Working closely with members and other International CSOs, we strive to work across a global CSO accountability network on a variety of projects and initiatives.
Find out more about the exciting projects being undertaken by us around the world.
Accountability in action:
Our Projects
Coalition governance, strategy, and renewal
The Opportunity
The Global Democracy Coalition is a multistakeholder network of over 180 democracy focused organisations from around the world, including some of our long-time partners like Accountability Lab, InterAction, Transparency International and West Africa Civil Society Institute. The coalition started several years ago around the launch of the Summit for Democracy, which brought together progressive world leaders, policymakers, and civil society organizations to ignite democratic renewal. In the early days, GDC formed mechanisms, roles, and functions designed for a successful take off of a new and evolving coalition. Several years into these initial structures and processes, the Steering Group recognized that as the coalition formalized and began to introduce more complex programming and convening the rules, governance, and strategic framing around their work needed to be updated and formalized to better serve the coalition into the future.
Our Role
For this project, Accountable Now used its expertise in adaptive and responsive governance, decision-making, and stakeholder engagement to consult, review and update the Coalition’s governance, strategic framework, and decision-making structure. Importantly, we identified ways to bring more democratic processes and consent-focused agreements into the GDC’s ways of working. We engaged the Coalition’s Steering Group, partners, and current host institution to revise their roles, responsibilities and relationships to one another, and co-designed a new strategic framework to better articulate the aims and offers of the coalition looking ahead.
Designing and launching the Collective Action Assistance Fund
The Opportunity
Alongside a major investment by the US Government in people-powered movements Humanity United is launching a multi-donor pooled fund that aims to deliver flexible and responsive funding and support to enable movements and their essential ecosystems and infrastructure. Employing a participatory grantmaking approach, the Fund will actively involve affected stakeholders with lived experience whose insights will inform decisions and provide guidance on the strategic framework, design, and execution of the Fund.
Our Role
The ongoing support from Accountable Now to Humanity United and other philanthropic partners is aimed at strengthening the initial design and launch of the Fund. Leveraging Accountable Now’s long-term expertise in philanthropy, innovation, field development, participation, knowledge acquisition, and stakeholder-driven accountability, we are putting together the architecture necessary to ensure that this groundbreaking Fund lives out its value and goals, and positions social movements for sweeping people-powered change.
Board induction, cohort building, and training on dynamic accountability
The Opportunity
The World Organisation of the Scout Movement is the largest international Scouting organisation, and a member of Accountable Now. In its commitment to strengthen youth-leadership, it is looking to bring more young people to its Board and into decision making roles. In doing so, they aim to equip their Board members with the right skills and vision to be responsive, adaptive, and more strategic.
Our Role
In our support to WOSM, we are undertaking design, facilitation and upskilling actions for the Board’s first face to face meeting. Harnessing our technical ability in accountability, we will be mapping the skills needed for WOSM Board members, identifying the best way to strengthen them, while delivering a fun and constructive agenda that build the bond and cohesion needed for a multi-generational decision-making body.
Global Standard for CSO Accountability Partnership
The Opportunity
The Global Standard for CSO Accountability Partnership is an initiative by 13 international, regional and national accountability networks around the world. Through their collective hosting of the 12 Accountability Commitments (Global Standard for CSO Accountability), advocacy, and various projects, the partners champion a vision of accountability that is dynamic and responsive to those who are most affected by civil society’s work.
Our Role
Accountable Now, alongside our Global Standard Partners, co-created the 12 Accountability Commitments through bottom-up consultations with over 1500 CSOs with different scopes and sizes, operating from the grassroot to international levels. Until its decentralisation in 2023, Accountable Now hosted the Secretariat function for the partnership, providing central knowledge, advocacy, and administrative support to advance the uptake of the Global Standard and its 12 Commitments globally. In mid-2023 the Secretariat transitioned to a dispersed hosting model with key functions and responsibilties spread out across the 12 partners who work together to implement activities and advocate for sector reform.
Past Projects and Initiatives
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.
Recognising the enormous, but largely untapped, potential of youth civil society in the moment of the largest youth generation in history – the Development Alternative was created to shift power and turn traditional development on its head through leveraging the potential and agency of young people and communities to accelerate development outcomes. The Development Alternative is a consortium of organisations, led by Restless Development, including Accountable Now, DOT Lebanon, Integrity Action, INTRAC, War Child, Y Care International.
From 2019 – 2021, the consortium worked closely with young people and their communities, and youth-led and focused organisations to co-design approaches to development that ensure these groups define, own and lead solutions to the problems they face.
