Civil society organizations and advocates for transparency and accountability predicted (accurately) that the COVID-19 pandemic would prove to create new spaces in which corruption, mismanagement, and misallocation of resources could occur.  In response, many organizations and activists tested innovative ways to analyze and share data to track public resources, uncovering mismanagement and corruption and advocating for changes in government response. Data trackers were a powerful tool in this response. So, we wonder, what can we learn from these experiences for future work tracking the use of public resources and strengthening preparedness for crises?

To answer this question, we revisited work we started in June 2021 looking at the use and usefulness of COVID trackers. Reviewing these trackers and then interviewing developers and partners, we sought to understand: (1) is there evidence that the tools are still being updated and used and (2) have the tools adapted to the changing needs of pandemic data, including tracking key data points on vaccines. 

What we found was a nuanced and interesting story that challenged some of our general assumptions about the use of trackers and, we think, can add value to efforts to use transparency, participation, and accountability to improve decision-making and service delivery.

Organizations have kept trackers alive and updated

Most trackers require significant effort to update data, even if no other changes to the structure or focus are made. We presumed that some of the trackers developed in 2020 to track pandemic spending and procurement might have been left without recent updates, especially as many countries and people began to consider COVID less of a pandemic and more endemic in early 2022.

However, our review rejected this hypothesis. The majority of tools reviewed had been updated in the 60 days prior to our online review, and several others had been updated within the previous six months. While the majority of trackers did not have any information on how the data had been or could be used on the sites, the fact that trackers contained updated data means that activists, civil society, and media who are interested in tracking gaps in spending and procurement at least have the raw materials to do so. An element that plays a part in this result seems to be that the majority of trackers reviewed built on the existing work of the organizations leading them, that is they either relied on some official or self-made data infrastructure which despite the challenges posed by the pandemic remained in place.   

Trackers are being used for advocacy, but the tools themselves do not tell this story

As noted above, the trackers themselves largely do not have information on use on the sites, which can leave visitors to these trackers believing that the tools may suffer from a “build it and they will come” mentality. Only one of the trackers we reviewed included any stories of use, and even these stories were from a year prior (“generations ago” in pandemic years).  

However, our interviews with the people and organizations that created the trackers, highlight that there is more happening with the data than the websites themselves let on. While use varies across these tools, several respondents revealed a large and growing number of users. For example, “Auditores Ciudadanos” (Citizen Auditors) in Colombia has experienced a rapid expansion of its user base from the time it was launched in 2020 to today, increasing from 500 total users in 2020 to over 1,200 in mid-2022.  

 What uses and results did we uncover in the process?

After establishing that trackers are being updated and used, the next questions we had were who is using the data and how.  Many of the tool developers with whom we spoke shared a range of potential and intended users for their trackers, ranging from NGOs and social movements to journalists to policymakers themselves. The experiences of how the trackers are being used across this diverse user group highlight the great – and sometimes unrealized – potential for COVID trackers to go beyond just tracking the data and to directly support more transparent and accountable pandemic policy.

Targeted partnerships for data use and impact: “Compras Covid” (COVID Purchases) in Mexico helped to reveal early in the pandemic that only 2% of resources allocated to the pandemic were being published in the government’s official public database Compranet.  As such, PODER (the organization that developed “Compras Covid”) sought to make their tracker a resource for journalists and advocacy organizations who could use official data and information available on “Compras Covid” to investigate discrepancies in the data as well as publish and publicize these gaps to seek accountability from the government and suppliers that were circumventing accepted best practices in procurement. “Mapa Inversiones” (Investments Map) from SENAC in Paraguay worked directly with one organization (IDEA) to identify similar problems as those that Compras Covid revealed in Mexico. IDEA was able to use this tracker to verify 98 criminal complaints regarding conflicts of interest in spending and procurement related to COVID in Paraguay.

Leading by example: We also heard from tool developers who adapted their trackers to create new uses for the data as the pandemic evolved. In South Africa, the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) and Open Up developed the Vulekamali tracker in partnership with the government in the years before COVID to advance open budgeting in the country.  When the pandemic began, tool developers saw that government data regarding COVID-specific resources was not being shared in a consistent or usable format. In response, PSAM and Open Up developed a new tool – Keep the Receipts. This tracker shared government data on pandemic resources as well as data collected by journalists and activists. As a result of publicizing this data, the developers have been approached by CSOs, journalists, and even the auditor general to support advocacy and action for more accountable COVID spending.

