Rethinking NGO Effectiveness in Development: A Workshop Reflection

1. A workshop for the Measuring Effectiveness “Communities & Development”, September 2007, Melbourne. Dreaming how NGOs can be different and therefore more effective.

2. Introduction • NGO reflections and research on effectiveness • What our partners in Cambodia understand and tell us about effectiveness • Some possibilities for NGOs

3. Context • Effectiveness is the current preoccupation of international aid & development sector • Significant difference between NGO and donor debates about effectiveness • NGOs understanding and defining effectiveness • What are the consequences for NGOs?

4. The Predominant Aid Response • Aid as a complex system governed by dynamics of power and relationships • Official aid and some of the NGO sector occupied with measurement and accountability, reducing complexity to parts to show a linear cause and effect of performance. • Results based approaches reflect the reality of the MEASURER not the MEASURED. • Inadequate assessment, and retains emphasis on approaches disconnected with complex reality

5. Australian NGO Research • NGO Effectiveness Framework identified principles, policies, strategies and program standards agreed across the sector • Critical Approaches: • long term engagement • high quality relationships • mutual learning • flexibility • working together

6. The Critical Finding • That NGO effectiveness is WHAT they do – as well as WHO they are and the more synergistic these elements, the more effective the outcomes for poor people and communities. • Typical approaches to measuring NGO performance are inadequate – assumes that organisations are simply WHAT they do.

7. Research with NGOs in Cambodia • Relationships with communities have central importance, with an intuitive appreciation of the link with organisation • Relationships with ‘partner’ NGOs as donors requiring compliance and accountability – not the mutuality suggested in Australian research • No systematic collection of information about these relationships – occupied by meeting donor reporting requirements focused on results.

8. Risk and innovation inhibited by donor requirements and project focused funding • Positive experiences with donor NGO relationship revolve around institutional development support, capacity building and empowered decision making • Readily use current development terminology and key words that suggest attention paid to relationships and power balances

9. Implications for NGOs • Time and energy complying with and challenging the predominant approach, no time and space to pause to … • … do things differently Or • … to be different

10. Where could we start? • Focus more on the quality and nature of their relationships, in particular with partners – • Time • Power • What is valued as important

11. Walking Your Talk • Be more explicit about our VALUES and the utilisation of those values in decision making and implementation • Increase ORGANISATIONAL COHERANCE between what we say and what we do

12. Valuing the things that make a difference… • learning, • acknowledging failure, • working collaboratively • innovation & risk taking

13. Why is this not easy?