for Sustainable Development

Initially, I worked as a consultant, grant writer, program designer, team coach and workshop leader. Later, I was the Director of Development at a University on a three year contract to turn the department around.

Over six years I really learned—from the inside—all about your needs and challenges as NGO specialists. I began to realize that I wanted to be able to help more NGOs than I was able to do solo.

Boy did I learn a lot about starting and running a nonprofit in the early years of CSDi. Those new insights were added on top of what I had already learned from you all in the six years before starting the Center. This was where the rubber hit the road: I was now in the same game as you were—no longer just an outside consultant.

• finding donors
• finding volunteers
• communicating and engaging with donors and volunteers
• completing the cycle of actually getting donations
• finding staff
• getting new programs off the ground—and then running them
• finding myself in the middle of a new and emerging technology wave

Having worked with so many of you I realized that I wasn't the lone wolf. Many of you had also struggled with the same challenges. So I decided to begin compiling my experiences: the tools and techniques that I found had worked. I then used them to develop a series of training programs to address our common needs and challenges.

• build skill sets and visibility for a new job or promotion
• better identify potential donors
• collect compelling stories from your programs
• boost donor marketing and communications (and donations!)
• increase online donations (using emerging web technologies!)
• develop projects that solve challenges and that can be funded
• learn time-saving techniques for getting everything done
• learn to better manage projects

• nonprofit marketing and communications
• developing resources online: donations, volunteers, subscribers and AdWords grants
• project/program design, funding, management and reporting

• Executive Directors and Communications, Development and Program Directors
• Administrative Coordinators
• Program Coordinators
• Volunteer Coordinators
• Grant Writers
• Board Members
• Donors
• People hoping to transition into the nonprofit world

Since 2008, The Center for Sustainable Development—CSDi—has specialized in providing sound, evidence-based information, tools and training for development professionals worldwide.

CSDi is firmly committed to proven, results-based solutions to end suffering and poverty. Our goal is to spread these solutions across the globe through our online field guides, resources and interactive online workshops. Work with us & become the solution.

Our mission is to improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people by increasing the impact of development projects through empowering in-country field staff with the knowledge and skills to work more effectively.

We can cost efficiently provide a development field worker anywhere in the world with personalized information that helps them work more effectively. This distinctive capability is underpinned by the breadth of expertise of our team, our proven project development process, our extensive digital library and ongoing dialogue with and between our global network of students and alumni.

We provide in-country development field staff around the world with affordable, accessible and personalized information, training, consultancy and networking services to enable them to better plan and execute their projects. Information services include fact sheets, lesson plans, reading lists and articles that are provided free of charge via the www.csd-i.org website and e-newsletter.

Training and consultancy services are principally provided via our online courses. We also run in-country custom workshops.

Organisational Values & Culture: We are a US registered charity. We achieve results by using information to unleash the potential of others. Our work is guided by the values of compassion, evidence, respect, rigor and transparency.

CSDi is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

What We Do
The Center for Sustainable Development was developed to provide sound, evidence-based information, tools and training for humanitarian development professionals worldwide.

We Focus in Three Areas:
1. Development Projects Designed to End Human Suffering Sustainably
The Center has worked with participants in 153 countries to design, fund, launch and manage projects that help people lead the healthy, productive, meaningful lives they need for leaving the cycle of poverty. Projects have been developed and are being developed with partners to impact the lives of over 400,000 people.

Project themes have included safe water, sanitation, children's health, family planning, nutrition and home gardens, soil and water conservation, connecting farmers to markets, education and literacy, forest restoration, micro-enterprise development, and adapting to climate change.

CSDi’s role is in helping participants design sustainable, impact-oriented projects that will solve community challenges.

2. Training and Capacity Building
The Center provides training workshops in designing, launching and managing sustainable development projects, and organizational strengthening, among others.

Field staff in developing nations often don't have access to training so we developed Online Courses that are exactly parallel to the workshops -- even including field components that online students to complete in their communities as part of assignments. These online courses are accessible to staff from all over the world.

Professionals from over 153 countries have used our online courses to develop projects.

3. Information Knowledge Center
In order to make progress in solving the complex problems humanity faces, development workers need to use activities in the field which have shown evidence of working. At the Center, we analyze scientific studies to see which field activities show evidence of solving challenges in the developing world.

We then share this information through simple tools on our website. People from over 218 countries have visited our website (see map below right) to find field guides, community workshop lesson plans, posters and handouts which they can download from the site to use in their community projects. There are dozens of activities which we've documented in this manner on our Field Tools page.

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