Advocating for institutional reform: In Chile, Observatorio Fiscal developed a daily updated tracking of COVID procurement and in doing so identified that the lack of standardization of measurements and unit sizes hindered the ability of accountability agencies and citizens to oversee emergency procurement. Using this evidence in their engagement with the Chilean procurement agency they included a reform in procurement regulation that will address this challenge for COVID and other relevant government procurement in the future.

Efforts to promote transparency come from users who have used different channels available. In the case of the “Buenos Aires Compras” petitions were received through the Argentine Chamber of Commerce to improve the information published and also through the website and emails available from the General Directorate of Purchasing of the City of Buenos Aires. They have ​​also announced their initiative through press releases and their own media to inform. 

Strengthening citizen-led monitoring: In Colombia, the Citizen Auditors platform created a tracker for public procurement related to COVID to enable additional investigations at the local and national level. This approach built on the efforts to bring more citizens into the oversight of public resources (as mentioned above) and strengthen their monitoring efforts. Relatedly, the use and dissemination of this tracker has informed the creation of other trackers such as those for investments in gender-related issues and peace. The tool has proven useful for an incremental increase in citizen-led monitoring including the use of the data made available in combination with data from other official sources to provide a more complete view of local investments in the country.

Not everything critical to the pandemic has been tracked

A final finding from our review of trackers was that COVID tools may not be tracking some of the most critical resources in the fight against the pandemic – namely, vaccines.  In our initial online review of trackers, we observed that the majority did not include any information on vaccine procurement or distribution. Rather than being an oversight, our interviews revealed a more complicated and potentially concerning story. Tracker developers overwhelmingly shared with us that they had sought to include vaccines in their tools but faced challenges in doing so.

One of the biggest challenges shared across many countries was that vaccines were being procured through different channels than other medical supplies, leaving them outside of standard government reporting.  In some countries, much of the COVID vaccine supply came through donations from high-income countries. The delivery of these vaccines from country to country was highly publicized in national and international media; however, because these donated supplies were not always entered into public databases, it became difficult if not impossible to track where these vaccines went next (see this Investigation about COVID vaccines in Mexico). 

Together, the ways in which COVID trackers evolved over the course of the pandemic – and the challenges that made this evolution difficult – reveal many lessons for the future of trackers in both emergency and non-emergency settings. In our next post, we unpack what we see as the implications of these findings and how they can be applied to open data initiatives. In our next blog, we share some reflections and open questions that can be useful to inform future efforts to respond to emergencies and track the use of public resources and the results those investments deliver.

The News Item Reflecting on tracking COVID funds: what happened? appeared first on Transparency and Accountability Initiative.

The rule of thumb is that an organization’s strategy should be updated every three to five years. During my five years at the Wikimedia Foundation, I went through a strategy process almost every year. 

Each process wasn’t called strategy per se, but they all looked alike: there was new research into how our foundation needed to adapt; new consultants making recommendations; new calls to action for staff and volunteer feedback. But too often we wound up in the same place: the “priorities” we defined rarely stuck, and we had to start again. 

The impact of this cycle was more detrimental than the supposed upside. Our strategic planning and annual planning blurred together. Burned-out staff began to disconnect from the latest “strategy” process. I saw teams simply repackage existing work into new narratives because managers knew the goals would change again soon. 

The traditional methods of nonprofit strategy weren’t working. We were stuck eternally planning for the future while often doing the same things year after year. We wanted to be more strategic, but the tools we were using weren’t getting us there.

In 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation Board decided to invest in a different kind of strategy: a movement-level strategy. 

“We are currently doing good work across our movement, but [we] lack a unifying sense of how that work coheres into something greater than its individual parts… The absence of a movement strategy, in other words, is hampering our ability to work toward our mission. Given the importance of that mission… this is an expensive opportunity cost.”

— Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation (2016)

Wikimedia’s 2030 strategic direction would not be determined by the input of many and the final vote of a few. The process would be widely participatory in nature, shepherded by those from the wider movement (not just staff of the Wikimedia Foundation), and decisions would be made outside the existing governance structures that were in place. 

But more so, this process would afford us the ability to interrogate not just what to focus on, but how we operated. By opening ourselves up to a more transformative process, we were able to interrogate power: how it was held structurally, how it enabled or impeded our efforts, and how we were going to shift to unlock our ambitions. 

Opening up strategic decisions to the voices of many can be at best invigorating and at worst overwhelming. The prospect of failing to shift power after grandly committing to it feels like a nightmare. 

So how can funders create the conditions for a successful participatory strategic process? Four key enablers make a difference. 

