Transparency

Transparency is key to greater NGO effectiveness and is vital to enabling organisations to be accountable to their stakeholders - funders, supporters, the public, Southern governments, partners and beneficiaries.

Transparency also enables NGOs to better demonstrate how they are improving their practice and performance.

The Bond Transparency Programme

The Bond Transparency Programme will run for two years, co-funded by DFID and delivered in partnership with the Scottish and Northern Irish NGO networks, NIDOS and CADA.

It will support UK NGOs to:

1. Comply with the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard
2. Improve NGO transparency and the disclosure of project, governance and performance information, particularly as part of the Bond Effectiveness Programme

The IATI standard

The IATI standard provides a common way of publishing data on aid flows. It emerged from the transparency principles agreed as part of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005, finally being agreed in February 2011.

The process of agreeing the standard brought together donor country governments, developing country governments, NGOs and aid data experts and aimed to find a way to make information about aid spending easier to find, use and compare.

Bond will initially work with DFID-funded NGOs (those receiving PPA, GPAF and CSCF funding) to assist them in complying with the standard by April 2012, as directed by DFID. We will provide technical support, together with the IATI Secretariat and DFID, on data management and publishing, as well as supporting learning between peers.

Year two of the programme will reach out to other UK NGOs among Bond, NIDOS and CADA members.

Transparency and effectiveness

The Bond Transparency and Effectiveness Programmes will work closely together to ensure disclosure of NGO project, governance and performance information improves in both quantity and quality. Transparency will be incorporated into the tools and approaches being developed, principally the Self-Assessment Tool and Im-Prove It Framework.

Bond will monitor the number of UK NGOs publishing project-level data on their websites, as an indicator of overall transparency. Specifically we will look at project descriptions, geographic details, funders and partners, as well as looking at how much performance data is published.

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Get involved, stay in touch

You can receive regular updates on the Bond Transparency Programme by signing up for the NGO Effectiveness e-bulletin.

If you have any questions about the programme please email Joni Hillman.