CARE Internationalaccountability Framework

CARE InternationalAccountability Framework

Testing/Piloting Guidelines

(Draft ver. January 20, 2011)

Accountability for CARE is the means by which we fulfil our responsibilities to our stakeholders and the ways in which they may hold us to account for our decisions, actions and impacts

Table of Contents

Introduction

What does CARE’s Accountability Framework aim to achieve?

Who are these guidelines for?

What is the purpose of these guidelines?

Accountability Framework: Policy Statement

CARE’s Accountability Framework(draft version 20.01.11)

Guidance Note

Accountability Processes and Indicators

1.Advocacy/Communications

2.Governance Structures/Boards

3.Marketing

4.Program

5.Senior management

6.Support functions

Applying the Enablers

Annex 1 – Good Practice Examples

Annex 2 – Useful Tools and Resources

Annex 3 – CARE’s Core Commitments

Annex 4 – Facilitator Guidelines for Testing the Accountability Framework

Annex 5- Feedback Form for the Testing Phase

Annex 6 – Facilitator Guidelines for Piloting the Accountability Framework

Annex 7 – Feedback Form for the Pilot Phase

Introduction

What does CARE’s Accountability Framework aim to achieve?Is this another initiative?The aim of CARE International's Accountability Framework is to pull together CARE's existing key commitments into one place to make it easier to understand and act upon our commitments to both external and CARE stakeholders. Such accountability commitments include both CARE internal policies along with commitments that CARE has made to interagency standards and principles.

CARE International’s Program & Operations Committee (POC) is currently leading the development of CARE International’s Accountability Framework (AF) with support from a Task Force set up for this purpose[1]. The AF will draw upon lessons learned from CARE’s Humanitarian Accountability Framework (HAF), but will cover all of CARE’s programming, governance and operations…not only our humanitarian activities.

Who are these guidelines for? The primary target is staff members who will be facilitating tests and pilots of the Accountability Framework. However, it is hoped that these will be for CARE staff more generally to help them understandthe testing and piloting process and how they can participate.

What is the purpose of these guidelines?

Using lessons learned from the HAF, it is planned that CARE’s Accountability Frameworkwill be developed through testing and piloting by different functional units in CARE (e.g. Country Offices, HQ units, etc.). These guidelines are to facilitate this testing and piloting process and help capture learning so that this results in a user-friendly accountability framework that improves CARE’s accountability to all key stakeholder groups; including beneficiaries.

Accountability Framework: Policy Statement

CARE International’s Vision, Mission and Humanitarian Mandate statements establish the core mandate of our work to fight poverty and social injustice. We work in partnership with others to address the underlying causes of people’s poverty and vulnerability in the poorest communities around the world. We respond to humanitarian emergencies as an essential part of CARE’s work to fight poverty and injustice. To make all this possible we mobilise resources and supporters, and seek to influence public opinion and decision-makers. This Accountability Framework is a statement of CARE’s commitment to accountability in all our work. It is fundamental to putting CARE’s mandate into practice.

CARE’s Accountability Framework(draft version 20.01.11)

• Uphold our vision, mission, values and standards
• Wisely use the funds entrusted to us
• Manage and reduce our environmental footprint

• Fulfil our agreed goals and commitments
• Ensure the welfare and support of our staff
• Respect statutory requirements in host countries

1. Communicate in an open and honest way
2. Give stakeholders a voice in our decision making
3. Actively seek feedback and complaint from others
4. Demonstrate impact, quality and effectiveness of our work
5. Learn with and from others

1. Demonstrate attitudes and behaviours that reflect our

1. Develop appropriate systems to support accountability
2. Encourage leadership at all levels

• Who are the main stakeholders for our particular function? Who do we interact with the most?
• What are the main accountability commitments we have made to them and how do they relate to CARE’s ultimate mission of reducing poverty?
• What processes are already in place (or are planned) to meet these commitments?
• What are the current gaps and challenges in meeting these commitments, especially to the poor, women and girls? What are the significant risks that CARE is exposed to as a result?
• How can we address these gaps and challenges using the five core accountability processes?
• How will we know we are meeting our commitments for each Benchmark? What is a user-friendly list of relevant indicators for our functional area that we can use to monitor this?

CARE defines accountability as the means by which we fulfil our responsibilities to our stakeholders and the ways in which they may hold us to account for our decisions, actions and impacts. It is about accepting responsibility for the intended and unintended consequences of our work.CAREaims to be accountable to all our stakeholders, but first and foremost to the poor, vulnerable and disaster affected people and communities with whom we work, especially women and girls. CARE’s key stakeholders include:

• Those that we work for (often with limited power over CARE’s decision-making):
• People, especially women and girls, on whose lives CARE seeks to have an impact
• Communities affected by our programmes
• Those that we work with(usually those with limited power over CARE):
• Our partners, allies and organisations we support
• Our staff and to one another
• Those with legal mandates over us(usually those that wield power over CARE):
• Our donors and supporters
• The governments that host us
• Those affected by our work
• Those we seek to influence through our advocacy(usually those that wield power over CARE):
• General public, environmental resources in operational areas (usually with limited power over CARE)

A detailed table of CARE’s core commitments is available in the appendix.

For CARE, putting our accountability into practice is about building two way relationships based on trust. This means involving our stakeholders in our decisions and activities, being open and transparent about our work and achievements, systematically listening to people’s opinions and concerns, capturing and using learning from our experiences, and putting right what may have gone wrong. It requires respectful and responsible attitudes, appropriate systems and strong leadership.

