A main tenet of our work is that societal learning to solve important social problems improves when there is systematic and effective stakeholder dialogue that flows through into public reporting. Organizations learn and perform best when they are held to account by those most affected by their work. Similarly, governments, donors and society at large will be better able to assess the value of those civil society organizations that report all their stakeholders’ voices.¹

Another Keystone tenet is that public reporting of stakeholder views partly redresses dysfunctional asymmetries of power, access, knowledge and resources. Lone organizations do not cause sustainable social change. Keystone products and services bring collective learning and will to bear on important and difficult problems. The learning processes fostered by Keystone allow steady improvement of mutual understanding among different organizations acting on a problem within an ecosystem, which in turn produces improved social outcomes. Moreover, the clarity of aims and measures that Keystone generates will help to attract innovation in development finance and other institutional strengthening.

Keystone is now testing the hypothesis that a civil society organization’s theory of change provides the optimal reference point for stakeholder dialogue, public reporting and operational excellence. What we mean here by a theory of change is a general explanation of how social change occurs and a particular strategy for bringing about the kinds of change an organization is working for. A good theory of change is plausible, achievable, and measurable. Stakeholders review the organization’s theory of change against these criteria and agree indicators to be tracked and reported by the organization.

A further hypothesis at the core of Keystone is that the quality of relationships with beneficiaries and other constituents and organizational capabilities are the best predictors of the potential to affect change in future. Specifically, Keystone argues that there are three capabilities that determine the quality of constituency relationships and are most predictive of the potential to cause and sustain social change. These three form the basis of the Keystone Capabilities Profiler. Keystone reporting requires organizations to track and report their results in a rigorous way. But when it comes to assessing and comparing across organizations, and to predicting future performance, Keystone integrates results data into the scoring of capabilities.

Figure 1, below, represents this view of the ecosystem of social change and profiles Keystone as a way to shift reporting practices to enhance learning, collaboration and accountability.

We argue that development outcomes depend on success in mobilising and aligning the work of many actors, partners and stakeholders towards shared outcomes. The resulting web of relationships in the development process is quite complex and change agencies need to manage and prioritise competing accountabilities. However, in practice, stakeholder relations are mostly bilateral (e.g., between an international NGO and a donor; between the international NGO and its local partners; or between local partners and beneficiaries of the work). Information is fragmented. Planning systems or monitoring and evaluation frameworks that are designed to drive “quality” according to carefully planned outputs do not adequately fit with what really drives quality in field work, such as time to reflect on practice and adapt, recognize failure, or practice downward accountability to constituents so that it generates greater participation.²

Reporting requirements effectively shape an organization’s accountability actions. Today, they usually privilege upward accountability to donors at the expense of accountability to constituents and to partners. In our vision of success, reporting requirements and practices will enable change agencies to plan for and measure the changes they seek to bring about and to learn from experience.