Related resources

This report by the Auditor-General discusses poor decision-making practices involving significant expenditure, inadequate management of conflicts of interest and unacceptable practices concerning management expenses – practices damaging to the credibility of a public entity.

This report by the Auditor-General is a performance audit of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) grants programmes following the merger, in July 2003, of Trade New Zealand and Industry New Zealand. It recommended NZTE apply sound administrative principles and standards to all aspects of its grants programmes.

Increased accountability is often assumed to only be desirable for non-profit and voluntary organisations. This papers outlines some of the risks and dangers from externally-imposed, 'classic', legalistic accountability arrangements found in contracting. A typology of 'funder capture' risks is presented. Rather than advocating a vacuum in responsibility, the paper examines the Social Audit tool (developed by the New Economics Foundation) as an accountability measure. Garth Nowland-Foreman’s paper presented to 29th Annual Conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organisations and Voluntary Action, New Orleans, Nov 2000.

Like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is a measure of economic progress.  The difference is that GPI also takes into account social and environmental costs as well as the benefits of growth.

The Ministry for Culture and Heritage is committed to having clear expectations and maintaining good relationships with the national cultural organisations it funds. This section provides further details on their monitoring process.

Read about the Ministry of Social Development's key principles in measuring performance.

This report by the Auditor-General discusses the management of the visiting investor programme for companies and individuals considering New Zealand as a location for establishing operations. It recommends establishing robust policies and processes for the administration of the programme to minimise the risk of inappropriate expenditure, ensure adequate record keeping, and to improve transparency.

The Department of Internal Affairs report on the 2007/2008 Local Authority Census data notes that many local authorities failed to explicitly link any discussion of the effects of activities to community well-being. Some links could be inferred, but this depended on the quality of a local authority’s performance management framework, and in many cases these links were not clearly made.

Table Builder is a web tool that enables you to build your own tables of data from datasets such as census, business statistics, household economic statistics, recorded crime statistics plus many more. A help section is available on the Table Builder homepage and it includes a series of video clips with step-by-step instructions.

These Treasury guidelines encourage the use of better contracting practices by all departments and Crown entities involved in negotiating arrangements with NGOs for the provision of services.

These Treasury guidelines encourage the use of better contracting practices by all departments and Crown entities involved in negotiating arrangements with NGOs for the provision of services.

The mechanisms of accountability of government-voluntary sector contracting are problematic for both government agencies and voluntary organisations. If they are to be revised, new mechanisms need to be appropriate for both parties. While the public accountability system has been relatively well described and analysed, the accountability systems of voluntary organisations have not. This research aimed to explore accountability from the perspective of voluntary sector managers and board members asking to whom, for what and why they thought themselves accountable. Four organisational case studies were undertaken involving 34 in-depth interviews with managers and board members.

A paper based on Jo Cribb's doctoral research, which aimed to explore accountability from a voluntary-sector perspective and the implications for government funders.NZ Non-Government, published in the Social Policy Journal of New Zealand: Issue 26, Nov 2005.

Colleen Pilgrim's article, published in the Chartered Accountants Journal, explores the changing roles and responsibilities of public entities. Over the past 20 years, public sector reform has led to a broadening of the base of service delivery, both in New Zealand and overseas. NGOs are now frequently involved in delivering public services, influencing policy design and implementation, or performing a facilitative role to ensure that government objectives are met. Second, activities that were once carried out by public entities are increasingly carried out by NGOs for public entities. Colleen Pilgrim, Office of the Auditor-General - NZ government, October 2006.

This Office of the Auditor-General Performance Audit report outlines concerns about NZAID needing clear and accessible processes and procedures for putting in place and monitoring funding arrangements for delivering aid programmes. The issues of setting performance expectations and monitoring performance are covered for programmes in challenging parts of world.NZ government, 2008.

This report examines how one funding agency did or did not take steps – through the medium of the funding contracts – to check and verify that the funds made available had been spent properly and for the purposes for which they had been given. In January 2003, the leader of the ACT New Zealand parliamentary party, asked the Auditor-General to inquire into certain allegations of financial impropriety involving one of his party’s list members, Donna Awatere Huata MP. The allegations involved money owned by the Pipi Foundation Trust, a private trust established by Mrs Awatere Huata in 1999 to deliver a children’s reading programme, which Mrs Awatere Huata had developed in the 1970s. (2003)

This report provides measurement of New Zealanders' philanthropic funding for the 2005/2006 year, and what these funds supported.

In June 2006, a questionnaire was sent to government departments seeking information on the size of government funding flows to non-profits. The results provide a broad overview of central government’s funding of non-profit organisations.In 2005/06:

• the largest amounts of departmental payments are made to non-profits in the social services, education and health activity sectors
• contract payments for services dominate over grant funding

• payments of $1.25 billion to NPOs from departments
• payments of at least $141 million to NPOs from Crown entities 

Chapter 5 of the Treasury guidelines deals with review and evaluation of contracts. While there is some overlap with monitoring, review and evaluation merit separate treatment given that this extends further than an individual contract.

