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Accountable Now is a global membership platform that supports civil society organisations to be more transparent, responsive, impact-focused, and community-led.
For more than 15 years, we have been working to shift power, champion equity, and embed dynamic accountability into everyday practices.
Our work focuses on supporting civil society organisations to continuously reflect, learn, and adapt to strengthen or embed new ways of working grounded in processes of inclusive, participatory and meaningful engagement with all stakeholders. It goes beyond monitoring & evaluation, due-diligence and compliance, driving accountability as a process that centres communities’ voices, feedback, and preferences.
Our members are a network of civil society organisations that differ in size, geography, and in the issues the work on, however are committed to advancing accountability and delivering better on their individual, and our collective, mission to improve the lives of people and the planet.
We provide civil society organisations, both our members and others, with the tools, resources, and support needed to adopt and champion tested practices and policies to support people-drive programming, intersectional equity, just climate action, and more.
From tailored thematic training sessions to support in revising and/or implementing new governance structures, policies, and organisational development strategies, our consulting and trainings can help ensure that organisation's work is efficient and effective so that more resources can be spent delivering better impact.
The work we do is defined by our dynamic approach to accountability.
Dynamic accountability is a systemic, people-powered approach that goes beyond M&E, due-diligence and compliance. For us, dynamic accountability is both a process and practice about continuous learning and improvement around a shared set of values and commitments. The dynamic approach to accountability supports organisations to live out these values and build strong partnerships grounded in two-way feedback, trust, and equity.
It is about creating a transformational relationship between a CSO and its trusted counterparts, and it requires adapting a whole organisation’s ways of working to those counterpart’s needs. This includes redressing unequal power dynamics whereby through practicing dynamic accountability, CSOs move beyond the hierarchical accountability ladder to a more horizontal and mutual approach.
We believe this dynamic approach to accountability is necessary to truly achieve systemic change in the form of a power-shift with and outside the organisation. By centring the people and communities we work for and with in our work, they become recognised drivers of the CSO work that affects their own lives for better and more long-lasting positive change.
The Resilient Roots initiative, coordinated by CIVICUS and in collaboration with Accountable Now, Keystone Accountability and Instituto de Comunicación y Desarrollo, aimed to test whether organisations who are more accountable and responsive to their roots – namely, their primary constituencies – are more resilient against external threats.
From 2017 – 2020, the initiative worked with 14 national partner civil society organisations (CSOs) of varying size, focus, location and approach, to help them design and implement year-long pilot projects aiming to increase accountability to the people and communities impacted by their work.
Find out more about the project here.
The Resilient Roots initiative, coordinated by CIVICUS and in collaboration with Keystone Accountability and Accountable Now, aimed to test whether organisations who are more accountable and responsive to their roots – namely, their primary constituencies – are more resilient against external threats.
Find out more about the project here.
A new and exciting project, the Development Alternative has kicked off with a programme that is designing solutions to bridge the imbalance of power between the people, organisations and decision-makers involved in development work.
Find out about the project here.