In applying these benchmarks we strive to balance the different needs of our different stakeholders. However our primary accountability to communities means that we give priority to their needs, priorities and perspectives. Each benchmark has key indicators which are drawn from good practice and the standards and codes that CARE has committed to. Each part of CARE undertakes to develop the way these benchmarks are applied as appropriate to the context. We adopt a ‘good enough’ approach, which means we recognise that it is important to begin by taking simple, practical measures tomeet our commitmentsand continuous improve over time.

We need to demonstrate our compliance with them by regularly reviewing how well we are meeting the benchmarks, how our interventions are having an impact and identifying areas for improvements. We do this through monitoring, review and evaluation and communicating our findings to our stakeholders in a way they can easily understand. Our approach to reviewing compliance is based on learning, supportive relationships, local voices and is adapted to the specific context. All staff are responsible for implementing our work in accordance with this accountability framework, and CARE managers have a specific responsibility to support them in doing so.

Guidance Note

CARE plans to introduce the AF progressively into all aspects of our programming, operations and governancethroughtesting and piloting and improving the AF based on the results. This guidance note has been prepared to help CARE staff understand how an accountability framework can help improve our work. It should also help guide those staff facilitating testsor pilots. The guidance note will be useful for all CARE staff in understanding CARE’s approach to accountability issues and will also provide specific assistance to staff members and units who will lead and implement tests and pilots. It is planned for the testing phase to be spread over 3-6 months, which should result in an Accountability Framework which is user-friendly enough to be piloted in different parts of CARE. . The pilot phase will probably be somewhat longer, spread over 12 months or so, and will focus on analyzing how the Accountability Framework and the guidance note works in practice. Detailed guidelines for those leading tests and pilots are provided under Enabler No. 2 (page 10) and the appendices.

Overall scope: CARE’s Accountability Framework (AF)addresses staff in all functions and levels.The AF does not contain anything new. It merely draws together the multipleaccountability commitments that CARE has made in various internal policies and external standards. The AFhelps makea clear declaration of CARE’s accountability commitments,communicate them consistently internally and externally and facilitate their implementation. Accountability provides a common lens to help CARE improve the quality of all its functions, e.g., raising funds, meeting donor requirements, improving programs, meetinggovernment requirements, keeping staff motivated and safe, influencing others, and increasing public awareness about CARE’s work. Different functions pursue these goals using different terminology. For example, Finance and Marketing highlightdonor compliance, Program emphasizes community participation, Communication desires clearer communication with the public, and senior management and the board emphasizeenterprise risk. In reality, eachof these goalsconstitutes different forms of accountability. Thus, using a common accountability lens helps inbringing the whole agency on the same page, comparing the varied goals of different functionsalong a common denominator and identifying and addressing conflicts among them. This common lens can help in achieving CARE’s aspiration to make accountability to communities its most important accountability.

Risk management: The AF provides a powerful tool for mapping and reducing enterprise risks. These include hazard risks related to lawsuits, staff security, exploitation of female beneficiaries and criticism byhost governments;financial risks frominappropriate grants and funds management;reputational risksfrom ineffective interactionswith external stakeholders;and operational risks from ineffective team work across staff and partners. NGOs face lower market risks than corporations whose customers have greater ability to influence corporate performance by withholding business. Increasing community accountability helps CARE enhance the market power of communities and yet manage market risks effectively. Similarly, enhanced accountability to stakeholders in other functions can help in managing risks.

Dimensions for analyzingaccountability: CARE staff should strive to be accountable both for our contribution to achieving lasting change in people’s lives and for the way that we work, including how we: i) Uphold our values, principles and standards, ii) Fulfil our agreed goals and commitments, iii) Wisely use the funds entrusted to usand respect statutory requirements in the countries where we work, iv) Ensure the welfare and support of our staff, and v) Manage and reduce our environmental footprint. In practice, accountabilitymeans involvingkey stakeholders in all stages of the performance management cycle (Planning, Implementation, Review and Sanctioning). The extent of accountability to a stakeholder is affected by thenumber of stagesitparticipates in and the frequency ofinvolvement. It also is affected by their level of influence, i.e., whether they are merely consulted or are part of the decision-makingor are the final decision-maker. Accountability also is affected by theformality ofinvolvement, e.g., whethertheir participation is discretionary, required by agencypolicies or required legally. Finally, it is affected bythe extent of concentration of powerin a stakeholder, i.e., whether it is one of its kind (home country regulators who can shut down global operations); one among a few (e.g., donors) or one among a large number (e.g., beneficiaries) with limited individual power. While donors and governments generally have legal rights to participate in each stage, often as final decision-makers, weaker stakeholderslike communities score low onthese questions. Thus, their accountability must be increased through active policies, e.g., by enhancing the concentration of power of beneficiaries by helping form representative organizationswhich participate in decision-making at each stage regularly, and making this an agency-wide program standard.

Accountability Processes and Indicators

A range of options (from low-effort, low-accountability ones to higher-effort, higher-accountability ones) are provided below for different functions at all levels to operationalize each benchmark into specific indicators. The suggestions are merely examples and each unit is encouraged to generate indicators suited to their situations using the five dimensions given in the “Dimensions for analyzing accountability” sectionabove during the AF testing/simulation phase which can then become part of the pilot version of the AF.The emphasis in these examples is on increasing accountability to communities. CARE’s responsibilities towards the AF remain the same if we work through partners. This needs to be considered when selecting partners, drawing up contracts and setting up monitoring and evaluation systems. Each sub-section below includes examples of indicators (given in italics) for each accountability process (given in bold) for different CARE functional units.

1. 
   Advocacy/Communications(Stakeholders: advocacy targets; public, program staff)

1. Communicate in an open and honest way(All stages)

1. Give stakeholders a voice in our decision making(Planning stage)

1. Actively seek feedback and complaint from others(Implementation stage)