Accountability is a challenge for community-based social organizations. Often relegated to a secondary role in favor of direct activities with beneficiaries, a lack of emphasis on accountability can hinder fundraising and transparency with donors.
Presenting accurate financial data and demonstrating commitment and efficiency is fundamental to attracting investment and avoiding missed funding opportunities. Donors expect a return on their support, whether in the form of reports or documents that show how the resources were used.
With the aim of encouraging this practice and demonstrating its importance to the management strategy, our Social Investment team implemented a simplified accountability process in Futuro Bem Maior – a program that institutionally supports small initiatives located in socially vulnerable municipalities in Brazil. Although still in its early stages, the chosen approach has already generated positive results for both us and them.
During the first quarter of the fourth edition of the program, which began in January, we presented each organization and collective with the accountability process for this first year. We adopted a simple spreadsheet in Google Sheets , with only one tab. This spreadsheet contains fields for entering relevant financial information, such as income, expenses, dates, space for describing the expense, and a column for categorizing the expense (human resources, equipment, services, etc.). The data serves as input for analysis. Furthermore, we opted to waive the requirement for presenting receipts and vouchers.
The simplicity of the spreadsheet and the flexibility of the verification requirements were implemented with the aim of facilitating compliance with this demand, allowing CSOs to focus their efforts on essential day-to-day activities and on the management training offered in the Futuro Bem Maior program. With this task, we also seek to encourage transparency and financial accountability .
The simplified format also benefits us as funders, as it allows us to have a comprehensive view of the activities carried out by the supported organizations, as well as to assess the effectiveness and importance of the institutional and non-profit financial support we offer, thus strengthening our relationship of trust.
Even in the first report submission, we received positive feedback on the process. Some organizations expressed satisfaction with using the online spreadsheet, even those that had never used this type of tool before. Others expressed interest in replicating the report submission spreadsheet model for internal use in other tasks.
These responses illustrate that by systematically and simply entering and visualizing data, organizations are able to reflect on their financial management, reinforcing the importance of accountability as a valuable tool for institutional strengthening . Through this process, organizations not only meet the expectations of funders and civil society, but also obtain significant internal benefits.
We hope to find further evidence in future accountability reports that simplicity can also be efficient, providing more information to improve the process and allow for internal analysis of the initiatives. We have confidence in the transformative potential of the community-based organizations we support and are committed to helping their development, working together to build a Better Future !
Image credit: Tima Miroshnichenko
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