6 tips for taking transparency to the next level

In today’s environment of increased scrutiny and uncertainty around aid budgets, the concepts of transparency and accountability are more important than ever. But it can be about more than just publishing balance sheets, according to Restless Development, the nonprofit for youth-led development, which won the first ever Transparency Award in London last month from U.K. NGO network Bond. Instead, transparency can be used to improve the work of an organization and empower its beneficiaries, COO Perry Maddox told Devex. In 2015, Restless Development began a process that led to what it calls “dynamic accountability.” Rather than publishing to be compliant with the U.K. International Aid Transparency Initiative and the Charity Commission, it began making everything from staff salaries to board meeting minutes publicly available. The goal was not only to become more open, according to Maddox, but also to bring about a more fundamental change. “Just being transparent isn’t an accomplishment in itself — we really wanted to step it up and apply the principles of transparency and accountability inwardly as well as outwardly,” he told Devex. By opening up the agency’s internal workings and inviting more people in, Restless Development can have a greater impact on the young people and other partners it works with, Maddox said. But this will only work if the move toward transparency is “radical” and goes beyond a passive one-way flow of information. “Going beyond transparency for the sake of transparency, ‘dynamic accountability’ becomes a two-way exchange of information,” he said. “The act of being transparent brings more voices into the leadership, governance and management of our agency, ultimately making our work better.” This is especially important for Restless Development’s mission of empowering young people, who too often tend to be pigeon-holed as beneficiaries instead of participants or leaders, he said. This extends to the policy space, where young people are often invited to take part in a “token” effort at engagement, posing for photos with politicians rather than taking part in discussions, Maddox said. “We know young people have the agency and ability to meaningfully participate in and lead development,” Maddox said. In a show of commitment to this, the agency handed over the development of its new strategy to a team of young people aged 28 and under, who created a strategy that is a “real departure” from previous management-led efforts, Maddox said. “Rather than setting out our institutional goals and plans as such, this strategy diagnoses a historic challenge facing the development sector — to hand over the ownership of development to the communities that we all serve, while also translating impact into lasting change via the priorities that young people told us were key to unlocking their power to lead,” he said. Another means by which the organization is trying to embed transparency is by appointing young people to its board. Aamirah Patel, aged 24, is one of the trustees. Speaking at the Bond conference a few weeks ago, Patel explained how her role as a trustee is helping to realize Restless Development’s ambition of dynamic accountability. “It’s about having that direct line of sight between the people you seek to empower on the ground ... being reflected right at the top, at the governance level. That is what true, real accountability is,” she said. However, the organization’s transparency overhaul hasn’t been without its critics. Some outside the organization have suggested it is asking for trouble to make everything publicly available — “do you really want to publish that?” is a common question, Maddox said. Restless Development’s staff have also tried out a number of approaches and pilots, some of which have been more successful than others, the COO said. Based on lessons learned so far, Maddox offers six top tips for organizations wanting to follow suit. 1. Be clear about your motivation. Interrogating the reasons why you want your organization to move from a compliance approach to one that embraces transparency at all levels is key to making the transition, Maddox said. For some organizations it is not appropriate to disclose more than they are required to, he suggested. For example, they may need to protect the identity of staff who could be open to attack. However, many organizations will find that it increases the impact of their work, he said. 2. Draw from existing experience. “Look at the culture and values of your organization and its programs and ask yourself — is there something you are already doing which can teach you how to do this work within your own organization?” Maddox said. For Restless Development, for example, this involved taking their approach to youth-led accountability, which is at the heart of their external work, and applying it internally. 3. Be realistic. Embracing two-way flows of information and opening up decision-making processes to all staff and partners needs to be balanced with the need to make executive decisions across a global agency in an agile way, Maddox said. Striking a balance between the two will be different for every organization, but Maddox advises that candour about how decisions are being made and why a certain balance has been struck is a vital ingredient in building trust. 4. Make use of digital technology — but know its limits. Digital tools can be a great way of enhancing transparency, Maddox said. For example, Restless Development’s directors tweeted live from their annual meeting, which garnered participation from staff and young people who replied with questions. However, it is important to view such things as “one tool in the transparency toolkit” and not the tool itself, Maddox said. He also cautioned organizations to remember that online media are not universally available. “Be careful not to fall for the trap of investing in applications and relying too heavily on the internet, since if you run something online you automatically exclude a lot of people,” he warned. Digital technologies are also not always reliable as a form of engagement, as Maddox and his team discovered when they attempted an online discussion ahead of the directors’ meeting. “It didn’t work: we only had seven people posting in the whole two weeks, so we had to let that idea go,” he said. 5. Think about your size and structure. Restless Development has over 400 full-time staff and more than 3,000 volunteers spread across 10 hubs in Africa, South Asia, the U.K. and the U.S, working with youth-led organizations in 50 countries. This lent itself well to trying out different approaches to transparency, Maddox said. For example, the experiment with youth-led strategy development drew on the agency’s size and structure. It was large enough to convene a global discussion with inputs from dozens of countries, while also drawing on deeply embedded young leaders in rural villages and urban slums to generate 45 percent of responses from offline sources, Maddox explained. This will look different for every organization, so it’s worth reflecting on the size and shape of an organization to understand how best to apply these principles, Maddox said. 6. You’re not on your own. There are some exciting discussions and plenty of resources out there to help you get started, Maddox said. Restless Development’s journey began with a transparency review produced by Bond, which helped the organization formulate a plan for its work. Maddox and his team then worked with Accountable Now, a global platform that supports transparency in civil society, to further develop their thinking, he said. 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