SAIE’s Management Information System (MIS)
Accountability is a high on the agenda of the corporate world and many corporations are linking themselves to non profit organisations as a part of demonstrating their accountability and legitimacy in society. However, in the same way that investors want assurances that companies are ethically and financially sound, donors and other stakeholders are increasingly demanding to see a measurable social impact resulting from their social investments. More and more, therefore, nonprofit organizations need to think seriously about how they operate and put in place management information systems and governance strategies to earn and maintain the public trust. Without the trust of the public, there would be no charitable sector. Many nonprofits are taking key steps to enhance their governance and accountability processes and make the result of their activities more transparent.
Nonprofits are accountable to as many stakeholders as corporations are, including private and institutional donors; local and national government agencies; volunteers; the public at large and, perhaps most importantly, the “beneficiaries” of their activities in whose name they have accessed and deployed financial resources that could have been allocated elsewhere.
In being accountable, therefore, it is not sufficient for nonprofits to only focus their feedback efforts on funders by providing accurate reflections of funding spent. With the limited resources available and the need for significant intervention to improve the lives of the marginalized, nonprofits have to be accountable for their social impact. Are they achieving with the funding received the goals they set out to – viz. their organizational mission and objectives?
In order to effectively, demonstrate accountability, most nonprofits need to establish more effective information management and evaluation processes that can make public the outcomes achieved by their use of funding and other resources. There thus needs to be effective information management systems, procedures and technologies, including internal controls and smart software, which collates and makes visible impact achievements and outcome results.
NON PROFIT ACCOUNTABILITY CAPACITY REQUIREMENTS
Nonprofit organizations are mostly admired for their passionate commitment to mission and their inventive approaches to addressing urgent social problems. Across the country and around the world, nonprofits are implementing programs that are improving the quality of life for tens of millions of people, and they are often doing so against heavy odds and with very limited resources.
The success that nonprofits have demonstrated in addressing social issues has generated increased demand for their services. Government is increasingly turning to nonprofits as potential service providers and partners in tackling our most pressing social issues.
As nonprofit organizations play increasingly important roles in our society, it becomes even more critical for them to not only perform effectively but to also establish the systems and infrastructure to evaluate that performance and be publicly transparent and accountable for their actions and achievements. Most of the issues being addressed by non profits – such as hunger, homelessness, or unemployment and poverty – may not be “solved” in our lifetime, which places more emphasis on the need for strong organisations with sufficient management information systems, infrastructure and capacity to continue to address them.
Nonprofits have an obligation to seek new and ever more effective ways of making tangible progress toward their missions, and this requires building organizational capacity. Forward thinking nonprofit managers have already demonstrated their commitment to growing management practices and principles in order to help them build sustainable high-performing organizations, rather than just strong programs. However, all too many focus on creating new programs and keeping administrative costs low instead of building the organizational capacity necessary to achieve their aspirations effectively and efficiently.
This is not surprising, given that donors and funders have traditionally been more interested in supporting an exciting new idea than in building an organization that can effectively carry out that idea, but it must change. Both nonprofit managers and those that fund them must recognize that excellence in programmatic innovation and implementation are insufficient for nonprofits to achieve lasting results. Great programs need great organizations behind them, and the only way to build a great organization is to build capacity.
Investing in the people and systems that make products and services better is well established in the for-profit sector. Consider the millions spent on staff and warehouse facilities before Amazon.com ever went on line. However, what is interesting is: why are those organizations created to eradicate poverty and solve the complex social problems of our society not financed in a way that allows them to develop or maintain their infrastructure? Capacity is vital to the long-term health and effectiveness of nonprofit institutions, both large and small.
