Reporting NGO Family Structure - Salvation Army

Community Zone
#1

Hi all,

I’ve been talking with a colleague from Salvation Army about how to represent their NGO family structure using IATI. Collecting experience and best practice seems to be the best way to approach this, so I would welcome any thoughts that people have.

The key question:

  • IATI is about reporting financial flows between organisations, and each reporting org is responsible for reporting their part of the chain only. Is it possible to reflect the wider structure of the NGO family when there is no direct financial link?

Example:

Salvation Army Netherlands collects funds from donors and the public. This money is directly disbursed to SA India who is implementing the project.

Salvation Army International HQ plays a coordinator role by matching the project, conducts monitoring and evaluation of the project and makes all the final decisions. But they will not necessarily be involved financially.

Can we describe this relationship in IATI?

My suggestion:

In SA NL IATI Activities, refer to SA IHQ as an ‘Accountable’ participating-org.

… But is this accurate? Typically, in this scenario I would understand SA NL to be the Accountable organisation. Can there be two Accountable orgs, with slightly different meanings held within the same org role?

All questions and suggestions very welcome.

#2

hi Daniel, my first reaction would be: SA IHQ is maybe accountable (“An organisation responsible for oversight of the activity and its outcomes”) or maybe better extending (“An organisation that manages the budget and direction of an activity on behalf of the funding organisation”), SA NL is funding and reporting.

But would SA IHQ also publish the activity in their data?