A friend wrote me recently asking about my views on governance and fundraising. For NGOs this is always an important topic—and a difficult one, because the involvement of board members in fundraising differs so much around the world.
At the moment my friend wrote I'd just finished contributing to a study of NGO self-regulatory initiatives in Europe. So my thoughts were focused on the board's responsibility to ensure accountability and transparency in organizations that raise funds. There's a lot of work being done in this area, mostly in response to recent or planned regulatory efforts that aim to ensure ethical fundraising practices and prevent NGOs from being used to finance terrorist or criminal activities.
On the national level, many European countries have watchdog organizations that monitor fundraising practices. These are tightening up their standards, especially regarding external communications, accounting, and the use of funds. Meeting these standards is recognized as a board responsibility ultimately, and many codes and standards are making expectations for internal governing bodies more explicit. This is a welcome development which, one hopes, will lead to more pro-active oversight activities by boards.
A good place to start looking at such standards is the International Committee on Fundraising Organizations, a group composed of accrediting bodies that set fundraising standards in member countries--mostly European, but non-European countries are also members. ICFO's standards are a bit older and general but apply in most contexts. IFCO has issued international standards for fundraising that start with expectations of the board (http://www.icfo.de/standards.htm). Since implementing international standards can be so challenging, most of the action in this area is taking place at the national level.
Another important effort is the INGO accountability charter put out by large international NGOs. The charter, which can be found at at http://www.ingoaccountabilitycharter.org/read-the-charter.php, addresses governance and ethical fundraising. Counter-terrorist regulations are addressed in a recent article by Mark Sidel at www.icnl.org/knowledge/ijnl/vol10iss3/special_2.htm.
Of course, a whole other track of conversation is whether the board should part in fundraising, and if so how. BoardSource is still the best source of advice on this topic. In my experience most boards outside the U.S. don’t see fundraising as one of their duties. This goes for highly professional and active boards as well as those that simply aren’t very involved. My own belief is that there’s no right or wrong answer on the topic and there’s no point in trying to convince boards to fundraise if it’s not part of the local culture.
I’d be interested in hearing from readers whether your country has a national body that determines fundraising standards and if so, what they say about governance.
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