Defrosting Corruption Icebergs in NGOs.
Analysing the problem of leading non-government organisations, particularly in NWFP, turning into corruption icebergs is getting difficult for the simple reason of commentators' shying away from constructive criticism due to fear of knee-jerk reaction and instant "anti-NGO" labels from certain quarters. Undoubtedly, NGOs are an extremely essential component of the civil society and they are contributing to the overall development in many ways. However, when it comes to knowing the results of their efforts, NGOs rate poorly. A serious effort is needed to understand how to defrost the frozen icebergs through a system that provides reliable evidence of achievement in relation to development goals.
The present lack of management by achievement stems from many factors like the complexity of what must be assessed and limitations of the instruments NGOs use to monitor, evaluate and review. Besides this, a culture has been developed which values action more than reflection and this trend does not put enough emphasis on benchmarks to compare performance with. In most cases, the assessment costs are not allocated to project budgets and are treated as overheads, which must be kept low. Compounded with lack of clarity about objectives and position, these weaknesses make it difficult for the NGOs to prove their legitimacy and to be held accountable.
NGOs must be accountable to and judged from the perspectives of those who affect or are affected by their behaviour. The basic measure of their performance is the effective satisfaction of the rights and interests of legitimate stakeholders in keeping with their mission. In this regard, the only primary stakeholders are the legitimising population - people who are poor, women, children, the disabled, etc - which legitimises the NGOs existence. Experience shows that in most assessments concerns of the primary stakeholders, to whom the NGOs have a formal or legal obligation, are ignored and snubbed due to their dependent and disempowered position and lack of capacity to engage and sanction NGO behaviour.
The core task of NGOs management is to lead the organisations to their purpose. If achievements are not recognised, or can only be guessed at, or must be assumed by logical inference, the basis of management and decision-making is weakened. Instead of results, if the focus is solely on achieving targets and completing activities, managers lack solid grounds to judge consistency between activities, goals and mission, and cannot ensure a transfer of 'ownership' to primary stakeholders at the right time and in the right way. The target orientation makes the cost-benefit appraisal impossible and personnel may only be judged on the basis of effort, not merit, in terms of their contribution to achieving development goals.
Grievances of favouritism and nepotism arise due to the fact that authority cannot be delegated with confidence, as completing the statistics does not provide an external standard against which staff efforts and quality of decisions are judged. The target orientation keep open legitimacy and accountability to questions which results in a perpetual state of internal anxiety and vulnerability to external appraisal, weakens an NGO position as a trusted civic actor and reduces confidence. Moreover, this lack of demonstrated achievements weakens grounds on which to resist or negotiate alternatives to government-centred policies and practices.
Problems with assumptions, methodological difficulties and organisational demands are the three main factors why NGOs find it so hard to recognise their achievements. The way change occurs in real life is different from the assumptions shaping the funding system. Inconsistencies arise when causes and effects do not fall in a straight line as assumed by the aid system. Such a system might work if each organisation could shield the donor funding and organisational behaviour from negative internal and external influences - which they never can. The whole process of development does not occur in a controlled hypothetical environment and the NGOs influence diminishes as other factors come into play. To achieve an progress, he outcomes of an NGO's activities must merge into ongoing processes in the community rather than clearly stand apart from them.
NGOs need to provide information on both tangible and intangible products and process of development. They must have reference points or standards against which judgements can be made. They must incorporate a time scale covering future changes. The NGOs must be reliable and produce valid information which is appropriate for different users and timely in relation to decision-making and accountability requirements, and be cost effective in relation to the level of resources applied. These criteria are so difficult to satisfy that most NGOs simply measure their activities, expenditures and out puts. It is very rare to find any assessment of the organisation as a whole.
Besides paying attention to performance, NGOs need to develop systems which demonstrate actual outcomes. The inadequacy of existing performance measurement is tied to the methods and instruments that systems typically employ. Monitoring, evaluation and review in general was assumed to be carried out by a neutral and external people not involved in the organisations. However, the participatory approaches followed by NGOs rejected it as unfeasible, incompatible with authentic participation and contrary to true people-centred development. The press reports, however, show that instead of using monitoring, evaluation and review as means to assessing the organisations 'doing' development, they have been used as ends to avoid critical scrutiny by presenting statistics in a palatable way. Evaluations seldom say anything about the organisational conditions or characteristics which might contribute to the results.
The major limitation in assessing NGOs performance is the government's perfectly sidelined stance and the funders' lack of accepting responsibility. By and large, donors take the stance of a contractor, ignoring the fact that they control many of the conditions affecting performance. However, "in a manner similar to employers-contractors, donors typically assign responsibility for results to those whom they finance. They hold guarantees accountable for the successful delivery of outcomes and outputs specified in negotiated agreements without considering the determinative nature or impact of their own policies, objectives, requirements, timetables and capabilities on guarantees' orientation, scope, capacity and operations," (Krystal, Young and Waithaka (1995) "NGOs in Kenya: A review.").
As a matter of principle, good practice and fairness, the funders dimension must be included in any investigation and explanation of NGO performance. Unless their occurs, the funders would always remain unaware of their lack of capability to undertake accurate evaluations.
External evaluations carried out in a limited period or time to a limited programme area can falsify reality for organisational ends and are seldom placed in a forum with those 'investigated' so that findings can be challenged or rejected. This approach of relying on funder's or internal evaluations that do not reflect what has changed, what caused the changed and what was originally intended, not only separates development from poor people, it places the interpretation of facts in the hands of outsiders. In other words, it disempowers those who should be in the driving seat.
Defrosting the icebergs would only take place if an "interpretive approach" to monitoring and evaluation is followed which highlights different stakeholders' views and appraisals of situations and events both in the community and within the organisation. In this approach, monitoring and evaluation are on-going situation specific processes which may be stopped for practical reasons like lack of funds, but will carry in the minds and lives of those concerned. People evaluation their circumstances continually; life, even in poverty, is much more than a series of development schemes.
The multi-level interpretive assessment works on the basis of building up the 'truth' not only from the perspective of an NGO management or a few annual reports, but from the point of views of different interested parties. Since people's lives are affected by diverse factors, an interpretive method can disentangle an NGO effects from individual factors. It is the values, aspirations, interests and changes people will act on which are important for assessing outcomes and gauging long-term impact.
The icebergs of corruption in NGOs will remain frozen as long as the leadership remain unwilling to learn or simply intent on surviving where levels of support, rather than impact, are the yardsticks for performance. The future development role of NGOs is to learn and demonstrate from experience in order to influence the larger forces which perpetuate poverty. Getting this message across to donors and public is already yesterday's challenge, but it is yet to be undertaken by most NGOs. This is a leadership stance which makes significant difference to whether the NGO learns or not. The stance need to encourage questioning; treat errors and failures as positive information; value self-criticism, systematic reflection and external challenge;; and push boundaries - not rejecting hard facts as "campaign of disgruntled people."
Learning should also answer the 'why' question the NGOs face. But for some, accepting the reality of failure is still more important than answering the 'why' question described by Marie-Therese Feuerstein as, "knowing why an organisation is succeeding or failing is even more important than knowing it does," (Feuerstein M T (1988) Partners in Evaluation: Evaluating Development and Community Programmes with Participants, Macmillan, London).
Nunc auctor bibendum eros. Maecenas porta accumsan mauris.
Manager
Nunc auctor bibendum eros. Maecenas porta accumsan mauris.
Staff
Nunc auctor bibendum eros. Maecenas porta accumsan mauris.
Staff 2
Nunc auctor bibendum eros. Maecenas porta accumsan mauris.