How do you know how your organization is performing? Here at Keystone Accountability we say for a clear indication of how you are doing ask the people you serve. It is these customers, clients, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders, or constituents as we call them, that are best placed to determine the value of your work.[…]
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Or so we are told. But is it true? Words are powerful and we use them carefully to evoke certain feelings and emotions. For example, the vast majority of international NGOs work in “partnerships”. What does this word partnerships evoke? Shared mutual benefits perhaps? Shared[…]
International non-governmental organizations often ask a lot of partners in terms of reporting requirements – but how many provide reports in return? This simple innovation, introduced after receiving feedback from partners has changed the dynamic for INGO Peace Direct. Peace Direct, which supports local peace-building organizations, engaged Keystone to survey their partners about the state[…]
Localization makes partnerships in development all the more important. In this guest blog Ros Tennyson, Director of Strategy at The Partnership Brokers Association discusses the challenges of multi-stakeholder partnerships in development. Multi-stakeholder partnerships for humanitarian relief and sustainable development are much promoted (especially by donors) as the way to tackle the complicated and complex challenges we face. As[…]
Oxfam is serious about partnerships and so joined 76 other international non-governmental organisations in taking Keystone’s Partnership survey, which solicits views from partners. “The results were not particularly shocking to those of us working in programs although we hadn’t expected we would do so poorly,” said Makarand Sahasrabuddhe Program Quality Lead for Oxfam International. “The[…]
Collaboration is a core value of international non-governmental organisation (INGO) WaterAid. The organization knows it can only achieve universal access to water and sanitation (WASH) by working with others including government bodies, civil society organisations, academic institutions, donors, other NGOs and the private sector. WaterAid wants to develop empowering and mutually accountable and respectful relationships[…]
There is a growing understanding that constituent feedback is crucial to development work. The terms “feedback” and “listening” now permeate our collective discussions, so much so that Lucy Bernholz has made “Constituent Feedback” one of the top buzzwords in her recently published Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2014. As Lucy notes, however, feedback is[…]
After almost four years, 62 participating international NGOs and over 3,000 responses from local partners to our Development Partnerships Survey, Keystone is proud to present a short report (it’s only 8 pages long!) on what we are learning so far. The headlines are: Financial support is well administrated by INGOs, but often conditions are too[…]
The latest version of the Insight on Conflict blog features a call for participants for Keystone’s Development Partnerships survey. To read the blog piece written by InterAction, please click here. Insight on Conflict is a project launched by Peace Direct, the UK-based charity that finds, funds and promotes local peacebuilders in conflict areas around the world.
Sam Worthington, President and CEO of InterAction issues an invite to Keystone’s Development Partnership survey. The invite is below. ___________________________________________________ Dear Colleagues, In 2010, 28 international NGOs in the United States and Europe participated in the Keystone Performance Survey: Development Partnerships to assess the quality of their relationships with their local partners across five[…]