Article
The role of the Riva Secretariat
Every network has to answer a practical question: what do we do together, and what does each of us do alone? The Secretariat is our answer to the first half.
Why is there a Secretariat?
Who it is
The Riva Secretariat is led by the Secretary General, who is also the CEO of Stichting Riva, the Dutch foundation that is the network's legal home. They are supported by a Deputy Secretary General. Under that sit five small teams: Secretary General's Office; Strategy, Programme Quality and Learning; Brand and communications; Business Development; and Administration — finance, HR and ICT. Around twenty people in all, adding up to fewer than nine full-time posts.
The unusual part is that this lean Secretariat employs almost no-one directly. Every role is seconded from a Member, mostly part-time, so the people running the network's shared functions are the same people doing the work in country. It is a virtual team drawn from across the network — paid for chiefly by the Members themselves, which is about as direct as accountability gets.
What it does
Each unit is a small core that coordinates its counterparts across the network — communications officers, finance staff, learning leads — and commissions specialists where more depth is needed. In practice that means representing Riva and holding its governance and alliances; keeping the network's strategy, programme quality and institutional memory; carrying the brand and the shared channels; helping Members win work through funder intelligence, pipeline discipline and proposal support; and running the common financial control, HR policy and ICT systems everyone relies on.
The Secretariat coordinates the network; it does not run it. Strategy, plans and budgets are agreed collectively by the members. The Secretariat's job is to make those decisions possible — and then to make them work.