THE “CAPACITY FRAMEWORK”
Capacity is one of those words that mean all things to all people, and nonprofits have approached and interpreted capacity building in many different ways. The “Capacity Framework” provides a starting point and defines nonprofit capacity in a pyramid of seven essential elements: three higher-level elements – aspirations, strategy, and organizational skills – three foundational elements – systems and infrastructure, human resources, and organizational structure – and a cultural element which serves to connect all the others. These elements are defined as follows:
- Aspirations: An organization’s mission, vision, and overarching goals, which collectively articulate its common sense of purpose and direction
- Strategy: The coherent set of actions and programs aimed at fulfilling the organization’s overarching goals
- Organizational Skills: The sum of the organization’s capabilities, including such things (among others) as performance measurement, planning, resource management, and external relationship building
- Human Resources: The collective capabilities, experiences, potential and commitment of the organization’s board, management team, staff, and volunteers
- Systems and Infrastructure: The organization’s planning, decision making, knowledge management, and administrative systems, as well as the physical and technological assets that support the organization
- Organizational Structure: The combination of governance, organizational design, interfunctional coordination, and individual job descriptions that shapes the organization’s legal and management structure
- Culture: The connective tissue that binds together the organization, including shared values and practices, behavior norms, and most important, the organization’s orientation towards performance.
By combining all the different elements of organizational capacity in a single, coherent diagram, the pyramid emphasizes the importance of examining each element both individually and in relation to the other elements, as well as in context of the whole enterprise. These emphases reflect a key finding of the research: many nonprofits tend to think capacity building is limited to “technical assistance” or improving the effectiveness of functions at the bottom of the pyramid – human resources or organizational structure, for example. In fact, case studies suggest that the greatest gains in social impact come when organizations engaged in capacity building efforts are aligned within the pyramid. Thus an organization’s systems are most effective when integrated both with other lower-level capacity elements such as structure and human resources and with the higher-level elements of aspirations, strategies, and skills.
THE BENEFIT OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TOOLS : OPTIMIZING SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT
Social Impact Assessment includes the process of analysing, monitoring and managing the intended and unintended social consequences of development. The goal of impact assessment is to bring about a more ecologically, socio-culturally and economically sustainable and equitable environment. Impact assessment, therefore, promotes community development and empowerment, builds capacity, and develops social capital (social networks and trust).
The aim of social impact assessment is to enable organisations to take a proactive stance to development and to better their development outcomes, by identifying and ameliorating the negative or unintended outcomes and assisting communities to identify development goals and ensure that positive outcomes are maximised. Such an ongoing real-time assessment and management of information contributes to the process of adaptive management of interventions and has the following additional benefits:
- It empowers local people and enhances the position of women, minority groups and other disadvantaged or marginalised members of society;
- It develops sustainable capacity; It reduces all forms of dependency; increases equity and focuses on poverty reduction.
Despite SAIE’s wide reach, the GEM analysis of the impact of the Youth Entrepreneurship course in South Africa, various evaluations of course effectiveness and the many stories of achievement and success, SAIE has not had the capacity to put in place, or effectively manage the information coming out of its interventions that could be used to analyse and enhance its own course interventions.
As discussed above, and most especially when operating in a country with as many pressing needs as exist in South Africa, it is critical for community development practitioners and development organisations to not only engage in honest practice and ensure financial accountability, but to also stand accountable for the social change they aim to facilitate. To this end, the SAIE is keen to provide a higher level of quality assurance and monitoring in order to specifically evaluate its social impact and benefit.
This process requires significant construction of course logic and assumptions for each of the Institute’s courses and their individual activities. (See an example of a Course Logic here).
This course logic establishes the course of the intervention beginning at the problem statement with its illustrative baseline measurement and indicator and moving to the target measurement over time with the proposed activities for beneficiaries. Without this course logic – which sets out the assumptions at each stage of intervention – it is almost impossible to put in place effective monitoring mechanisms that can clearly identify where assumptions are either incorrect or where the course is ineffective in addressing the problem statement.
The SA Institute for Entrepreneurship has used the power of software to build a comprehensive management information tool that now provides real-time information capture and management and that essentially npw tracks the Institute’s entire range of activities and impact on entrepreneurship globally.
SAIE celebrates, in 2006, its first decade of successful development. However, as an organisation now in existence for ten years, SAIE has appropriately spent considerable time over the past six months reflecting on its past achievements and shortcomings and developing its strategy to move forward into the next decade as a stronger organisation with the requisite capacity framework to achieve its obvious potential.
This process has very clearly indicated that a critical need – even more important than additional staff capacity or training implementations – is the effective monitoring and evaluation of its courses worldwide, to ensure that feedback loops result in problems being detected early, and to provide the ability to specifically identify where in the course logic the intervention requires refinement and enhancement.
We believe that this is a timely process, given our stage of organizational development, and one that will position us for greater things in the next decade.