A page on the Office of the Ombudsmen's website describing what the Ombudsmen do and do not investigate. Under the Ombudsmen Act, an Ombudsman is able to investigate complaints about the administrative acts, decisions, recommendations and omissions of central and local government agencies. New Zealand government.

If you need to research or evaluate a project, first find out what information already exists. Information to help you can be found on the Good Practice Participate website.

The pilot project was an initiative to review funding arrangements and to seek ways of reducing the compliance costs for community organisations.

The website of the Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector includes a number of links to help community organisations and funders focus on what counts when resources are tight.

Urban Water Decision-Making Project: Learning from the Stories of Nga Puna Wai o Hokianga (2005) reports on a collaborative evaluation undertaken by Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) with Hauora Hokianga and Whirinaki Maori Committee. It found several contributing factors played a part in the pilot being a success, such as the enabling political climate, consultation and liaison, community ownership, project management and the employment of kanohi ki te kanohi as a negotiating and relationship building tool.

This four-hour NZ Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA) course helps organisations to identify, describe, measure and report non-financial performance indicators based on the objectives and outcomes they aim to achieve for users, stakeholders, clients and founders.

People working in many different roles have to develop evaluation plans. These workshops teach a process to develop an evaluation based around a visual results model (also called an intervention logic or outcomes model).

SPEaR is a cross-agency group overseeing government investment in social policy research and evaluation.

"Is anyone better off?" is the question at the core of a simple but effective way of measuring results – one increasingly being used by government and non-government agencies.

Harvey's 2004 Analytic Quality Glossary. Provides some interesting definitional issues around the term "accountability" (2004)

Alliance Magazine has free online articles on impact evaluation and information required to make social investment decisions. USA

The 'Better Purchasing Guides' support the State Procurement Policy by providing information about current best practice procurement in the Queensland Government. Titles include: ‘Ethics, Probity and Accountability in Procurement’,  ‘Managing and Monitoring Suppliers' Performance’, ‘Relational Contracting Guide’, and ‘Value for Money’.  The full series of 28 stand-alone procurement guides is available as downloadable booklets via this link. Australia, 2009.

From the Finance Project, which helps leaders make smart investment decisions, develop sound financing strategies, and build solid partnerships that benefit children, families, and communities. USA.

The USA’s Urban Institute and its project partner, The Center for What Works, collaborated from June 2004 through May 2006 to identify a set of common outcomes and outcome indicators or “common framework” in the measurement of performance for non-profits. The aim was to avoid non-profits with multiple projects and multiple funders having to deal with different requirements for tracking outcomes for similar programs.The idea was that if agreement on a common core set of outcome indicators can be reached, then outcome reporting can be efficient and focused. (These aims are similar to New Zealand’s own Integrated Contracts initiative and the work done to introduce integrated contracts.)The report from the US provides suggested core indicators for 14 categories of non-profit organisations and then expands the notion of common core indicators to a much wider variety of programmes by suggesting a common framework of outcome indicators for all non-profit programmes. 

This article suggests that to be truly effective, non-profits need to rigorously confront a few essential, interdependent questions: Which results will we hold ourselves accountable for?, How will we achieve them?, What will results really cost, and How can we fund them? Harvard Business Review, USA, December 2008.

Autonomy from the state has been considered a core feature of civil society, and understanding the consequences of perceived threats to that autonomy has been a central theme in social and political theory. This article examines a specific question: What is the effect of government funding on non-profit organisations' political activity?Research identifies some mechanisms by which government funding might reduce non-profit political activity and others that might enhance such activity. By investigating this relationship with two data sets (a national sample of religious congregations and a longitudinal sample of non-profit organisations in Minneapolis–St. Paul), the researchers find some consistent and compelling results: the relationship between government funding and non-profit political activity is either positive or nil; government funding does not suppress non-profit political activity. Published by the American Sociological Association in the American Sociological Review, Volume 69, Number 2, 1 April 2004 , pp. 292-316. The full article can be purchased online

In this article, the authors develop an instrument for systematically assessing public accountability arrangements, drawing on three different normative perspectives. In the democratic perspective, accountability arrangements should effectively link government actions to the ‘ democratic chain of delegation ’ . In the constitutional perspective, it is essential that accountability arrangements prevent or uncover abuses of public authority. In the learning perspective, accountability is a tool to make governments effective in delivering on their promises. M Bovens, T Schillemans and P T'Hart. 2007.

This sample performance-measurement framework draws on work with not-for-profit organisations in the United States involved in job search assistance and job training. The framework is used to identify key organisational goals. Some quantitative data is collected for each goal to show what has been achieved. Data is collected over several years to show trends. Putting all the data on one form allows stakeholders to quickly see what progress is being made for each goal. Community organisations can use this type of format for their own goals and performance measures. USA

This report argues that the route to public sector efficiency is to focus on effectiveness. Effective services are personalised - driven by people's needs. They take aim at the cause of problems rather than the consequences, and they are delivered collaboratively. Services driven by these principles result in better outcomes for citizens, a better quality of service, and happier staff. They also save money because getting things right the first time always works out cheaper. United Kingdom.

