As international funding from foundations and bilateral agencies has dramatically decreased and continues to do so, civil society organizations in Latin America need to look to contracts with local and national governments and to collaborative ventures with company CSR strands in order to generate the resources they need to continue their work. This was the general conclusion of one of the most crucial sessions at the XI Ibero-American Meeting of Civil Society held in Madrid last month. Indeed, the conference title, ‘A Necessary Change’, reflected the urgency of the question on both sides of the Atlantic, as overseas funding diminishes in Latin America and Spain’s economic woes deepen. However, participants also noted that though these are the most promising sources of future support, they are also fraught with difficulty ‒ as other civil society communities around the world attempting to embrace similar solutions have found.

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