6. Lay the groundwork for a change process, not just a strategy process. 

A participatory strategic process is actually two processes in one: one is focused on defining future priorities, and the other is focused on changing the way we operate and interact. There is immense focus placed on the first process – defining strategy – and unfortunately, the second process is often a surprise. 

For organizations without a strong practice of working in the open, conducting consultations, or sharing decision-making, the shift to participatory practices can feel like a fundamental culture shift. In these cases, it becomes crucial to lay the groundwork for the change process early – sometimes far earlier – than beginning the strategy process. 

“I’ve found that the process of participatory strategy, and just participatory processes in general, can change and reshape an organization because what you’re socializing [is] ownership. You’re building the buy-in, you’re building different mechanisms for different voices to come to the fore.”

— Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory 

Participatory strategy may also represent a shift in how you’ve engaged those outside your organization. Especially as a funder, consider how you’ll navigate the uncertainty that comes from talking about power and the future in the same conversation with your grantees. How can you enable and support those who currently have less power to feel prepared and comfortable discussing a future that impacts them? 

“Sharing of power is pretty easy because one already has it. But for somebody to interact with power, for somebody to become accustomed and acclimatized with power and then contribute is always tricky. In processes that come with either a stipulated date or outcome, the way that power interacts is: this is an opportunity and this is the [expected] outcome; this is the responsibility and this is supposed to be the result. The correlation between “the power that is shared” and “the output that is expected” is not in the favor of people who just enter into the conversation. It is always in the favor of people who are not just situated in power but who are also comfortable in power.”

— Tanveer Hasan, Senior Program Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation

7. Create a practice around investigating biases and blind spots.

We all have biases and blind spots. When it comes to building an inclusive process, these blind spots make it difficult for us to see who is not present or not heard. 

“When we think about participatory approaches… one thing that is key is thinking about ‘Who is it we are including?’. No matter what your stakeholders are, what groups there are, there are always those more visible voices and those less visible voices. It’s our job when we design these processes, we have to go beyond the usual suspects… [For APC] we want to go beyond activists who are part of formal structures. We want to open the space of participation to informal collectives, individuals, to connectors who are working outside these formal spaces. How can we ensure that these groups have access to resources and opportunities?” 

— Natalia Tariq, Resource Mobilisation Coordinator at the Association for Progressive Communications

Given our biases manifest in unconscious ways, building a recurring practice around identifying and addressing blind spots is the strongest approach. For example, early in the process, consider how you’re seeking out conflicting points of view, to build a more holistic picture of the issues at hand. As you consider tradeoffs, consider how you’re holding time and space in the process to pull out implicit assumptions and challenge them. 

The practice of attending to biases is more important than doing it once. How can you continue to expand your understanding, so that you can “design for everyone without understanding the full picture”?

“These blind spots… these biases, these weak spots are a result of the lack of equity and the persistent inequalities in terms of how power is distributed. Working toward equity means constantly making an effort to identify our own biases… We’re all trained to not see [and] not hear some voices. Institutions have been designed to serve the needs of some. It really is about unlearning how we know how to do things… It’s ongoing work. It’s not something that you can do only once. You really need to set up conditions for this so that it’s ongoing.”

— Ana Pecova, Deputy Director at Prospera the International Network of Women’s Funds

8. Design a thoughtful strategy around how to engage those with power. 

One of the first questions to ask before embarking on a participatory strategy (or any participatory process) is: Are those in power ready and willing to share power?

“Vested power is very hard to change overnight. Anyone in the business of social change [is] very aware of that. Having a really thoughtful strategy for how anybody with that type of power, authority, and resources is engaged and brought along is a critical part of the design process… Don’t underestimate paying attention to power and politics, and the formal spaces that are there. Because that [is a] make or break. [Underestimating power and politics could] undermine a process, which then damages those who’ve participated.” 

— Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory 

Today, a lot of onus is placed on the individual to understand the power and privilege they hold, and how they might address the inequities that result. But when it comes to an organization or network – which is both a group of people and an entity itself – it’s not practical to hope that the individual reflections of many will coalesce into collective understanding. Not without some prompting and structure. Add in the complex regulatory constraints of international organizations and it becomes clear that wrangling a conversation on “governance and equity” is a whole process to itself. 

