OWT's Christmas present

One World Trust today published its 2007 Global Accountability Report. It compares 30 intergovernmental, non-governmental and corporate bodies on measures of transparency, participation, evaluation and complaint handling.

The international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) under study (in order of best to worst performing) are:

• Christian Aid
• International Accounting Standards Board
• International Save the Children Alliance
• Aga Khan Foundation
• Human Rights Watch
• International Organization for Standardization
• Medecins Sans Frontiers International
• MERCY Malaysia
• Greenpeace International
• Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)

The headline findings are:

• Only 3 INGOs have transparency policies and two lack readily-accessible ‘contact us’ functions
• All the examined INGOs make commitments to engage external stakeholders but only four have organisation-wide guidelines in this regard
• Over half the INGOs have evaluation policies but only two commit to being open with evaluation results.
• The overall quality of INGO internal complain handling is high but external complain procedures are where the sector’s accountability capabilities are least developed.

One World Trust are now carrying out their survey of 30 organisations every year. One suggestion: why don't they also include a review of a selection of previous years' organisations to see if they've improved or not?

Innovate this

Why is innovation such a big deal in business but so difficult for government and the third sector to get to grips with?

It's because NGOs and the state don't face the same incentives as business does. The main priority becomes fulfilling contracts and getting more contracts - not addressing the problem in fundamentally new ways.

This isn't a problem which is easy to solve, but (you guessed it) increased transparency would certainly help. If donors were totally candid about their successes and failures then there would be more of an opportunity to piece together what works and what doesn't. Someone, somewhere, might even come up with a better way of doing things.

Another way to inject some innovation would be to flip the funding model on its head. Instead of paying development organisations for what inputs they say they will deliver (as in the normal contract model), they could be payed for the outcomes they achieve (as in the prize model). Several renegade philanthropists are now operating in this way. It makes you wonder: if the promise of a large prize can galvanize engineers into designing affordable space travel, what could it do for development?