Adapting feedback and complaints mechanisms: looking beyond the covid-19 pandemic

The discussion generated several takeaways for the different actors in the ‘feedback loop’.

• CSO staff managing feedback and complaints mechanisms have had to increasingly rely on digital channels for feedback and complaints, and the challenge will be continuing to harness the potential of technology while at the same time restoring face-to-face opportunities for communities to provide feedback, particularly when it comes to sensitive complaints. Adapting to the pandemic has reinforced our understanding that to reach different groups within the community, our mechanisms need to be much more flexible and diverse than we think. There needs to be a diversification of mechanisms as part of our preparedness planning before a crisis actually hits and we need to recommit to consulting with communities on how they want to receive information from CSOs, and provide feedback. While Covid-19 and future disruptions may create constraints, our starting point must always be the preference of communities rather than what is assumed by, or most convenient for, CSOs. 
  

• CSO senior management/decision-makers have been presented with new opportunities to strengthen the inclusion of community member perspectives. The pre-covid reliance on face-to-face meetings would often limit who would be ‘in the room’ when strategic programmatic decisions were being made. We relied on anecdotal interactions of CSO decision-makers with community members to balance out the rather narrow viewed impact that M&E systems provided. However, with fewer opportunities to physically visit projects, but more feedback available in digital form, CSO decision-makers have been able to draw on this feedback to guide decisions. Furthermore, systematic analysis across large amounts of feedback can generate powerful insights into how a programme can best adapt. For example, World Vision was able to aggregate feedback trends within countries and across all our country-level responses to better target its support. However, the flip-side of this is the exclusion of voices that are not able to be heard through digital platforms. Covid-19 has brought into sharper focus the digital divide and the need to invest resources to enable marginalised community members to access feedback mechanisms and participate in meaningful dialogue.

• Donors who value meaningful dialogue have also been presented with opportunities to accelerate adaptable implementations through local partners and give more space for localisation. Many have loosened their controls (giving greater flexibility to enable grantees to quickly respond to the pandemic) while not being able to conduct field visits and directly monitor implementation. Being able to access aggregated feedback and complaints has the potential to enable them to understand the effectiveness, manage the risks and explore untapped innovations, in the programmes they fund. 

The process of sharing our adaptations reminded us that we often tend to develop our own systems and mechanisms and that we need to continue to share approaches and harmonize whenever we are engaging overlapping constituencies. One of the silver linings of facing a global crisis is that many CSOs and alliances have now developed information sharing portals on Covid-19 responses generally (ALNAP Portal, CHS Alliance Covid-19 and CHS, BOND Covid-19 Advice and Resources, COVID-19 Resources by UN agencies and Clusters) as well as specific sharing around feedback and complaints mechanisms (see list below). These can all help us reflect, and retain the positive adaptations made during the pandemic, that support meaningful dialogue with the people and communities CSOs work for and with.