“In any complex, confederated structures, the governance arrangements are really complex. You have a lot of stakeholders with a lot of power and perspectives, and their own independent reporting, regulatory and governance jurisdictions that all come to bear. While it would be easier to set up the ideal kind of governance model first, I don’t think that’s usually the pragmatic approach to take because those sorts of changes are hard and they take time. Waiting around until that gets sorted [is] not practical…

[Instead] be really thoughtful about how the process itself can reveal certain deficiencies in the system… It can reveal the entrenched power dynamics… That can often be the most telling and the best use of the process: to reveal our institutional issues that can then be course corrected. [For example] within an organization I worked [with], the process itself identified significant blockers who had significant power. [It resulted in] an intentional process to remove them [from the board] because they were really holding back the rest of the organization… It was only through the process that was really revealed, how entrenched that [dynamic] was.”

— Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory 

Remember that internal change process that I mentioned before? Part of it is shepherding those with power through a process that supports them: seeing the breadth and depth of their power (formal and informal), the impact it’s had on others, the value of sharing their power, and the implications of doing so. Rather than one conversation, this reckoning with power is its own stream of work. It’s the workstream that brings attention repeatedly back to how an organization and the strategic process embodies equity. 

“Beyond acknowledging diversity and existing inequalities, to me equity is also about actively seeking to identify where power comes from, who holds it and why? Whose voice we do not hear and what we can do about redistributing power?… Equity is not a simple act. It is a process of active listening. It is a process of constantly correcting course. Equity is not given. Equity is rather built: it’s built together [and] it’s built collectively.”

— Ana Pecova, Deputy Director at Prospera the International Network of Women’s Funds

9. Lean into the discomfort. Be willing to take the first step, even knowing it’s not perfect. 

I often get the question, “Where do I start?”

The reality is there is no ideal starting place. Every organization that I’ve seen complete or attempt a participatory strategy has struggled in different ways. Even those who have done it many times uncover new blind spots and create new mechanisms for elevating new voices. 

“Women’s funds have amazing experience when it comes to participatory grantmaking processes… However, what happens when a community does not see certain issues as relevant? Who is left behind? And this often happens within feminist movements for groups such as sex workers, trans people, and formerly incarcerated women. The movement in many contexts [does] not necessarily consider these relevant issues. So even on a level of women’s funds, they’re constantly asking themselves ‘Who are we not seeing? How can we ensure full representation and access to resources?’ It’s the same for Prospera, on a network level. We’re [always] asking ‘What are the conditions that we need? What is the infrastructure that we need?’… so that we can catch these blind spots or biases and we can do the deconstruction work.”

— Ana Pecova, Deputy Director at Prospera the International Network of Women’s Funds

Participatory practices are a “muscle” that an organization needs to repeatedly use in order to improve. Just like with our bodies, the first time we do something new it will feel awkward, uncertain, and possibly uncomfortable. But the more we do it, the more we discover how we can improve. 

The most important step is just beginning. Define your scope of influence and take a first step within it. Commit to learning from that first foray, and also to applying those learning to the next step. 

“Just start from where you’re at… Be really pragmatic about balancing what the ideal shape is and then also the reality, and just take the steps where you can… My most useful tool for bringing about longer term, bigger changes is just by starting with a simple pilot… [A] pilot with intentionality about the learning questions, the participatory nature of it, and how that can have ripple effects – [that] can be really powerful.”

— Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory 

To learn more about how to approach participatory strategy, visit the Transparency and Accountability Initiative’s Library on Participatory Strategy. 

The News Item 9 tips for doing a participatory strategy (Part II) appeared first on Transparency and Accountability Initiative.

Participatory approaches have gained ground within mainstream philanthropy in the last  decade. While participatory grantmaking has been much discussed, its less discussed siblings in budgeting, evaluation, and strategy are being quietly utilized by nonprofits, INGOs, philanthropic funders, and funder networks around the world.  

All participatory practices bring a spotlight onto shifting power, especially decision-making power. But participatory strategy brings a sharper focus to a specific set of decisions: What do we want to achieve over the next few years? What role do we want to play in the world? Where will we focus our work and resources?

These decisions dictate the tradeoffs made, the priorities set, and the flow of resources. These decisions affect everything downstream, from programs to partnerships, fundraising to operations.

But what role do our communities play in making these decisions? 

Are they a bystander, someone who is impacted by the outcome but has little recourse to change it? 

Are they a contributor, providing critical insights and feedback that strengthen the overall result?

Do they pose the tradeoffs to be made and craft recommendations, shepherding the process to its culmination? 

Do they own the process and its myriad of decisions, holding the final say over the next era of work? 

