Keystone Accountability helps organizations understand and improve their social performance by harnessing feedback, especially from the people they serve.
They seek to improve the effectiveness of social change organizations and they want every organization in the world to cultivate Constituent Voice. They provide the methods, tools and services that allow organizations to really know how their constituents experience them, and what to do with that knowledge once they have it.
Their Constituent Voice method does for organizations seeking to create social value what the customer satisfaction industry does for consumer-facing businesses.
Their clients and partners are the global pioneers in bringing Constituent Voice to their work. They are varied, coming from over 20 countries and including private and public grantmakers, international development agencies, global corporations and local organisations.
They publish resources and guides that are free for everyone to use, adapt and help them improve.
Keystone is building a global movement to support better feedback practices. They are a founding member of Feedback Labs, a group creating real conversations between governments, NGOs, donors, and citizens through human-centered design, adaptive processes, technology, and trust.
Keystone origins go back to 2004, and now has registered charities in the UK, South Africa and the US.
Keystone was born at the beginning of the century out of a dissatisfaction with weak measurement and performance management among organizations dedicated to creating social value. While recognizing the need for better after the fact evaluation in the social sector, the emphasis was on real time measures, and their implications for decision making across all and organization’s constituents, from those meant to benefit from their work to funders, government and society-at-large.
From 2001 – 2003, David Bonbright initiated discussions on the need for new measuring and reporting practices for social change. These discussions culminated in an inception report, published in 2003. The following year, David’s employer, the Aga Khan Foundation, seconded David to the initiative. Initial seed capital from the Omidyar Network and Hewlett Foundation allowed Keystone (then known as ACCESS) to come into existence.
AccountAbility hosted Keystone and operations began in September 2004. Senior staff quickly came on board, including co-founder Andre Proctor, based in South Africa. The board of trustees was assembled.
From 2004 onwards the organisation benefitted from widely respected advisors including: Srilatha Batliwala, Anabel Cruz, Jed Emerson, Simon Zadek, Catherine Odora-Hoppers, Alnoor Ebrahim, Jacinto Gavino, Sanjeev Khagram, Mark Orkin, Jamey Power and others.
Subsequently, Keystone engaged in a range of piloting, learning and development activities, including with the Philippine Council of NGOs and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The refined the tools and models, deepened the knowledge of the field, and built a strong network of accountability innovators. In parallel with this methodology development work, they delivered a variety of services to clients.
By 2007 they had discovered that the largest benefits related to improved measurement practices were those that captured the voices of an organization’s constituents. They built a concept and methodology for doing this that they named Constituent Voice.
Since 2008, Keystone has continued to refine the methodology, develop the innovative partnership survey and work with a range of clients, including the World Bank, Gates Foundation, and Care International. They started Ground Truth Solutions in 2012 to bring Constituent Voice to the humanitarian space. In 2013 they helped found Feedback Labs as a clearinghouse and laboratory for good feedback practices.
