Winter 07-08

As 2008 dawns, NPOKI begins its first full year of formal operations. While our peripatetic team members have developed a strong global identity in their search for better performance management tools and solutions, until October of 2007, NPOKI existed organizationally only as a concept. That has finally changed! We are pleased to announce several major steps in our growth – steps that will accelerate our activities and allow us to offer concrete products and information to our members and to the wider global health community. The Headlines:

• Bill Lester Appointed NPOKI’s First Executive Director
• A Vision For the Future: Clear Added Value, High Impact Collaboration and Sustainability
• Proofs of Concept Underway:
  • The Heart of Performance: A Proof of Concept to Track Indicators
  • NGOs as Donors: Subawards Database
  • Sharing Best Practices
• Incorporation: Almost There

Meet the New Head

Welcome to William “Bill” Lester, our first Executive Director. Bill is well known as the long time Chief Information Officer at EngenderHealth. While nurturing NPOKI through its formative stages, Bill will divide his time between NPOKI and EngenderHealth, where he will continue to be based. Bill was an original advocate of NPOKI and spearheaded the concepts of deep collaboration to avoid the waste and redundancy of many NGOs developing performance management tools in isolation. In the words of NPOKI Chair Doug Palm, of PATH, “Bill brings both expertise in managing technology on an international scale and a fantastic web of relationships”.

Bill has invited NPOKI’s consultants to join him on a permanent basis:

Rodolfo Melia, based in Barcelona, will be Director of Programs. Rodolfo will be responsible for the assessment of members’ current systems, their performance management needs, scoping, designing and costing out the development of new/existing systems and solutions, and identifying trends in technology and new media important to the international health community. He oversees all of NPOKI’s projects.

Gregory Cohen, based in Brooklyn, NY, will be Director of Organization Development. He will be responsible for outreach to the NGO and donor communities, member relations and administrative and fiscal operations.

More on the staff

An Eye on NPOKI’s Future

At a Halloween retreat, speaking in person before the members for the first time as Executive Director, Bill Lester offered a promising vision of NPOKI’s future. Key points of Bill’s vision:

NPOKI will grow to be a sustainable organization by delivering products and knowledge of great value to its members and to the NGO community. NPOKI will deeply engage member staff people – particularly those in the field – in its project design and testing. NPOKI defines its community broadly to include not just members, but donors, government agencies, multilateral institutions and the private sector. NPOKI will be a substantive contributor to the technology and knowledge management needs of its members by offering tools, iRider training, best practice information gleaned from the real world experience of peers and serving as a “go to” clearinghouse for contacts and other resources. NPOKI will run in a lean and business-like manner, particularly until it finds support for basic operations. Overhead will be low, as the group will operate virtually. The board, which will include people from important constituencies beyond the members, will beconstituted for rapid decision-making. We will recruit corporate volunteers and others to bring in varied perspectives and expertise from around the world. NPOKI will work to realize the aspiration of offering an integrated, enterprise-wide performance management system – essential for high performing global NGOs—our original “Big Project.” We will approach this goal, module by module, in a thoughtful and strategic manner, informed by the rapid advances in technology. We will model forms of knowledge sharing and cooperation and openness with related organizations such as NetHope, LINGOs, and APVOFM.

Bill Bacon, Packard Foundation and Gabriela Schwed PPFA-I at the October retreat.

The Heart of Performance: A Hub for M&E Data

NPOKI’s methodology is to define the highest priority needs of its members around performance management, tracking, and reporting. We’ll research existing solutions among our members and partners, and develop, in incremental steps, applications which apply the best tools and approaches within the specific context of global health NGO organizations. These solutions will be tailored for and tested among our members. This a called a Proof-of-Concept approach, borrowing a term from our friends in the vaccine development field.

One of our NPOKI members, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), has been working with Rodolfo Melia on a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) solution. The IAVI work has greatly advanced our knowledge and experience in creating a system for establishing, collecting and reporting on project and program indicators of the type used for M&E and reporting to management and donors. These functions are integral parts of any enterprise-wide performance management system.

Screenshot of sample progress indicators, drawn from PEPFAR, from the M&E reporting system.

