Civil society

CIVIL SOCIETY: What would Civil society do to achieve better results if they had time, ample resources, and no pressure at all from funders to generate progress reports of all sorts?
Ideally, they would continually track and reflect on their performance in a manner that would help them improve their programs. They would internalise the truly vital metrics that would help them measure their current performance against their strategy and the needs they are trying to meet. They would gather data relevant to decisions about what to stop, start, continue, and refine – all with an eye toward increasing their impact.
Unfortunately, even though measument is perhaps the single most powerful tool that civil societies and their donors can use to get better together, it’s rarely deployed to that end.
Happy talk prevails in public because donors and grantees need each other and share a common passion. In private, however, hand-wringing may become the order of the day as reporting-related frustrations accumulate.

Birungi K. Desiderius
077 2 426 607
Executive Director
Better World Uganda
P. O. Box 406, Hoima-Uganda