Many have asked me “What is participatory strategy?”. The honest answer is that it is a process by which institutions interrogate and investigate their structural power: the power they have to make choices and limit the choices of others. The power they have to set the direction and the guardrails others have to abide by. 

“With structural power, we have the possibility of limiting other people’s access to resources, of narrowing their options, and of making choice difficult for them to exercise because of possible consequences we may deliver… Because others bring habitual fear of consequences into every relationship of power difference, it can be invisible to us that we are getting our needs met at their expense.”

– Miki Kashtan

At its finest, participatory strategy is a transformative process that results in more than just a new strategic direction. It can restructure a movement or reconnect it with its roots. It can shift an organization’s culture to include more consultation and civil discourse with those outside the organization. It can provide a mechanism for identifying who in power is enabling or impeding change.

No strategic process is the same, and participatory strategy is no different. There is no recipe, beyond contextualizing and leveraging a plethora of participatory practices during design, discussion, and decision making. 

But there is a spectrum of participation and power sharing within every participatory strategic process. It’s an organizational choice where you want to sit on that spectrum. 

“[Doing a participatory strategy] means listening to the constituents you are accountable to. It means adjusting. It means correcting. It means being intentional. It also requires you to revise every aspect of your work. It requires you to look at your institutional design, your governance structure, your decision making processes, the organizational culture, all the way to actual process to designing and implementing the strategic planning process. Do we have the infrastructure for a process like that? And if not, can we design it? 

– Ana Pecova, Deputy Director at Prospera the International Network of Women’s Funds

The most common question I’m asked is “How do I do a participatory strategy, of any kind?”.

Last year, the Transparency and Accountability Initiative brought together five practitioners of participatory strategy from international NGOs, nonprofits, and philanthropic funder networks to share their insights into what truly matters when embarking on this journey. 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing our top nine tips for how to do a participatory strategy. These represent the collective wisdom of myself and:

• Ana Pecova, Deputy Director at Prospera the International Network of Women’s Funds
• Natalia Tariq, Resource Mobilisation Coordinator at the Association for Progressive Communications
• Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory 
• Tanveer Hasan, Senior Program Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation

This week, we’ll begin with five tips for designing the process itself.

1. Articulate the differential value a participatory strategic process will bring to your organization and your work. 

For those new to the space of participatory practices, participatory elements can feel like a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. Moreover, they can be perceived as nice-to-have elements that take up more time and resources. 

Before imagining where you want more participation, articulate why greater participation and power sharing matters. Why does it matter to your program, team or organization? What do you expect to be different at the end of the process? 

“The first and most important question would be: ‘Why do you want to do a participatory strategy process? What does it mean for your institution or for your network?’… Do [a participatory strategy] not only because everyone is talking about participatory strategy right now. Do it because you believe in it. Do it because it’s the only possible way to lead to meaningful change where communities design, own and lead their way to the change they want to see.”

Ana Pecova, Deputy Director at Prospera the International Network of Women’s Funds

2. Utilize design principles to articulate the big-picture change goals of the process. 

Design principles are a common tool to generate upfront alignment and buy-in when shaping a change process. Within a participatory strategic process, design principles are especially useful to frame and prompt upfront conversations with those in power about a strategic process that will interrogate power. 

It can be tempting to use “equity” as a design principle, but a survey of 15 American-based foundations in 2016 found that most did not have an “official” definition of equity, despite the organization’s focus on it. 

“Many foundations appear to guide their work via intuition rather than a clear definition [of equity]. We did find that foundations with a clear definition [of equity] seemed to have codified equity theories of change, frameworks, and plans more completely than those foundations that had no clear definition.” 

Source: “The Road to Achieving Equity”: Findings and Lessons from a Field Scan of Foundations That Are Embracing Equity as a Primary Focus

Ensure your design principles are adequately and contextually defined, so they resonate with those both in and outside your organization, with those in and outside the structure of power. 

“For CARE International, the [design principles of our participatory strategic] process were very intentionally related to a principle that the organization was already aligned [on] which was rebalancing the northern-dominated flow of expertise, resources, decisions, and formal power spaces… That was one of the design principles that we got an endorsement from the very outset so that it could be a thread that went through how we shaped process, consultation, decision points, communication points… Prioritize the critical [design principle] you’re going to pay the most attention to and integrate and embed into every part of how the process is designed.”

Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory 

3. Decide collectively who will make decisions. 

All strategic processes can be viewed as a series of decisions: Who will participate? Who will identify and reconcile tradeoffs? Who will build recommendations? How will the final decision or ratification be made? 

