Despite the vital role fulfilled by Community Advice Offices (CAOs) in South Africa, the vast majority receive no state support for their work. They rely on donor funding from international or local grantmakers, generate their own income through various community-based projects, or rely on donations from local community members.

CAOs offer free advice services and operate predominantly in poor, rural communities. They struggle to sustain their operations solely from donations or local income generation as a result of the low economic base in many of these communities.

Over the last few years, CAO have mainly relied on donor funding to carry out their activities. Donor funding has however, been erratic and not evenly distributed to all parts of the country. This resulted in the closure of many CAOs, while others have continued to operate with minimal resources.

In order for people in poor and marginalised communities in South Africa to have access to reliable and effective CAOs, the sector requires a sustained and comprehensive national funding mechanism that would support local efforts by the community advice offices themselves to sustain their operations. The establishment of such a mechanism is one of Nadcao’s key strategic objectives by 2013.

Nadcao is in discussions with a number of stakeholders including government, private sector and donor organisations to formulate a comprehensive funding mechanism to sustainably and sufficiently support the basic operating costs of at least one CAO per municipality by 2013. In remote rural towns and villages, additional CAOs or satellite CAOs may be required due to the vast distances people may be required to travel.

CAOs are able to derive resources and income from a diversity of sources, including;

• donations and local fundraising programmes and campaigns
• donor grant-funding
• local, provincial and national government subsidies
• income generating projects