By Nora McKeon Nothing unusual in the title of the seminar that The Hauser Center at Harvard University put together just over a year ago. Everyone from academics to NGOs, government officials and even rock stars seem to have something to say on the topic. The innovation here was the choice of the lead panelist: [...]

By Ayesha Barenblat In my new role as BSR’s Director of Stakeholder Collaboration, I am focused on building relationships with NGO colleagues globally to bring their insights to our member companies and develop next-generation stakeholder engagement approaches that are outcome based and take into account trends in the field. BSR created this position to deepen [...]

By Rahul Daswani The reason there are 9 “Major Groups” of stakeholders as part of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development is because these groups are the ones who are pushy and vocal. Felix Dodds (Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum), shared his tips during a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School on November 10 2011: [...]

By David Bonbright and Nicholas van Praag It is easier to listen than to act on what you hear. That is one of the lessons drawn by many of the groups pushing to give beneficiaries a greater say in the design of humanitarian programs. Why then is progress so limited and what can be done to [...]

Rahim Kanani recently sat down with Sophie Delaunay, Executive Director of the U.S. section of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), to discuss the intersection of innovative mechanisms in global health financing, advocacy, accountability, and civil society. Rahim Kanani: Explain a little bit about the intersection of global health financing and health priorities, and from [...]

By Sherine Jayawickrama The lively exchange on NGO collaboration on this blog has me thinking about the variety of ways in which NGOs collaborate and coordinate, what drives them to do so, and what keeps them from collaborating more systematically. NGOs (especially large humanitarian NGOs) and other actors in the international humanitarian system took a [...]

By Sherine Jayawickrama A newly-published essay by Andrew Natsios – who served as USAID Administrator from 2001 to 2006 – lays bare the tension between the compliance side of aid bureaucracies and the programmatic side of those same agencies.  He argues that the balance has now tipped so strongly toward compliance that the integrity of [...]

By Sherine Jayawickrama Several months ago, a provocatively titled academic paper caught my eye.  The Ethics of INGO Advocacy or Why It’s Okay that No One Elected Oxfam was authored by Jennifer Rubenstein, Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia.   Her presentation and the discussion that followed were interesting and lively.  Chatting with [...]

In response to this blog’s March 7 invitation of a variety of views on Charity Navigator’s decision to change its rating system (to reflect accountability and outcomes measures in addition to financial metrics like overhead), Steve Lawry shared his perspective, and George E. Mitchell and Hans Peter Schmitz contributed their opinion. In this post, Ken [...]

By George Veth On February 9, Professor L. David Brown joined the NGOs & Development study group, convened by the Hauser Center, where he led a discussion on “NGOs and the Puzzle of Legitimacy and Accountability”. To tee up the discussion, he started by pointing out the recent failure of several supposed bastions of trustworthiness [...]