While gathering broader and deeper input provides an avenue for greater participation, these avenues do not automatically share power. 

“[Participatory approaches are] really about contributing to shifting power structures. These processes should not just be for the theatrics, the performative element. It cannot be extractive, and just shift more responsibilities onto people who are overburdened. It has to be about giving people real decision making power.”

Natalia Tariq, Resource Mobilisation Coordinator at the Association for Progressive Communications

When designing your next strategic process, identify the compendium of decisions to be made and draft who will make them. What role do your communities play in actually recommending or deciding?  

“Decision points are a key thing to be clear from the outset… [During our global strategic process in 2010] there was a real intentional effort and process to set up large participatory engagement for the input and listening. But then it felt like it stopped and then went to ‘the powers that be’ for a decision. That’s often the transition point that is the most challenging for participatory processes…Once it gets beyond this very active and participatory listening, inputting and feeding in what then happens for it to be consolidated, decided on, taken forward?… Transparency and clarity around those decision points [is key], so that it’s not [a situation of] ‘this is participatory until it’s not’.”

Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory 

4. This is not a choice between “No participation” and “Being extractive”. Rather, design how the process will replenish the motivation of its participants. 

The fear of being extractive or causing burnout are common concerns when considering a participatory process. It’s especially true when it comes to volunteers. Asking a community member for their input feels doable; asking them to orchestrate your organization’s next strategy can feel like a burden. 

“Strategic processes are not very straightforward. These are often very time intensive and resource intensive. [At APC] we keep that in mind because we heavily draw on these collaborative processes but at the same time we do realize that they take a lot for the participants. We don’t want these processes to be extractive for the stakeholders that are involved.”

Natalia Tariq, Resource Mobilisation Coordinator at the Association for Progressive Communications

But the fear of asking too much shouldn’t preclude the usage of participatory processes. 

Rather, bring thoughtful attention to how you generate excitement at the beginning and how you’ll replenish and shore up that wellspring as the process progresses. Burnout is all too common. So as we ask more of staff and volunteers, it needs to come with increased resources and attention to the most precious resource: motivation. 

“Motivation is one of the key indicators of how healthy your process is… [We] imagine a process that has high levels of engagement and a very little component of endurance, but if you look at the way a process develops, the engagement quotient comes down drastically and the endurance quotient goes up…

If you are not able to retain a high quotient of motivation, most participatory strategies will fall apart. In the process that we ran within the Wikimedia Foundation…one thing that was very clear was that the motivation that needs to be supplemented [during the process] is not the same motivation that we started with”

Tanveer Hasan, Senior Program Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation

5. Invest in the underlying infrastructure that will enable participation, e.g. childcare, facilitation, translation, documentation, financial support, and internet access, etc. 

Strong orchestration, facilitation, documentation, translation, and communication are just some of the critical elements that allow a participatory process to succeed. This underlying infrastructure enables people to join and leave the process at different points, to understand and buy-in to the decisions made without them, and to discuss and disagree in productive ways. 

Rather than framing this infrastructure as costs to be minimized, reframe them as key enablers that have outsized impact on the end outcome. 

“[One] critical thing is strong facilitation…Somebody’s got to be shepherding and convening and connecting the dots between these various pieces of the proces. Who is inputting what and into what? How [information is] being brought together, taken to a decision, and then moved to the next stage? That strong facilitation is… what makes [a participatory process] run smoothly and work, in a way that can be a quicker pace than people often assume participatory processes [operate].”

Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory 

Beyond the process itself, consider how you can enable your participants to show up fully. An unfortunate truth is that those with the ability to participate are often those with the socio-economic means to do so, especially when contribution is unpaid. What support do your participants need in their everyday life in order to show up as you’ve requested? 

“[For] the last two years, much of [APC’s donor] advocacy has been centered around how the pandemic is affecting the lives of individuals and organizations, and how it has affected the pace at which they can work [and] the additional resources they need. 

We’ve managed to convince [some donors] that when you are budgeting for online events we need to create more space for people to be able [contribute]. You need to give people resources for connectivity because not everybody will have the same access, so we make sure there’s a stipend for that. We keep in mind that if somebody is connecting for a five hour meeting from their home they probably have to take care of meals or they need child care, and we need to provide for that to happen. There is an assumption that if people are working from home or they are working in the virtual space that all of these things magically take care of themselves. [So] we’ve had those conversations with funders [about this].”

Natalia Tariq, Resource Mobilisation Coordinator at the Association for Progressive Communications

To learn more about how to approach participatory strategy, visit the Transparency and Accountability Initiative’s Library on Participatory Strategy. 

