Accountability and transparency

At Sightsavers, we strongly believe we need to be accountable to our supporters, donors and partners if we are to maintain their trust and support.

We aim to perform to the highest standards, and we aim to be as transparent as possible over how we operate, how we spend the money we raise, and how we perform as an organisation.

We work in complex environments and with a diverse group of organisations, therefore we understand we cannot get things right all the time. We want to make sure it’s easy to raise a complaint, and encourage those with complaints to contact us so we can try to resolve the issue. We are committed to doing so in an appropriate, fair and timely way.

Sightsavers has a clearly articulated strategy that drives everything we do.

We feel it’s important that we understand how we’re performing against our strategic goals, so we’ve summarised our strategy into a one-page Strategy Implementation and Monitoring Card, known as our SIM Card. This defines key strategic objectives across a range of perspectives:

• Resources: to ensure we are adequately resourced and using those resources efficiently and effectively.
• Learning and growth: to ensure we have the right capabilities and expertise in the organisation to deliver our work.
• Capacities: to ensure we excel at the things we need to be good at to deliver for our beneficiaries.
• Beneficiaries: to ensure our programmes are achieving the desired change for our beneficiaries.

By tracking performance against these objectives, we’re able to assess whether we are working effectively and efficiently, and whether our programmes are having the impact we are expecting.

We collect data on our performance either annually or every six months, using our SIM Card dashboard. Any issues that arise are discussed by management at all levels so changes can be made, ensuring that our strategy and performance is under constant review and discussion.

Sightsavers is committed to operating transparently and ensuring it is accountable to supporters, donors, partners and beneficiaries.

Sightsavers has been a member of Accountable Now (formerly the INGO Accountability Charter) since 2011. Our CEO, Caroline Harper, is currently Vice Chair of the Board of Accountable Now.

As a member of Accountable Now, Sightsavers commits to publishing a report each year in which we reflect on our performance across a range of accountability standards. This report is reviewed by Accountable Now, which provides an assessment of the report with suggestions for improvement. Both the report and assessment are then published on the Accountable Now website and our own.

Sightsavers uses this process to reflect on our performance and ways of working so we can learn and improve. The independent feedback helps us to focus on areas that require improvement. Read our latest Accountable Now report.

As part of our commitment to transparency, Sightsavers publishes data on programme finances through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

In 2012 we signed up to the International Aid Transparency Initiative, which aims to make information on aid spending more accessible to governments, organisations and citizens of developing countries and beyond. By signing up, we have agreed to regularly publish details of our programme activity expenditure. We publish quarterly data showing how much money we distribute to partners for programme activity, and continue to look for ways to improve the quantity and quality of data we provide. Access Sightsavers’ data on the IATI Registry here.

The way the data is presented in the IATI Registry is technical and hard to understand. The same data is presented in a more accessible way in two other online tools: Sightsavers on d-Portal  and the DFID Development Tracker.