Opinion: A CEO's advice for building a global NGO

Having spent the past 10 years building what is today one of the largest wholly owned global microfinance organizations with over 30 microfinance institutions around the developing world, I am now looking ahead to exploring new challenges. The past couple of months have been a busy time of internal briefings and handovers where I have had the opportunity to reflect on a few lessons I learned and thought it would be helpful to share these with anyone building an organization of scale. 1. Set a strategy from the top, then execute well While it sounds obvious, we often jump in to fight fires and execute without having a clear and shared vision with future plans set. This strategy is not just of your direct organization but where you have strong dependencies with a parent, it must be a shared strategy. Decide your goals with all stakeholders, establish a plan of how you are going to get there together and adopt a phased approach so that you create strong foundations. 2. Build a strong team of professionals It is no secret, you need good people. I have hired a strong senior management team for our global center and we now have a strong CEO management team in our microfinance institutions. Take the time to put the right people in position and manage them properly. Find the right structure for your organization. Ensure the checks and balances are in place with appropriate reporting lines. Care for your staff. We expect a lot from our team members. They are asked to move their families abroad or spend periods of time away from home. One thing that has always impressed me is the care our staff have for each other. This says a lot to me about the caliber of our people. 3. Build the belt and braces When you start with a blank page, it can be both freeing and frustrating. Creating frameworks and policies from scratch is time consuming. Borrow as much as you can and adapt. Where risk is concerned, be careful not to follow the trends. This is where you will want to spend time digging into the facts and building policies and models that reflect reality. Be data hungry and base guidelines on fact not guesses. And as much as you can, create standards with as few exceptions as possible. For us, robust operations and risk procedures are critical. We are a regulated financial services provider in many markets. We are dealing with a lot of money — both clients’ funds, which we need to safeguard, and lenders’ and donors’ funds for which we need to be good stewards. Always be vigilant. Constantly seek ways to improve your organization’s operations and risk management framework. 4. Funding is attracted by good risk management and performance measurement Institutional funders and donors care about how you manage your risks and how you achieve your results. Thanks to our high operational standards, institutional debt funders have shown significant confidence in VisionFund. We have also looked deeply at our portfolio and derisked it through a combination of operational activities, data analysis, insurance and holding enough liquidity to span the bumps. We are recognized for our pioneering work with social performance measurement, which demonstrates that our services are improving the lives of families and children. These factors, along with solid risk management, attract social investors who want to impact the poor, but still want to have safe investments on their balance sheet. 5. It is all about the mission We operate a client-centric model. Our clients are at the heart of everything we do. We ask ourselves, how can we help more people? What impact will any decision, operational change, new product and so on, have on our clients? How can we make it better? You must never forget the mission principles for which you have striven. 6. Work with expert partners to bring more significant benefits We have been very fortunate to be part of the global humanitarian agency World Vision. This partnership has enabled us to bring to many communities microfinance services that support other humanitarian interventions such as latrines, water filters, and better quality housing, to name a few. Working with multiple partners is complex but very rewarding. In Tanzania, we are working with World Vision and other partners, to help smallholder farmers increase productivity, plant new crops, negotiate to purchase farm inputs more effectively, get better prices for produce and access new markets. This enhancement to the agricultural value chain is significantly increasing farmers’ incomes; this would not have been possible without a partnered approach combining complementary expertise. 7. Live your values VisionFund is a Christian charity, which means we believe in caring for all people. We have been able to work in different cultures, religious contexts and countries, providing for all people regardless of religion, gender or culture. We are focused on improving the lives of children living below the poverty line. We have found that when we help women increase their income, they will spend more on caring for their children. So we ask ourselves, how can we reflect this throughout our organization? We have launched a Women’s Empowerment Fund to raise money to help us provide services tailored for our women clients. We are taking a look at how we can adapt the way we provide services to better meet women’s needs, for example, making the branches of our microfinance institutions more child friendly. We are looking at how we deliver services to women and hiring more female loan officers to work with them in a more culturally sensitive way. 8. Do not stop innovating Think about how your mission can be made more impactful, longer-lasting, further-reaching. We have a global network of institutions that are ready to explode with new ways of helping people. We have introduced affordable and effective insurance for our clients to insure their families and livelihoods against disaster. We have pioneered recovery lending, a form of post-disaster lending that helps people become more resilient to disasters and get back on their feet more quickly. We have become known for our social performance measurement, for our move into working in fragile states such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar. The list goes on and I know that in a few years time, it will be much, much longer. Devex delivers cutting-edge insights and analysis to the leaders shaping and innovating the business of development. Make sure you don't miss out. Become a Devex Executive Member today.