The News Item 9 tips for doing a participatory strategy (Part I) appeared first on Transparency and Accountability Initiative.

A version of this blog was co-authored with Development Initiatives: What happened to aid for governance and civic space during Covid-19?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many have been concerned about its ramifications on key aspects of civic life and governance, including for transparency, participation, and accountability (TPA). Many governments have struggled during this period, including many developing countries facing higher debt and reduced domestic resource revenues, directly affecting governance.

Civil society organizations (CSOs) have also been concerned. For example, Civicus, a global alliance with a mission to strengthen citizen action and civil society throughout the world, raised three funding concerns for civil society during the pandemic. These included risks to the sustainability of civil society organizations (CSOs) and jobs due to economic crisis and lockdown, relief funding bypassing critical issues that affect the most vulnerable, and less funding and opportunities for youth activists and those working on other social causes.

The Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI), a network of funders working on TPA, inclusive governance, and information ecosystems, has been watching and sharing about the challenging funding environment. TAI and its members see that funding for civil society and governance is absolutely critical during these times of crisis. Inclusive governance is valuable in its own right and underpins outcomes in many other sectors. Thus, last year, TAI published a brief summarizing perspectives on the possible trajectory of international funding in relevant areas in light of the pandemic and other shifting priorities. Since data on 2020 was not yet available, we drew on the viewpoints of 16 funders and experts, as well as announcements and news releases.

Some interviewees thought that funding would stay steady to core governance issues. Others believed that funding was increasing to issues with renewed relevance, such as public procurement. Still, others thought funding was going down as funders shifted to health and climate.

With the recent data released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on funding in 2020, we can now get a better sense of what actually happened in 2020. Overall funding to governance and civil society increased in 2020 compared to 2019. Specifically, official development assistance (ODA) grants and loans and other official flows (OOFs) from multilateral development banks (MDBs) all increased. However, there were variations across the sub-sectors, e.g., increased funding to democratic participation and civil society but decreased funding to anti-corruption institutions and domestic resource mobilization.

In this blog, we share more on these findings. We analyze the overall increase by funding modality and designation to COVID-19. We then look at which funders increased and decreased funding. Finally, we look at what kinds of non-government organizations received the most funding.

Read the full briefing: The State of Governance Funding – Exploring the latest official development assistance figures.

To accompany our analysis, we constructed a dynamic dashboard of this funding data so that anyone can do their own analysis by region, country, issue, donor, and type of funding. It can quickly show answers for top donors and recipients, and it includes data for not only 2020 but also 2019 and 2015. For more on the dashboard, see below.

Funding to governance and civil society overall was up in 2020

In 2020, international funding disbursed to the general government and civil society sector from bilateral government donors, MDBs, multilateral organizations, and charitable foundations reached over $34.4 billion compared to $25.1 billion in 2019. This was not widely expected: many were worried that disbursements would face major impediments and reprioritization due to the pandemic.

In fact, a significant share of the increase in the sector seems due to the pandemic. In 2020, over $9.8 billion in the sector was marked with the keyword COVID-19. Thus, rather than the pandemic necessarily lowering funding to governance, some funders, including MDBs, increased funding as a response to the crisis.

However, across all the different types of funding, private development finance, which is often provided by charitable foundations, actually decreased by over $53 million. Although many TAI members increased their funding, a large cut by another foundation led to this decrease.

There were significant variations across purpose areas

This sector includes diverse purpose areas, from human rights and media and free flow of information to public finance management (PFM) and public procurement. Diving into these areas, the ones that saw the greatest absolute increases were some core areas of government work, including public sector policy and administrative management, PFM, macroeconomic policy, and decentralization and support to subnational government. These areas received substantially increased support from multilateral development banks (MDBs), which supported recipient governments with this funding. Major providers of these flows in 2020 included the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Asian Development Bank (AsDB), the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB).

What about some of the sub-sectors that TAI members prioritize? Anti-corruption organizations saw funding disbursements drop by about $144 million, support to domestic resource mobilization (DRM) was down by $289 million, and human rights were down by about $53 million. See the graph.

Some sub-sectors saw relatively little change, including media and free flow of information, legal and judicial development, and women’s rights organizations, movements, and government institutions. These areas saw disbursements change less than 2% from their 2019 benchmarks.

