Mystery shopping

What do you make of this? On 5th February 2008 I contacted eight large international development charities, all of whom are signatory to the International NGO Accountability Charter.

I asked each of them to publish a detailed breakdown of their expenditure for the last tax year. For each project funded within 2006-07 I wanted to know a) the name of the project b) the location of the project c) a list of funders for the project and d) the total expenditure on the project in the tax year.

None of the organisations has been able to produce me with this list. None were even able to give me just the names of the projects they funded over that year.

Their excuses were as follows:

• ActionAid - "we try to balance the need for transparency with what we think readers will find digestible, useful and informative"
  
• British Red Cross - "administrative processes [must] remain cost-effective, thus maximising the money available for our front line services."
  
• CAFOD - no reply
  
• CARE International UK - no reply
  
• Christian Aid - just a link to the annual report
• Oxfam - see this post and this post
  
• Plan International - no reply
  
• Save the Children - "this is a considerable amount of information for us to prepare and will use valuable resources".
  
• Tearfund - a link to total grants made to top 50 partner organisations.

This is simply unacceptable. Producing a list of funded projects annually certainly is time-consuming, especially when financial data is included as well. But charities which take a large proportion of their income from the public should consider themselves to be under a moral duty to be transparent. Publishing a list of funded activities would obviously improve aid co-ordination as well.

No doubt these thoughts were in the chief executives' minds when they signed the International NGO Accountability Charter. This states that "By signing this Charter we seek to promote further the values of transparency and accountability that we stand for, and commit our INGO to respecting its provisions." The Charter goes on to say: "We are committed to openness, transparency and honesty about our structures, mission, policies and activities. We will communicate actively to stakeholders about ourselves, and make information publicly available."

I call on these organisations to meet their commitments.

The other side to all this...

....is, of course, fundraising.

Steve Bridger's got a good blog on how NGOs can get themselves up to speed with the whole Web 2.0 thang from the fundraising point of view. This presentation summarises his (slightly evangelical but still interesting) views.

But a quick look at the development NGOs' wiki-blog-mash-up-myspace-facebook things (e.g. Oxfam's and ActionAid's) shows they haven't quite got the full picture. Web 2.0, and the associated rise in consumer personalisation and peer-to-peer interaction, demand that organisations relinquish power. Development charities can't just sit on MySpace collecting their online friends - they have to act in a genuinely friendly way too.

People want opportunities to connect and share their experiences of the organisation. If those opportunities are to be at all attractive they must be meaningful. For them to be meaningful they must include the possibility that the organisation will be criticised. It will hurt in the short-term but the early adopters will reap the rewards in the long term.

Hobbs on accountability

The Herald Tribune recently published an interview with Jeremy Hobbs, the executive director of Oxfam International.

In it, he teasingly says: "...if NGOs take over public responsibilities then they would have to be accountable to the public they serve."

Indeed.

Urking Oxfam (1)

The impetus for this blog came from an unexpected and unsettling experience with Oxfam. In July 2007 I emailed them for a list of all the projects which they had funded in the tax year 2006-07 - so that I could see where in the world the money goes and what it goes towards.

But I was disappointed. The Supporter Relations department told me:

"If you have been unable to find the exact breakdown of our budgets and expenditure, then I'm afraid this information is not available to the public."

Looking harder I found that in their Annual Report for the 2005-06 tax year, Oxfam provide this pie chart...

...which indicates how £196.5 million was distributed between the five Oxfam aims - but it gives no more detail who is receiving the money or what they are doing with it.

The report states that over £40 million of the expenditure is made through grants (1,782 of them apparently) to other NGOs or other Oxfams. A quick analysis of the top 50 recipients reveals a pattern of expenditure as follows:

Oxfam region	Grants in £thousands
East Asia	249
Southern Africa	510
Central America, Mexico and Caribbean	791
South America	880
West Africa	1,436
Middle East, Eastern europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States	1,535
Global	1,876
South Asia	2,538
Horn, East and Central Africa	3,708
Grand Total	13,523

It is interesting to see how money is distributed around the world. But no meaningful conclusions can be drawn because these grants only represent a fraction of the total grants made in the year (about 12%) and most of Oxfam's money is not distributed through grants anyway.

In total, £176 million of Oxfam's income for the year came from voluntary sources (ordinary donations, legacies, public appeals, DEC appeals, the DfID PPA and other gifts). That's money that comes from you and me. In addition DfID and other public agencies (e.g. UN, European Union etc.) gave £48 million. That's also money that comes from you and me.

But as to what this money is actually spent on, we are left in the dark. There are no other details on:

• Which organisations received grants from Oxfam
• Where Oxfam's money was spent
• On what activities Oxfam's money was spent

Why can't Oxfam be open and transparent about where our money goes?