Washington, D.C., April 04, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Humentum, a nonprofit helping social good organizations strengthen their operations, released findings from its first annual Equitable, Resilient, Accountable (ERA) Index. They designed the survey to assess where international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) land in their journey toward equity, accountability, and resilience in the global development sector. The research is part of Humentum’s Theory of Change: that equitable and locally-led development only happens when organizations exercise autonomy over their institutional architecture, people, funding, and risk.
A wide range of INGOs from Humentum’s membership participated, 41 in total, with revenues ranging from under $6M to more than $100M and staff sizes ranging from the dozens to the hundreds.
"Humentum knows the value of measuring progress, and nowhere is this more true than the effort to create equitable power relationships within global development," said CEO Dr. Christine Sow. "We use our years of experience in consulting, training, community building, and advocacy to help organizations focus on strategic levers of change and progress toward the collective goal of significant and transformative partnerships.”
ERA for the Global Development Sector
Humentum defines ERA in terms of how an organization does its work:
- Equitable: everyone at an organization has access to the same treatment, opportunities, and advancement
- Resilient: an organization can prepare for and appropriately respond to unexpected shocks and highly changeable environments
- Accountable: an organization can communicate consistently what is being done to reduce risk and how it is being done
Findings: From the Messy Middle to Autonomy as a Change Agent
Looking at insights from the survey as well as the many membership events and collaborative work over 2022, Humentum found:
1. Most organizations are making progress and currently are somewhere in the ‘messy middle’. 81% of respondents are either considering or implementing change, with 42% implementing some changes in a deliberate, systematic way.
2. The most change is seen where organizations have the most autonomy. 63% are making changes to decentralize authority within their organizations and 49% are changing staffing structures and roles, whereas only 36% are adopting a trust-based compliance approach or committing to full and fair cost recovery, respectively.
3. How we make change matters. Most of the change is being driven by INGO leadership, with 91% indicating executive teams are driving change. At the same time, nearly 80% of senior leaders say that no one group is resistant to changes toward equitable development. And yet this does not align with what we see and hear. Being honest and deliberate about the role of change management and individual mindset shifts will be crucial to success.
Tangible examples of transformational change are further explored in Humentum’s Policy Blueprint, also a part of The Journey to Collective Action series.
About Humentum
Humentum is a global nonprofit that unlocks the strategic power of operating models for social good organizations. We focus on practical solutions to improve the effectiveness of finance, people, risk and compliance processes through the lens of equity, resilience and accountability. We strengthen organizations through: Individual, group, and organization training; expert consulting delivered by professionals with years of global experience; a robust membership community for peer-to-peer networking, resources, and problem-solving; dynamic advocacy to address the sector’s most pressing operational issues.