IAVI took a very systematic approach to creating this application. Originally conceived to address reporting needs under a USAID contract, the organization decided to expand the system design to include and integrate internal and donor-driven indictors used throughout their enterprise. Before any programming took place, consultants from Abt Associates developed and mapped indictors used in individual projects to establish commonalities and a shared taxonomy. Then the system development team designed a tool which can: Draw upon basic indicator data to report according to the frameworks of IAVI’s strategic plan as well as various donors, regardless of their timeframes.

• Aggregate levels of detail for roll-up reporting.
• Align the collection and aggregation of indicator data through the use of enterprise-wide classifications which can link to various information systems such as accounting.

The system, written in ASP.net using web 2.0 concepts, incorporates a variety of administrative measures that control access and data quality, including:

• Viewing and editing permissions.
• Approval processes. (Workflow)
• Task completion.

The beauty of the IAVI system is that it is a neutral vessel in regard to the indictors and outcome frameworks—these may change as contract goals or strategic frameworks change. It automates a business process for creating, collecting and reporting indicators. For this reason, NPOKI is in discussion with IAVI about how other NPOKI members could benefit from their experience should NPOKI rework this application to work more generically for other groups. NPOKI would raise funds independently to carry out this modification.

What would be the value added for NPOKI’s members? In addition to the basic functionality, tailored to their particular M&E frameworks, NPOKI would add more features to make the application more sophisticated, robust and useful in a variety of settings, including those with low bandwidth.

These enhancements might include:

• Flexible dimension manager Currently the system has a basic \’dimension manager\’, based on the ideas on NPOKI\’s Business Plan. The module needs some work, and more importantly a UI – currently all setting needs to be done directly on the database.
• 3D Matrix Current matrix supports up to 5 dimensions, but visualization is 2D. A new dimension will allow manipulation of data at a more granular level.
• Off-line functionality Creation of Excel templates for data collection. Import functionality. (based on concepts from AIDS Alliance/UK).
• Multi-Audience Dashboards Current interface centers around data collection/ validation. Dashboard will focus data consumption around audiences (board/ donor/ project director).
• Flexible Reporting engine.
• OpenAPI read-only, for extracting data on a variety of formats. Needed for Dashboard and more flexible reporting suite.
• Installation Routine For easy deployment on local networks.
• Technical Documentation API documentation, installation documentation, architecture documentation.
• User Documentation Includes online help, basic, start up printable documentation, video training.

NGO as Donor: Subaward Database Proof of Concept

Many NPOKI members share their USAID and other contract funds with local NGOs. Each carries reporting responsibilities and related documents over the project lifecycle. Such grants can number in the hundreds each year—how to keep track? Members chose as a Proof of Concept the creation, from IntraHealth’s existing model, of a subawards database which would be a component of a larger grants management system. This database would allow NGOs to track non-financial information such as basic scheduled items (e.g. contract signing, report deadlines and submission), contact information and documents in a content management system. It would focus on the award life cycle, and include a task tickler system. As with most of our NPOKI products, it would be appropriate for low resource areas.

Habits of Highly Effective (and Collaborative) NGOs

The Sharing Business Practices project is firmly rooted in knowledge sharing among members. NPOKI will establish a web-based repository of standard operating procedures and best practices, using content submitted by the NPOKI membership. We’ll model this Proof of Concept on the EngenderHealth Standard Operating Procedures web site, and include Use Cases to capture the functional requirements of a system or solution. Use Cases allow us to better evaluate the sequence of events that taken together, lead to a Best Practice or Lesson Learned, and is a highly effective way to give life to static organization content.

Fundraising Toward Sustainability

At a face-to-face meeting hosted by Planned Parenthood Federation of America – International in New York City on October 31, 2007, representatives of NPOKI’s ten member organizations approved key principles to be embodied in the group’s bylaws, the last step before incorporating as a nonprofit in New York State and filing for (c)(3) status with the US Internal Revenue Service.

With formal incorporation, NPOKI now faces the responsibilities of operating a real organization, with staff and program expenses. Our members’ contributions have seeded are work to-date, but now we must begin to raise funds to complete the three Proofs of Concept projects and to build member involvement and strengthen our external partnerships. We are actively courting funders from the foundation and corporate worlds and welcome ideas.