Highlighting Accountability Initiative

I have been watching the social sector for quite sometime now and that includes the policy space. A while ago, I chanced upon Accountability Initiative (AI) and I find myself thoroughly impressed by the work they are doing. So impressive is their work that it actually go me to restart blogging after eons! :). But of course I did post about it briefly it in ThinkChange India

I am usually shy of talking about women in entrepreneurship in itself as an achievement as it makes me feel that the very statement lends support to the notion that men are better entrepreneurs at women. But I must confess that the first thing that made me stop and notice AI is that it is all women at the helm. Somehow. I have a psychologically driven belief that organizations founded and led by women are honest and purposeful than otherwise!

The second thing that interested me was the fact that 3 out of 5 of these women have a common background of education in London School of Economics, which probably means that they have trashed some plum job offers, came to India and focused on development.

AI is primarily interested in finding ways to institutionalize transparency and accountability in all government programs. Their flagship initiative is called PAISA (Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions: Studies in Accountability) which works towards developing tools to track fund flows right from the top all the way till the grassroots level to understand where and how implementation deviates from the intention. This is accompanied by a parallel capacity building initiative to empower stakeholders in education (like teachers, principals, parents, students). They have visited a village (called Sehore) and conducted awareness-drive of sorts on their entitlements and responsibilities under SSA by means of comics-like posters etc, and documented the lessons they have learnt.

To kick-off PAISA they have done an extensive expenditure track by means of sample surveys on SSA across the country. Their finding paints a very breathtakingly grim picture of planning, implementation, administration.

The PAISA exercise tells me that even if we assume no corruption, the current trend of planning, implementation of fund allocation is toothless and ineffective. The exercise highlights that decision making protocols that estimate the funds needed are short-circuited, definitions of roles and responsibilities at different hierarchies of administrations are confusing, funds often reach the school too late to be of any use and frequently teachers and grass-root level stakeholders often don't even understand the purpose of the fund that arrives at school. Sometimes stakeholders don't even know that they are stakeholders. Worse of them all, there is no formal grievance redressing system and the Parent Teachers Associations that are supposed to raise concerns back to the government don't meet.

What I understand from this is, the very fact that AI is going through with this exercise offers some hope but the is a long, long, long, long way to go before we see the light at the end of the tunnel,and the only way is to help organizations like AI build informed citizenry that raises as much hell as the trade unions do when they don't get Diwali bonus.

Going forward they plan to expand and replicate their efforts out of SSA into other government programs (like NREGA etc). Accountability Initiative's work appears to me to be extensive, purposeful, addresses an urgent need and reaches out to all stakeholders (government, schools, parents). Simultaneously, their presentation is simple, clear and transparent (which it better be :) )

Now the question is, do people like you and I have it in us to take time, stop and take a look at what they are doing and help them?

SE session 10: Writing fund-raising proposal

I couldn't attend this class. So, this post owes its credit to my classmate, Manmohan Jain.

1. Most NGOs overseas average about 51% earned income. The percentage for Indian NGOs is much lower. Earned income is income generated by the NGO. It could be either by
- sales of goods (T-shirts, auction of paintings by hearing-impaired children)
- volunteer activities e.g organizing a qawali nite / music concert
- beneficiary created products (hand made carpets or some other handicraft of a particular community)

2. People give to People -
At the end of the day it is a person that you are making the appeal to. It may be a foundation that makes grants, or a government body or a corporate that you are seeking funds from, but eventually the pitch is made to a person - for e.g a trustee or board member.

Similarly when making their decision they are considering you, your credibility etc. You may have a great cause, your NPO may have good track record, but still it does matter in terms who is the person appealing to them.

A fraction of funds raised may be impersonal but any large grants - the "people to people" principle applies.

3. Understand donor - what appeals to them, what is important to them, what is their process for selection.

4. Pareto principle - how 80 % efforts might only give 20% returns and often it is core 20% activities that give most of the Return Of Investments so focus on those.

5. Acronym for sources of income - GGCIE (you can refer to the slide on this)

6. Fund raising cycle - PDCA Plan -> Do -> Check -> Act

Or on similar lines

Need -> Sources -> Method -> Select / Evaluate

with the last step feeding back into the first in each case. For example, you evaluate you results and re assess/replan your needs.

A good question to answer is "How will you sustain the work after the grant runs out?"

Plan: Research sources - who will you target? Refer to GGCIE. If it is Government what schemes and programmes are available?
V K Puri's "Government funding schemes for NGOs/NPOs in India" lists several hundred schemes and can be very useful resource.

7. We went over SSA proposal format and some of the sections in that.

If applying to Companies and CSR departments, they will certainly need metrics/measures

8. A good exercise in planning phase is to project the need over time and match to appropriate sources. For example

- quick or short term needs - selling T-shirts, individual volunteer donations of small amounts

- long term needs - grants from foundations/governments. This will have long lead time and typically be larger amounts.

9. Objectives of CSR:
- branding
- employee motivation and feel good factor
- shared objective e.g KidSmart ?
- good business
- social responsibility

Went through exercise in actual writing of funding proposal. The template used is in slides 10 to 14 The class broke up into 4 groups of 2 each and spent about 30 mins preparing a proposal and then presented to rest of class.

Each was critiqued by Prof Bhargava, pointing out what was good and what needed improvement.

Some key points

- be specific in your title if you can
- have facts, clear breakdown of expenses/projected needs
- shows you have done your homework
- have measures or impact - short term/long term, even can mention associated/corollary impact
e.g rehabilitation of street children addicted to drugs will reduce crime in the locality - in 1 year impact can be seen

After the exercise we saw short video where a trustee/grant making body official talked about how they decide and how it is never a cut and dry Yes/NO answer.

- donors would want to review and evaluate
- they would want to visit and assess
- they are assessing the individual /invidividuals making the application, what is their credibility, integrity, commitment etc
- the decision takes time and combines several factors
So it is not black and white - yes/no.

Caution: Never put any fact or any statistic that is not real or cannot be substantiated

We then saw a real proposal example . Hindi Martin Institute and went over its salient points. It was a real life actual proposal that got funding.

Finally he touched briefly on results versus indicators and the LFA - problem solving technique. (I need to learn more about this).