Peer advice groups
PEER ADVICE GROUPS
Accountable Now is an active community of practice. Our Members participate in on-going Peer Advice Groups where colleagues from various organisations meet peers to share knowledge and exchange challenges in a trusted and confidential setting.
From approaching topics of governance, programming, organisational learning, complaints and feedback, environmental performance, anti-corruption and stakeholder engagement, our Peer Advice Groups give us the chance to work closely with our members to understand new approaches to common challenges across different themes. Find out more about our most recent PAGs below.
Receiving feedback from stakeholders and turning this process into a meaningful conversation is at the heart of every Accountable Now member’s work. However, putting theory intro practice can be difficult and it can confront implementors with many expected but also unforeseen challenges.
In 2019 we challenged six of our Member organisations to develop a fully functional feedback and complaints mechanism in 100 days. Over the course of the challenge, we discussed the difference between feedback and formal complaints, different online and offline mechanisms, safeguarding, tracking and responding to feedback, promoting the use of our mechanisms, and publicly reporting on complaints received.
Check out our lessons learned in our 12 steps to a great online feedback and complaints mechanism blog!
Our latest Peer Advice Group was formed by individuals from Accountable Now Members Organisations, with an interest and curiosity on Impact Measurement. The PAG was facilitated by Natalia Gubbioni (Amnesty International) and Hector Payo (Accountable Now).
From July – October we approached the thematic areas within Impact Measurement: contribution vs. attribution; identifying impact indicators; impact awareness culture, and impact sharing & learning using peer learning and exchange to pave the way for a longer term CoP.
Find out the outcomes and learnings made here.
In the past couple of years, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) integrity has been questioned due to the surfacing of cases of misconduct within our organisations. Issues of sexual exploitation, harassment, and bullying have been exposed, despite the fact that organisations have policies and procedures in place precisely to prevent these types of abuse. Ultimately organisations in our sector have a responsibility to protect the safety and wellbeing of the people that we work for and with, our staff, partners and everyone else linked to our work.
To tackle what has been labelled as the safeguarding crisis, CSOs have responded by enhancing their safeguarding policies, procedure including strengthening the ways incidents are reported, making sure we are accountable when concerns are raised. However, we continue to question ourselves if this is enough:
- Will more workshops and training be enough to prevent incidents?
- How do we make sure that the people and communities we work with are confident to complain and communicate any types of violations?
- How can we guarantee that safeguarding is not only a procedure but that it is part of our organisational culture?
- How can we adapt our safeguarding procedures to the diversity of CSOs (small vs big and service delivery vs advocacy oriented)?
These are just some of the questions that the PAG set out to explore. This PAG will be wrapping up in 2022, watch out for the Outcomes and Learnings which will be shared once available.
