DELIVERING IMPACT AS A PRIVATE FUNDER

David Bonbright, Keystone's Chief Executive, attended this year's 'Partnerships for Development' Forum at Wilton Park and presented a panel, next to Gerard Salole of the European Foundations Centre and Tina Wallace of the International Gender Studies Centre at Oxford.

The panel entitled: 'Delivering Impact as a Private Funder' took place on April 17th at 9am and addressed the following questions:

- What are the challenges of delivering impact as a private funder?

- How can funders best address issues such as accountability, transparency, aid effectiveness, and building capacity in-country?

MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHAT’S THE IMPACT

OF THIS ALL?

Keystone's Chief Executive, David Bonbright, will be participating in this year's Skoll Forum on Social Entrepreneurship and sitting on the panel of this interactive session that will explore various approaches to assessing impact and leveraging these efforts to attract resources and drive organisational learning. Panellists and public will try to answer key questions including: Who are the real audiences for impact assessment efforts? Who really cares and is it worth the bother? What happens in practice when social entrepreneurs are systematic about measuring impact? How does this lead to organisational learning, increased impact and innovation, or to greater resource mobilisation?

The GuideStar International Assembly took place in London on 19-20 September 2007. Around the theme of "Transparency, Civil Society and Effective States in the Information Age", representatives from civil society organisations, public aid agencies and private foundations debated on the possibilities offered by the information technologies for improving the transparency and accountability of civil society across the globe.

Keystone was represented at the event by David Bonbright who contributed to the panel titled: "To evolve a Global Reporting Framework" - an open discussion of the opportunities for, limitations and wisdom of and programme required to generate a consensus global framework for CSO reporting. 

On Saturday 26 May 2007, Keystone in collaboration with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) presented a training workshop during the CIVICUS 2007 World Assembly in Glasgow. The workshop titled: “Working with new approaches to monitoring, evaluation and accountability for sustainable social change”  was facilitated by Keystone Senior Advisor Andre Proctor and brought together 20 organisations from around the world serious about applying new ways to plan, learn and account for the impact they have on the well-being of the people they work with and for.

Read David Bonbright's speech from the International Seminar on Civil Society and Accountability in Montevideo, 16-17 April 2007, where he was invited to be keynote speaker.

Featured in Alliance Magazine (March 07), David reviews Joel Fleishman's book which argues that foundations must start operating more openly or risk drawing increased public skepticism and government regulation.

With support from Omidyar Network, Keystone convened a first international meeting of online social investment marketplaces from July 9-11. The first two days of the meeting were devoted to practical exchange amongst the markets from seven countries regarding operational challenges. In sum, we met to:

1) share experiences and learning;
2) explore ways and means of developing shared systems to address common challenges; and
3) set up engagements with market enablers and organizations poised to establish giving markets.

Keystone Chief Executive David Bonbright authored one of the four Background Papers for this year's Civicus World Assembly, which took place from the 21 - 25 June in Glasgow, Scotland. David kicked off a mini-plenary discussion on the Civic Justice topic on the morning of Thursday 22nd June.

Within an overarching theme for the event of “Acting Together for a Just World”, David’s paper explored civic justice as a set of enabling conditions for citizen action for justice ends. He concludes that downward accountability to “beneficiaries” is the soul of civic justice.

David Bonbright's presentation at the Skoll forum emphasised the need for new informational basis on which to make social investment decisions. There is a need to adopt new ways of assessing an organization's performance and this needs to be more closely aligned to what drives social development.

While it is argued that learning, strategic clarity, accountability, and collaboration with others are main drivers of social development work, the voices of beneficiaries are not usually available to investors. This is a critical gap that needs to be bridged with urgency if social investment decisions can be geared towards real performance and sustainable social change. This, in turn, would be an incentive for NGOs and other social enterprises to take beneficiaries' voices more into account.