Oral Answers to Questions to Ed Milliband, the former UK Government's Minister for the Third Sector. Interesting figures on total government funding of the third sector. There are doubts about these figures and they may be an underestimate. International Government, United Kingdom, 18 April 2007.

Practical guidance, published by the UK’s National Audit Office in 2009, designed to save charities and other voluntary and community organisations time and money by reducing the paperwork they are required to collect when providing public sector-commissioned services.  The guidance is in response to a 2007 report that suggested  UK charities were being required to jump through an inordinate number of bureaucratic hoops to access local and central government funding, with funders often demanding excessive amounts of inappropriate information. United Kingdom, 2009.

The complex task of managing contracts is often exacerbated by high transaction costs inherent in negotiating, implementing, and monitoring contract relationships with vendors. Through analyses of data from a 1997 study of the ways municipal and county governments respond to transaction cost factors inherent in contract service delivery is examined. The results of the analyses demonstrate that when governments contract for services in contexts that risk contract failure, they engage in a variety of monitoring techniques to improve their ability to monitor and correct vendor performance.T Brown and M Potowski, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. 2002.

An interview with the President of the Hewlett Foundation, Paul Brest stating that funders need to get better at assessing the impact of the money they spend. He notes that it’s clearly impossible to have a separate, specifically funded evaluation for every grant. He asks, "When are evaluations needed, and how can funders be persuaded to pay for them? And how good are foundations at sharing information?" A revealing and informative interview which examines the issue of evaluation and who should pay. International Non-Government, From Alliance magazine (Vol 12, No. 4) for Philanthropy and Social Investment Worldwide. USA, Dec 2007.

Charities that receive public funding have to account to government funders for how they have spent this money and should show the impact they have achieved with it. The cost of producing this information, however, must be proportionate to the risks and benefits involved. Cutting unnecessary red tape can free up time and money better spent focusing on the key services charities and others provide. The term for achieving this balance and avoiding poor practice is ‘intelligent monitoring’. New intelligent monitoring guidance, published by the UK’s National Audit Office along with the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) in the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, will help the UKgovernment cut paperwork, while still enabling it to monitor the £12 billion it gives to charities and other voluntary and community organisations each year.  New principles for the monitoring of funding for the third sector have also been unveiled. United Kingdom

This report provides strong arguments for reform of government contracting procedures when funding non-profits. As Director of the Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, Professor Steven Rathgeb-Smith argues strongly for government to invest in the equity capital and operational needs of non-profits. Steven is Professor of Public Affairs in the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. USA (1993)

Voluntary organisations risk being sidelined by the private sector unless they can show the public that their money is well spent. An article in the UK Guardian by Martin Narey, chief executive of Barnardo's. The article is adapted from a speech made to the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations annual conference in late November 2007 (Guardian 5 December 2007)

Issued by the UK’s Office of the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office. The principles and guidance aim to lessen the unnecessary burden of monitoring on charities, social enterprises and voluntary organisations and help them and departments gain better value from it.  The principles commit Government departments to understanding the cost of reporting for third sector organisations and to working closely with them when establishing monitoring requirements. The principles were produced as a response to a 2008 report by New Philanthropy Capital called Turning the Tables: Putting Charities in Control of Reporting.  United Kingdom, 2009.

This first ever Select Committee report focused on the third sector was released in July, and specifically looks at the policy of commissioning public service delivery from organisations in the third sector. The UK Public Administration Select Committee wanted to assess the impact on government, the third sector and, most importantly, 'the effect on service users and the public at large'. United Kingdom.

Time-limited grant funding and categorical funding streams leave grassroots organisations in a constant scramble to find funds and pay rent, utilities, salaries, and programme expenses. Relying on grant awards and contracts alone will not ensure a future for such organisations: Once those funds are gone, critical services for clients may cease to exist. Again and again, organisations that rely on funds from grants and contracts come back to the same question: “How do I find the resources to sustain and support my programme services over time?” A Toolkit for Community & Faith-based Service Providers – Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, US Department of Health & Human Services USA.

This paper identifies challenges within three core dimensions of philanthropic activity: how foundations think about community change, how they do their community-change work, and how they learn from their efforts. By Prudence Brown, Robert J. Chaskin, Ralph Hamilton, Harold Richman - Chapin Hall, USA.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are complex in nature, requiring different types of skills and new enabling institutions, and they lead to changes in the status of public sector jobs. To work well they require well-functioning institutions, transparent, efficient procedures and accountable and competent public and private sectors, ie: ‘good governance’. To address the challenge, the UNECE has elaborated this Guidebook for policymakers, government officials and the private sector.

This action plan (launched at the Australian Council of Social Services Conference in April) responds to two reviews commissioned by the Victorian Government: the Stronger Community Organisations project and the Review of Not-for-Profit Regulation. A new Office for the Community Sector will be responsible for implementing the plan, which includes 25 actions to reduce red tape, build the capacity of the sector workforce and strengthen the long term sustainability of community organisations.