RINGO Funder Action Pod: Exploring New Approaches to Accountability

The Fun­der Action Pod, con­vened by RINGO and Coun­cil on Foun­da­tions, aims to reimag­ine fun­der rela­tion­ships with their tra­di­tion­al part­ners (INGOs) in a way that shifts pow­er and resources to local actors. A key ele­ment of this process is for fun­ders to find a new approach to account­abil­i­ty – one which strength­ens com­mu­ni­ty voice and the fab­ric of local and nation­al civ­il soci­ety in par­tic­u­lar. At the meet­ing of RINGO’s Fun­der Action Pod in late Feb­ru­ary 2024, a wide range of donors (from bi-lat­er­als to foun­da­tions, to spe­cial and col­lec­tive funds) came togeth­er to explore what reimag­ined account­abil­i­ty might look like for them and how it can play a part in shift­ing pow­er.

Doing things differently

The ses­sion was shaped by pre­sen­ta­tions from Kate Moger (Direc­tor, Pledge for Change) and Jimm Chick Fomunjong (Head of Knowl­edge Man­age­ment, West African Civ­il Soci­ety Insti­tute) who are lead­ing the work on the inno­v­a­tive Pledge Account­abil­i­ty and Learn­ing Mech­a­nism (PALM). The Pledge works with a dozen NGOs that are com­mit­ted to chang­ing their prac­tices to build a stronger aid ecosys­tem, and the PALM is the embed­ding of account­abil­i­ty and learn­ing into the ini­tia­tive. We also invit­ed Car­olyne Ng’eny, the Pro­gramme Offi­cer of Fire­light Foun­da­tion, to share their work as a mul­ti donor trust fund that sup­ports move­ments, grass roots and com­mu­ni­ty based organ­i­sa­tions (CBOs) to dri­ve sys­tems change for chil­dren and young peo­ple in East and South­ern Africa. The approach that Fire­light Foun­da­tion has tak­en to cen­tre CBOs in its account­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms and approach­es was fan­tas­tic to hear about.

Barriers to change

New mod­els of account­abil­i­ty were dis­cussed with a spir­it of open­ness and enthu­si­asm, along with a dose of real­ism. On the lat­ter, vir­tu­al­ly all of the fun­ders present not­ed they face restric­tions in the scope and speed of change due to their oblig­a­tions to dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers. It was not­ed that these con­straints can be quite dif­fer­ent for bi-lat­er­al gov­ern­men­tal donors and foun­da­tions. Gov­ern­ments must mar­shall the polit­i­cal will to make changes to account­abil­i­ty approach­es, often need­ing sup­port from con­stituen­cies (leg­is­la­tors, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, vot­ers etc) who may be devel­op­ment scep­tics and moti­vat­ed by colo­nial or great pow­er ideas about “for­eign aid”. Pri­vate phil­an­thropy can be shaped by a founder and/or a Board of Direc­tors. In most cas­es pri­vate phil­an­thropy has less fund­ing to move, and the con­straints are less com­plex for foun­da­tions than for gov­ern­ment donors.

A shift in practice

Even with­in the lim­i­ta­tions, change is hap­pen­ing. A num­ber of foun­da­tions are mov­ing toward more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry part­ner eval­u­a­tions, includ­ing a shift in for whom and how impact is mea­sured, and who is account­able to whom for results. Over­all, efforts are being made so that account­abil­i­ty to the “end user” of devel­op­ment is placed at the cen­tre. On a prac­ti­cal lev­el, care must be tak­en that requests for feed­back are not extrac­tive, and that data and learn­ing are active­ly shared with and help­ful to com­mu­ni­ties and CBOs. The exam­ple shared by Fire­light Foun­da­tion illus­trat­ed that chal­leng­ing and flip­ping the tra­di­tion­al mod­el demands sig­nif­i­cant time and resources.

Action Agenda

Mov­ing for­wards, here are a few areas for fun­ders to be aware of and to nav­i­gate care­ful­ly:

• If fun­ders are work­ing with and through inter­me­di­ary organ­i­sa­tions, they need to be aware of the type of account­abil­i­ty prac­tis­es these part­ners are using, and ensure that they are not repeat­ing or entrench­ing extrac­tive prac­tices
• Fun­ders also need to be con­scious of and care­ful with the ques­tion of who is pay­ing for eval­u­a­tion work. Those who pay can then hold a lev­el of pow­er which, if not care­ful­ly man­aged, could impact on the accu­ra­cy and rel­e­vance of the work.
• Fun­ders have a his­to­ry of requir­ing met­rics that serve oth­er stake­hold­ers and do not serve a community’s local objec­tives. These pow­er dynam­ics need to be active­ly man­aged.

But, of course, com­mu­ni­ties and CBOs are het­ero­ge­neous – there is no sin­gle point of view and a com­mu­ni­ty will have many stake­hold­ers who will not agree on what are the best inter­ven­tions and how to best mea­sure impact. Fun­ders, rather than reject­ing or min­imis­ing these dif­fer­ences, can lead by build­ing this vari­ety into their account­abil­i­ty mod­els and edu­cat­ing their own stake­hold­ers. Under­stand­ing the nuance and embrac­ing the messi­ness could be a crit­i­cal step towards trust build­ing with CBOs. This means recog­nis­ing and mit­i­gat­ing bar­ri­ers born from a colo­nial mind­set and trust­ing that com­mu­ni­ties know what they need. The assets and resources, knowl­edge and social net­works held in local com­mu­ni­ties need to be trust­ed and hon­oured, or new ideas of part­ner­ship and account­abil­i­ty will not flour­ish and bear fruit.

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Pho­to by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash