AIDSpan, Global Fund Observer, and Social Market Analysts
Published by steve November 18th, 2003 in UncategorizedI ran into an interesting person this weekend at a party. His name is Bernard Rivers and he runs an organization called AIDSpan. He provides two services: 1) fund raising assistance to NGOs doing AIDS projects, and 2) a newsletter called the Global Fund Observer.
I have been thinking that donors lack independent commentary and analysis of various NGOs performance. In the private sector, investors can go to Standard and Poors, Morgan Stanley, Yankee Group, etc. to get analysis regarding various companies or business sectors.
It is true you can get what percentage of money NGOs are spending on overhead, but is not really the same type of information you would get in an analyst report.
In the private sector, the metric of performance are already agreed upon: market growth, earnings per share, annual dividend, etc. It seems we need a ?Social Standard and Poors? to develop new metrics for different NGO sectors: AIDS patients currently under treatment, Micro Loans Per Capita, VoIP Calls per Month, etc. Then NGOs could publish these numbers, have independent auditors verify the numbers, and analysts comment on which NGOs are doing a good job and which are not.
With donors wanting more accountability and cheap Web-based publishing technology, Global Fund Observer may be the first of many ?social market analysts.?
Steve,
I think the “Better Business Bureau” (http://www.bbb.org) attempts to do some of this for charities (http://www.give.org). This is clearly neither a sub- or super- set with NGOs, or foundations, but may be worth looking at. Someone I know in New York used to work for them and said that their mandate is mainly to stop charity scams, but they also look at percentage of funds put directly into action (i.e. rather than admin costs).
Cheers,
Nic.