Civil Society Accountability: Principles and Practice. A toolkit for CSOs in the Pacific Region
Basic information
- Type: Self-Assessment
- Year established: 2009
- Status: In development
- Thematic area: General
- Summary: The Civil Society Accountability: Principles and Practice, a toolkit for CSOs in the Pacific Islands a is a capacity building guide for CSOs intending to assess their accountability capabilities and practices. The toolkit provides a self assessment tool to assist organisations through the process. It also supports identified capacity gaps through the provision of tools, resources, and good practice sharing. The toolkit is part of a pilot project engaging CSOs in Belize, India, Uganda and the Pacific islands under which norms have been developed in consultation with participating CSOs. This initiative was implemented by the One World Trust with the support of the Commonwealth Foundation.
Contact details
- Host organisation: One World Trust and the Commonwealth Foundation
- Website: www.oneworldtrust.org
- Email: accountability@oneworldtrust.org
- Phone: 020 7766 3470
- Address: 3 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EL
Areas addressed
- Principles or standards: Principles-based
- Communications / advocacy / fundraising:
- General commitment to transparency
- Ethical communications
- Fundraising standards
- Governance and Management:
- General commitment to good governance
- Anti-Corruption
- Auditing
- Board structure
- Conflict of Interest
- Financial reporting
- Human resources:
- Staff development and training
- Staff relations
- Volunteer relations
- Beneficiary / client / supporter participation:
- General commitment to beneficiary participation
- In all project cycle stages
- In needs assessment
- In project design
- In implementation
- In monitoring (during project)
- In evaluation (ex post)
- In strategic planning
- Financial reporting to beneficiaries / clients / supporters
- Monitoring and Evaluation:
- General commitment to evaluation
- Commitment to integrate learning in future
- Dissemination of evaluations
- Impact evaluation
- Cross-cutting thematic areas:
- Gender equality
- CSO collaboration and partnership
Further info: The toolkit outlines organisational operations in three key areas: governance, programmes and financial and human resource management. Accountability standards, based on principles of transparency, participation and evaluation, are listed under each of these key categories along with challenges to actualising accountability and possible solutions to the same.
Participation
- Reasons for participation
- Enhancing credibility, quality or reputation
Compliance
- Monitoring mechanism: Commitment only
- Evidence base: Desk
- Description of monitoring mechanism: CSOs use the toolkit to perform desk-based self-assessments of their own accountability.
Assessment
Civil Society Accountability: Principles and Practice, a toolkit for CSOs in the Pacific Region provides the building blocks for CSOs to conduct a self assessment of their accountability capabilities and practices, along with mechansims and methods to address issues around capacity and training. It is purely voluntary in nature and may need support through more specific training on elements of accountabiltiy: transaprency, stakeholder participation etc.
