I was wondering if there are ideas in the donor community about using the IATI registry as an alternative for idiosyncratic application forms in which grantees have to submit again and again the same organizational data and track record data to different donors. As a grant manager, I often find myself entering the same data again and again to provide potential donors with information that is already openly available in IATI data files. If instead I could just submit my organization’s IATI identifier to a donor, that would save many people a lot of time they could use to improve data quality or do other things that are more useful to us all.
Hi Arie, exactly this was brought forward by the CSO working group as a request to donors and the Steering Committee, at the Technical Advisory Group meeting last May:
- Align donor information requirements with the IATI standard, so that only a small portion of donor-specific information is needed
- Provide CSOs with two options: fill out the complete form, or provide a (link to a) IATI data file.
I don’t know if anyone is working on this already…
Thanks for the reply Rolf! Good to hear that it has been brought forward already.
This is an interesting idea. While we often say/hear something “aligning requirements with the IATI standard”, it’s sometimes unclear what this alignment might look like in practical terms.
I think I understand what “organization data” is and how some might be available in the IATI registry or data files. Less clear to me is what “track record data” would be, and where it might be.
It would be great to have a practical example of a donor form with matching IATI fields. I hear what Sweden is leading an effort to harmonize donor requirements for NGOs - some kind of Code of Practice. Perhaps they have already mapped requirements among donors, which could provide a good basis to map IATI data to?
What I mean with “track record date” is requirements such as to demonstrate that as an NGO you have experience in projects focused on gender equality or that you have at least three years of experience operating in child protection in a french-language setting. If you can just list a few IATI-activity codes that would be easier than entering all the data about the relevant projects again, such as duration, location, title, results etc. All of this data can be found in your IATI data file.
I’m not necessarily pleading for donors to completely harmonize their information requirements, although of course that would be terrific, but a first step would be that they would just stop requiring you to keep entering information that is already available online in your IATI organization or data file and would allow you to simply enter your organization- or activity-identfiers.
Arie, thank you very much for the additional information and suggested ways to move forward. I will share with colleagues as food for thought in our ongoing efforts to improve our processes.
Hello, I’m new to the discussion forum. I saw this thread and I wanted to mention that my colleagues and I are working on tackling how organizations can use their aid activity files to launch crowdfunding campaigns. Bringing IATI down to the crowdfunding level can help model how IATI can be deployed by grant foundations.
Hi Brent, that sounds interesting. Are you talking about a kind of crowdfunding platform, in which IATI data is presented in a more readablef form, like a website rather than a data file?
We’re working on building a crowdfunding platform organizations can use to essentially fetch and display their activity files and make them crowd-fundable. Here’s a link to Oxfam’s activity files for Afghanistan (http://preview.iatistandard.org/index.php?url=http%3A//iati.oxfam.org.uk/xml/oxfamgb-af.xml). Our UI will look similar and give donors the ability to search for activities, open activity files and contribute to reporting or implementing organizations. Connecting to IATI will give donors the ability to compare and track activities, transactions and results in granular detail.
We’re curious if linking reporting and fundraising will give organizations an incentive to report their needs earlier in the humanitarian program cycle and update them more thoroughly. Thinking about your discussion thread, I would guess the initiative could help foundations evaluate uses for IATI for grant monitoring and evaluations.
Great ideas Brent! So at the moment work on building the platform is mainly on creating the user interface? I’d like to stay informed… It would be great if the use of it would really contribute to earlier reporting of needs and results.
hi Brent, might be good to have a look at Akvo RSR, they have something like that: originally with more of an angle towards fundraising, now more with a focus on field updates.
See for instance “projects that need funding”
Perhaps a use case the other way around is good too: show donor activities (programmes) where there is still funding available and help organisations identify potential donors. (Or: how can a donor indicate if, when and how applications can be made.)
Thanks for the information! This is really close to what we’re working on. Any suggestions relative to who worked on building it?
Hi Brent, some contacts at Akvo are Josje Spierings (@Josje on this forum) and Marten Schoonman (https://twitter.com/mato74), both active with IATI promotion. If desired: drop me an email rolf/at/drostan.org and I can connect you.