NGO Accountability

As the corporate responsibility movement seeks greater transparency and commitments on the part of businesses, commentators have begun asking, if governments are accountable to the people who elect them, and companies are accountable to shareholders and perhaps to society to a growing degree, who are NGO’s accountable to? What do NGOs have to report on? If I give money, how do I know where it’s going?

Coming from an NGO background, I believe NGOs or civil society organisations, to be, on the whole, as accountable as other societal actors, if not more so, as their raison d’être is to fulfill a social mission or provide a public good where government has failed, or to protect minorities from the 'tyranny of the majority'. In addition, they rely on donors’ trust in them to obtain funding and for large grants, NGOs often have to submit lengthy reports on how the money was spent. However, NGOs and other non-profits, as organisations, inevitably suffer from some of the same maladies as businesses and governments (witness the recent UN scandals, for example). Companies often question NGO campaign strategies and targets. Naming and shaming works best on well-known brands, even if some lesser known companies are doing far more damage to the environment or more egregiously violating human rights. A representative from a large NGO once told me as much – they needed to pick on high profile companies so as to keep the funding coming in.

So NGO accountability has become somewhat of a buzzword of late, and it was even the topic of a BSR session this year at their annual conference in New York. In response, a group of international NGOs has drafted the “INGO Accountability Charter”, covering topics such as independence, responsible advocacy, good governance, and ethical fundraising. However, the Charter only calls for “progressive” application of the Principles and there is no enforcement mechanism. Furthermore, to date, only 11 organisations have signed on. And this is not the first NGO code of conduct to be created; there are several others in existence already.

But there is one NGO accountability initiative that involves a comprehensive set of standards enforced through third party verification within a multistakeholder certification process. The InterAction Child Sponsorship Certification was established in 2004 in partnership with Social Accountability International (SAI). InterAction is a US-based membership organisation for NGOs with around 160 members. The certification is based on InterAction’s membership standards for “private voluntary organisations” (the PVO Standards). Previously, members were just asked to sign a document saying they were in compliance with the standards. Now, all members must complete a self-assessment questionnaire and submit it, along with supporting evidence, to InterAction. In addition, members may seek formal certification against the Standards. The process involves a third-party headquarters audit and randomly selected audits in the field to assess the extent to which centralised governance, financial, and child protection controls exist and are being applied at the field level. In July, 2005, five child sponsorship organisations (World Vision, Christian Children’s Fund, Save the Children, Plan USA, and Children International) achieved certification.

CSCC, as one of the accredited certifying bodies for InterAction, deployed auditors to various countries in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia to visit programme sites that provide benefits to sponsored children and their communities. Our auditors were able to evaluate how the donor money was spent, how the benefits were tracked, and how children were protected from inappropriate correspondence, among other things. The findings were presented to the Certification Review Panel with representatives from InterAction, donors, sponsors, subject matter experts and certification body (such as CSCC) representatives. The certification lasts for four years and random surveillance audits are conducted at field sites every six months.

While this certification programme does not address responsible advocacy, it does provide a model for a credible, multistakeholder process that can serve to enhance the confidence of donors that their money is making an impact.

For more information, see the InterAction website: www.interaction.org/newswire/detail.php?id=4197