Services to Donors

NGOs are part of a larger ecosystem for change that includes donors and governments. In order to develop better metrics, reporting and accountability practices, development agencies must work with these social investors.

We argue that the best way for an investor to understand the likelihood of an organization making an impact is to understand a combination of what its intended beneficiaries think and on the health of three key organizational capabilities: Strategy, Accountability, and Operational Integrity.  Our set of off-the-shelf tools enable donors and organizations to gain this understanding.

Building from our current products, we develop customized tools for our clients and partners. These include comparative constituency feedback surveys, assessment tools, reporting frameworks, metrics rating, certification, 'how to' guidelines, case studies, published reports, and learning events.

Clients

The Shuttleworth Foundation is the new private foundation of South African dot.com entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. Its initial strategy delivered one-off short term grants to educational entrepreneurs to enable their ‘innovations in education’ to grow into ‘phenomena’. Keystone conducted a series of strategic dialogues between programme staff and selected grantees to explore the Foundation’s theory of change in the light of grantee experience. This was an initial step in a longer programme to develop a learning and reporting system for the Foundation. The engagements highlighted that current grant making practices were insufficient to enable grantees to realize their considerable potential. A new theory of change began to emerge in the discussions that posited the value of a true learning partnership for social innovation.

“Keystone is tackling one of the central challenges of social work: to create a common system for measuring and communicating outcomes.  We need this type of system to create transparency and accountability in the not-for-profit environment and to enable citizens to understand, evaluate and support social change organisations.  Keystone's commitment to creating an open content model is also important as it ensures that its methods can be freely shared -- and improved -- by and among everyone.”

Mark Shuttleworth
Founder, Shuttleworth Foundation