Effectiveness
Accountability, transparency and quality are key to effective international development.
The central questions of effectiveness are simple:
- Do we achieve the changes we claim?
- Can we prove it?
These claims are not small: reduced poverty, protection of rights, saving lives and much more.
The Bond effectiveness programme aims to strengthen the management and reporting of non-government organisations' performance. It’s based on the conviction that effective development work depends upon the ability to provide robust evidence of performance through rigorous measurement using appropriate techniques.
Why Bond?
As the UK network of 370 NGOs, Bond is uniquely placed to lead on setting an agenda to develop policies, tools and approaches.
As well as the development of an effectiveness framework, we are advocating for commitment among NGOs to becoming more effective and influencing policy makers working on effectiveness.
The central questions are simple: do we achieve the changes that we claim, and can we prove it?
Strands
Our effectiveness programme has three main strands:
- Impact Builder - Developing a sector-wide framework of common indicators and agreed assessment methods to improve the rigor and consistency of how NGOs measure and demonstrate effectiveness. This tool, launched on 8 May 2013, was previously known as the Improve it Framework.
- Health Check - an online self-assessment to help identify an organisation's strengths and weaknesses and associated resources to support organisations in improving effectiveness
- Supporting innovative methods for assessing effectiveness
To make a significant and long-term impact, the programme is accessing cutting edge technical expertise while reflecting the needs, priorities and thinking of Bond members.
Coordination with other quality initiatives, national platforms and European and global civil society organisations ensures that the programme complements and learns from other work in the international development sector.
The NGO Evidence Principles
Eight NGOs including CAFOD, Traidcraft, Self Help Africa, and World Vision have piloted our NGO Evidence Principles for assessing quality of evidence. Organisations will use a checklist to measure whether they are meeting criteria across the five core principles when assessing their work.
Representatives from DFID, Comic Relief and 21 Bond members have been involved in developing the checklist tool.
The Principles are:
- Voice and Inclusion
- Appropriateness
- Triangulation
- Contribution
- Transparency
Further reading
Read more about our Health Check and Impact Builder.
We've commissioned the best thinking around the issue on our research page.
Our news and events page will keep you up-to-date on our progress.
Our meetings page has links to presentations and documents from our quarterly meetings.
Get involved, stay in touch
Bond members' input is key to our effectiveness program. Stay in touch with the latest news on our work via our regular e-bulletin. You can also email us: ngoeffectiveness@bond.org.uk.
What members say
"The presented frameworks could be very relevant across the sector as a whole."
"Its exciting to see how far this has come and encouraging to know that as a sector we are responding to the demand to show our effectiveness."
"It really feels as if the process is moving forward in a really positive direction."
