Up and Down, and Inside Out: Where do We Stand on NGO Accountability?

Locally led adaptation recognizes that people closest to the effects of climate change, especially those facing structural marginalization, require the financing and decision-making power to ensure that adaptation investments reflect their priorities. Supporters of locally led adaptation can leverage monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) processes to balance power, promote mutual accountability, elevate local knowledge and priorities, and create value for local actors. This paper recommends a systemic shift toward MEL that is locally led, context-aware, and itself adaptive. It provides steps throughout the MEL cycle and specific approaches, methods and tools that promote local agency in the interest of more effective and equitable locally led adaptation interventions. It builds on the recommendations of the Global Commission on Adaptation to increase decentralization of adaptation finance to the local level, and aims to support implementation of the eight Principles for Locally Led Adaptation that were developed for the Commission.

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“…active participation and enabling them to assess donor performance (Ebrahim 2003;Van Zyl and Claeyé 2019).…”

Section: Creating Value For Local Actors Avoids Extractive Melmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reshaping Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning for Locally Led Adaptation

Coger¹,

Corry²,

Gregorowski³

2021

WRIPUB

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“…Success can be considered in terms of achieving the intended outcomes or expected performance (Sawhill & Williamson, 2001;West & Ries, 2018). Indicators for success including outputs, outcomes and impacts have been identified and discussed in the literature in different contexts Gamble & Beer, 2017;Saj, 2013;Waweru & Spraakman, 2012;Yang & Northcott, 2019;Zyl & Claeyé, 2019). Ebrahim and Rangan (2014) present a simple approach in the context of poverty alleviation, such that output indicators focus on immediate results (such as number of people assisted), outcome indicators focus on medium and long-term results (e.g., increased income), and impact indicators focus on the root causes of poverty (such as improvements in human development).…”

Section: A Review Of Financial Sustainability and Success In Poverty Alleviationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, assessments of long-term outcomes and impact of NGO programmes remains challenging, lacking uniform approaches (Baur & Schmitz, 2012;Connolly & Hyndman, 2017;Ebrahim & Rangan, 2014;Gugerty, 2008;Sonpar et al, 2010). NGOs' priorities often focus on quantitative targets within short and pre-specified timeframes provided by donors, outputs rather than outcomes and impacts Houlbrook, 2011;Yang & Northcott, 2019;Zyl & Claeyé, 2019). This issue, as noted by Lall (2019), leads to the mission measurement paradox, where what is being measured (or in this case assessed as 'success'), does not reflect the organisation's mission.…”

Section: A Review Of Financial Sustainability and Success In Poverty Alleviationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding success in micro‐enterprise development: Dimensions and misconceptions

Chu

Luke

2021

Public Admin & Development

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This article examines micro-enterprise development (MED) programmes of nongovernment organisations (NGOs) in two developing countries, Bangladesh and Indonesia, to explore understandings of success from the perspectives NGO managers and beneficiaries. Interviews were conducted with managers from 20 MED NGOs, and individuals and groups of beneficiaries from four of the NGOs. A review of the NGOs' publicly available documents was also undertaken and compared with interview data. The findings reveal NGOs' understandings of success at the organisational-level-emphasised organisational development. However, NGOs' interpretations of success at the programme level focused primarily on short-term outputs rather than long-term outcomes and impacts, with limited follow-up by NGOs. Implications include potential misconceptions regarding understandings of success from an internal (NGO) versus external perspective, and the need for longterm monitoring to understand how sustainable NGOs' programme outcomes actually are. K E Y W O R D S micro-enterprise development, NGOs, success, sustainable poverty alleviation 1 | INTRODUCTION Poverty alleviation remains an ongoing challenge (Agyemang et al., 2017; World Bank, 2015) with global implications. Despite the continued efforts of non-government organisations (NGOs) and others to address poverty, the World Bank's (2019) most recent estimates note 10% of the world's population (736 million people)live in extreme poverty (on less than $1.90 a day), and for many nations, poverty reduction has slowed or even reversed. NGOs are perceived as essential actors in delivering aid programmes to alle-

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“…Within the stakeholder theory framework, accountability is frequently discussed in terms of upward and downward accountability (O'Dwyer and Boomsma, 2015;van Zyl and Claey e, 2019). For SEOs, this approach facilitates a broader perspective by emphasizing the importance of accounting to and for all organizational constituents, not just those in a position of authority.…”

Section: To Whom Is the Organization Accountable?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, the lack of disclosure of information externally raises concerns as to whether it is available internally. As social organizations, the importance of mechanisms which involve open dialogue cannot be underestimated (Ebrahim, 2003;van Zyl and Claey e, 2019). Disclosure is a powerful legitimating tool, primarily because disclosure recalls the idea of accountability, which is commonly considered to be good (Monfardini et al, 2013).…”

Section: Conclusion and Reflectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annual reporting by social enterprise organizations: “legitimacy surplus” or reporting deficit?

Connolly

Kelly

2020

AAAJ

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PurposeDrawing on an accountability framework developed for social enterprise organizations (SEOs), this paper examines the annual report disclosure practices of SEOs in the United Kingdom in order to investigate the types of accountability disclosed by SEOs.Design/methodology/approachAfter developing a SEO database, and utilizing a bespoke document coding checklist, the annual reports of 129 SEOs were examined.FindingsThe results indicate that while SEOs would be expected to account in line with normative stakeholder theory, many do not provide constructive and voluntary accountability information to their stakeholders, at least through the annual report, and that their focus is on satisfying legal obligations.Originality/valueIn response to calls for research to better understand accountability in new organizational contexts, this paper makes two contributions: firstly, by extending prior accountability research in the NFP sector to consider organizational hybrids, it raises questions about organizational accountability and how it is discharged in situations where an organization operates as a business and yet is accountable for its social mission; secondly, assuming these organizations are driven by their business and social logics, the findings suggest that SEO accountability disclosure practices are inconsistent with the social objectives on which they are based.

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Up and Down, and Inside Out: Where do We Stand on NGO Accountability?

Cited by 28 publications

References 46 publications

Reshaping Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning for Locally Led Adaptation

Reshaping Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning for Locally Led Adaptation

Understanding success in micro‐enterprise development: Dimensions and misconceptions

Annual reporting by social enterprise organizations: “legitimacy surplus” or reporting deficit?

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