Thursday, December 8, 2011

Why this blog?

I created this blog to share my thoughts about the need to implement transparency practices for non-profits, from the big Foundations (like the Gates Foundation) to their grantees and sub-grantees.
My experience during the last four years in the field of tobacco control in Africa has been one of extreme secrecy and refusal to divulge key information about how the programs are managed.
Creating a transparency scorecard could be a way to document in a more precise way what the actors are hiding and shame them for doing so by positioning them on a scorecard where their performance would be for everybody to appreciate.

How transparent is the Gates Foundation?

An interesting article published by Caroline Preston in this blog of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Philanthrocapitalism blog about King Bill

Bishop and Green keep complaining about the lack of transparency and how people are afraid to say anything that could perceived as criticism of the Gates Foundation.

Gates Foundation: still looking for honest feedback

From Tom Paulson's Blog, Humanopshere.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Alliance Magazine and the Gates Foundation

Tom Paulson reports about the articles about the Gates Foundation published in Alliance Magazine.
He refers to Tim Ogden's introduction that points out to the difficulty of honest feedback:


Speaking truth to power
The first is that it is increasingly difficult for anyone to speak truth to power at the Gates Foundation. We were surprised at the number of people who responded to our requests for submissions with some version of ‘I’d love to talk about that, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to comment publicly’.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

The Gates Foundation still has a big communication problem

That's expressed in the annual report and this short article by Kristi Heim. The word transparency is not mentioned. See also Tom Paulson's comments on his blog Humanosphere (linked on the side as well).

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

What Foundation's CEOs think about evaluation

What Foundation's CEOs think about evaluation is the title of an interesting post in a new blog from the Chronicle of Philanthropy about a recent survey in this domain. A majority of CEOs claim to be in favor of evaluation work but the post does not say if they agree to make the results public. How many evaluation reports remain safely sealed and strictly kept out of reach for fear they would trigger unwanted changes or questions about how the Foundation operates?

Monday, April 11, 2011

Bill Gates priorities: total transparency, rigorous assessment of cost-effectiveness, impact evaluation

In this post on his blog Bill Gates explains how he is going to look for additional sources of financing for development and aid, including a Financial Transaction Tax (sometimes called Robin Hood Tax). He also writes:  I'll have three principles in mind throughout. The first is total transparency around all types of investments. The second is rigorous assessment of the cost-effectiveness of interventions, so we know we're getting value for money. The third is impact evaluation, so we are clear about results and can learn lessons and improve.

The reasons for the 10 indicators of the Transparency Scorecard

1. Names, bios of the staff and contact email (program, project managers, all staff involved): 
It seems normal for any institution/project to provide basic information about the staff and the people in charge as well as an easy way (email) to get in touch with them.

2. Detailed annual report explaining the activities:
It seems normal that at least once a year a formal report is given explaining what happened, what has been achieved.

3. Detailed annual operational budget (easy to find and providing key info, see below):
It seems normal that at least once year a detailed budget showing how the funds are used is provided. This document has to be easy to consult.

4. Budget for staff and consultants (staff administrative costs)
It is important to know what amount and what percentage of the budget go to administrative costs, to check they are under control and don't represent an excessive part of the budget

5. Budget for travel and hospitality (including monthly update and yearly detailed list)
Travel and hospitality expenses can easily grow out of control, especially if they are not detailed and itemized in the budget, nor reported when they take place. How many useless but quite expensive far away trips and meetings take place when using the internet is much more effective and cost effective. Many groups consider travel and hospitality as obligatory perks and privileges: they can represent significant amounts if not kept under tight and public control.

6. Transparency blog providing regular detailed information about the progress of each program/project/grant:
One annual report is really very minimal while it is so easy (provided one does not relish a culture of secrecy) to post regularly via a blog about what is happening. 
Each program officer, each grantee can blog that way or pay a cyberjournalist a small fee to do the work if they don't feel like it. 
Considering annual budgets of $1 million or $100K, or even $10K, hiring a free-lance journalist to report for a $100 monthly fee (or even less in countries where the cost of living is very low) seems like a very small obligation to fulfill a key communication and transparency need.

7. Open selection process for grant applications (all applications made available):
Why should all applications remain secret? The myth of the "competitive grant process" that is sometimes used to enforce opacity, keeps everybody in the dark and allows for arbitrary decisions and nepotism. How come some people, groups seem to be selected much more often than all the rest?

8. Transparency requirement for grantees and sub-grantees (including the 7 first items of this scorecard):
All the transparency requirements mentioned above should apply to all the partners in the grant making process, from the donor to the grantees and sub-grantees. We are not talking about any extra heavy load but only most basic informations that are easy to provide.

9. Establishment of a benchmark scorecard (baseline) for the project, updated yearly to allow evaluation:
Without any baseline data, how can programs be monitored and assessed? 
It is shocking to see many programs operating year after year without such a benchmark. That makes any evaluation quite difficult if not impossible. Could that be the reason why they don't exist?

10. Willingness to answer questions and provide information (for big institutions, appointment of an access to Information person and elaboration of a standard procedure):
Basic questions relative to the above indicators or simple operations that are part of the grant activities should be answered quickly.  There should only be limited exceptions to refuse being transparent. 
For big institutions, at least one person should be in charge of making sure requests for information are correctly processed and not buried by staff members unwilling to be transparent.

Jeff Raikes talks again about the need for better feedback (March 2011)

In this interview with the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Jeff Raikes talks again about the need for better feedback. But would monkeysurveys do the trick? He also keeps limiting his concern with grantees while feedback should be open much more widely to all stakeholders and the public at large: grantees have a vested interest not to provide critical feedback and the Foundation's staff in charge of managing a grant is not in the best position either to carry and relay "bad" news.

Mr. Raikes also said the foundation is continuing to explore new ways to improve communication with grantees following a critical report last June in which many nonprofits complained that Gates is often unresponsive.
He said the foundation is working with the Center for Effective Philanthropy, the group that produced the report, to identify new avenues for eliciting feedback from grantees. Perhaps foundations could use online tools like Survey Monkey, which enable people to easily create and send out surveys, to engage with grantees, Mr. Raikes said.
“Our sector in general needs to put itself in a position of more continuous feedback loops,” he said.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Indicators for a transparent management scorecard

The first 10 indicators I chose come from my experiences of being unable to get this information about the grants and programs funded to promote tobacco control in SubSaharan Africa.

1. Names, bios of the staff and contact email (program, project managers, all staff involved)
2. Detailed annual report explaining the activities
3. Detailed annual operational budget (easy to find and providing key info, see below)
4. Budget for staff and consultants (staff administrative costs)
5. Budget for travel and hospitality (including monthly update and yearly detailed list)
6. Transparency blog providing regular detailed information about the progress of each program/project/grant
7. Open selection process for grant applications (all applications available)
8. Transparency requirement for grantees and sub-grantees (including the 7 first items of this scorecard)
9. Establishment of a benchmark scorecard (baseline) for the project, updated yearly to allow evaluation
10. Willingness to answer questions and provide information (for big institutions. Access to Information person and procedure)

On this scale of 10 indicators, giving a scale of 10 to each for a total of 100, all the participants in the tobacco control programs for SubSahara Africa score zero.