Other sub-sectors saw increases in 2020. Democratic participation and civil society funding were up by $119 million and public procurement by over $25 million.  For democratic participation, there wasn’t just a single funder increasing, rather many funders increased, including the US (over $91 million), Open Society Foundations (almost $56 million), Germany (over $31 million), European Union (EU) institutions (over $29 million), Switzerland (over $16 million), Sweden (over $12 million), and France (over $11 million). Public procurement’s increase was due to more reporting from the World Bank.

EU institutions increased their ODA grants to the sector while the United States and the United Kingdom cut

As for ODA grants, there was an overall increase of $1.4 billion, with EU institutions alone increasing their disbursements by almost $970 million. A large share of this ($593 million) was made to facilitate orderly safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility. The remainder of the increase was made across many of the purpose areas, including public sector policy, PFM, and democratic participation. There were also large increases in ODA grants from donors including IDA, the African Development Fund, Canada, and the AsDB.

Looking at cuts to ODA grants, as expected, the United Kingdom (UK) decreased its ODA grants by about $236 million. This was long-announced, and now we see it in the data. Every sub-sector in government and civil society saw a cut from the UK, with the greatest amount cut from public sector policy and administrative management at almost $50 million.

Less expected, the largest decrease to ODA grants disbursements was not in the UK but in the United States (US). The US reduced ODA grant disbursements by almost $363 million. This reflects a $314 million cut in disbursements to Afghanistan and almost $27 million to Pakistan.

Funding to non-government organizations (NGOs) increased, with most of the funding going to donor country-based NGOs

Overall, non-government organizations (NGOs) received over $4 billion in 2020, almost $150 million more than in 2019. Thus, funders were not cutting funding to civil society overall in the first year of the pandemic.

There are diverse kinds of NGOs that donors can fund, and the OECD uses the categories of developing country-based, donor country-based, and international. Last year, TAI took a look at the type of NGOs receiving funding for governance work and found that in 2019, 68% of funding was disbursed to donor-country NGOs. That trend continued in 2020. The absolute amount of funding to both donor and developing country NGOs was up and most of it ($101 million) went to donor-country NGOs. Thus, the percentage through donor country-based NGOs remained at 68% in 2020. See the figure below. The localization agenda, at least in this sector, did not make much progress in 2020 despite calls to support more organizations in countries directly.

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, international funding increased to the sector, and a good portion of this appeared related to the pandemic and loans from MDBs. We saw that the prediction that some governance areas would see increases came to fruition, including for democratic participation and civil society. At the same time, there were cuts to funding, e.g., the UK cut across the board and the US cut to Afghanistan.

Funding for civil society did not drop in 2020, but there were also higher needs for funding. Even though funding was up to developing country civil society, the increase was relatively minor when considering it was for all countries, and CSOs were also under pressure due to economic crisis and lockdown.

Overall, private development finance from foundations was down to the sector in 2020. This kind of funding is often viewed as catalytic and especially valuable to civil society, so TAI hopes that this trend was reversed in more recent years.

Next year, when data for 2021 is released, we will be looking to see if the overall level funding leveled off or decreased if MDBs and other major donors maintained funding, and how the key purpose areas like human rights and anti-corruption changed.  We will also be looking at how private development finance changed. TAI’s data suggests fewer new grants were made in 2021 compared to 2020.[1] Candid has already found that foundations may have dropped their funding in 2021 compared to 2020,[2] and TAI also sees this in its grants data.

TAI will continue to undertake this kind of funding analysis going forward. We see it as helping funders and partners see their own fits in the overall bigger picture, test assumptions about underlying trends, and inform advocacy. For example, funding data shows that despite calls during the pandemic to increase direct funding to organizations in developing countries, this mostly did not happen.

Again, take time to draw some of your own conclusions by exploring the funding dashboard.

[1] See TAI’s grants database, https://www.transparency-initiative.org/blog/9545/tpa-funding-data/.

[2] Stephanie Beasley, “US foundations decrease global COVID-19 giving despite ongoing needs,” Devex, June 3, 2022.

The News Item Ups and downs in governance funding – what the latest ODA numbers can tell us (and what they can’t) appeared first on Transparency and Accountability Initiative.

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You can download the full report here: 

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This report is part of a series of D4A outputs including: a scoping report for Nigeria; landscape reviews for Nigeria and Colombia; notes about donor collaboration in Nigeria and Colombia, and GI’s role as learning partner; pieces drawing lessons from the work in Nigeria and Colombia (this report), and a note reflecting on the implications of these findings for future donor investments.

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Intrigued about how both projects’ shared elements contributed to their success? Download the full report here (English and Spanish):

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