Mission and strategy The Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) supports civil society and governments to work together to solve critical governance challenges in developing countries. To achieve this objective, the GPSA provides strategic and sustained support to CSOs’ social accountability initiatives aimed at strengthening transparency and accountability. It builds on the World Bank’s direct and ongoing engagement with public sector actors, as well as a network of Global Partner organizations, to create an enabling environment in which citizen feedback is used to solve fundamental problems in service delivery and to strengthen the performance public institutions. Through a country-tailored approach, GPSA-supported activities are implemented in sectors where the World Bank has a strong involvement and can help governments respond to citizen feedback. The GPSA works to “close the loop” by supporting citizens to have a more articulated voice, helping governments to listen, and assisting government agencies act upon the feedback they receive. Background Social accountability has received increasing attention across the development community in recent years. This includes a growing emphasis on beneficiary engagement in monitoring and assessing government performance—particularly in providing feedback on, and voicing demand for, improved service delivery—and thus contributing to greater development effectiveness. This kind of engagement—also referred to as social accountability—enables beneficiaries and civil society groups to engage with policymakers and service providers to bring about greater accountability and responsiveness to beneficiary needs. At the same time, many factors—especially the proliferation of new information and communications technologies—are changing how beneficiaries and civil society organizations (CSOs)1 engage with governments; and many governments are creating better enabling environments for voice, transparency, and accountability. However, feedback from over 1,300 stakeholders in all regions indicates that there are large knowledge and evidence gaps, especially in terms of “what works” and why, under what conditions approaches can be scaled up, and how to sustain successful approaches. Moreover, civil society groups often operate on short programmatic funding cycles, and they lack the sustained support to build technical and institutional capacity to engage with governments over the long term on selected themes. The GPSA responds to these demands. How does the GPSA work? The GPSA provides support in two components: funding and knowledge. The Funding Component makes grants available to CSOs for specific social accountability programs and initiatives, as well as the institutional development of CSOs working on social accountability, and for knowledge generation and dissemination activities. Through a competitive process (Calls for Proposals), CSOs can apply for grants for periods of 3-5 years, with disbursement tranches linked to agreed project milestones. Indicatively, grant amounts are between $500,000 and $1 million. The GPSA Knowledge Component supports a global platform for knowledge exchange and research, especially in measuring and documenting the impact of social accountability interventions. The knowledge component also focuses on developing and nurturing practitioner networks for South-South exchange of knowledge and experiences. GPSA Grants The GPSA’s Funding component only operates in countries where the government agrees to “opt in” to the GPSA. To date, 35 countries have “opted in” to the GPSA. In opted-in countries, prior to issuing a Call for Proposals a consultative process with stakeholders including government, civil society and other donor agencies, is organized to define the key governance issues (thematic areas) per country that CSO proposals should address. This country-tailored, ‘problem-solving’ approach maximizes the alignment of GPSA activities with the development strategies of countries. While CSOs in participating countries respond to country1For the purposes of the GPSA, CSOs include legal entities that fall outside the public or for-profit sector, such as NGOs, not-for-profit media organizations, charitable organizations, faith-based organizations, professional organizations, labor unions, associations of elected local representatives, foundations, and policy development and research institutes.
GPSA in Brief tailored calls, all proposals compete at the global level. The GPSA launched its first Call for Proposals in February 2013 in 12 countries that had ‘opted-in’ to the program by that time. Response was high, with 216 civil society organizations that submitted proposals for social accountability projects. Based on a technical review by a global Roster of Experts, the GPSA Steering Committee pre-selected proposals for the first grants. On October 2, 2013 GPSA announced the 12 final grant winners from 10 countries. The 2nd GPSA Call for Proposals was held between November 2013 and January 6, 2014 in 33 countries. More than 400 CSOs participated by submitting proposals, which are currently under review. The GPSA Knowledge Component The GPSA Knowledge Component started with a capacity building workshop for 12 pre-selected CSO finalists in June 2013. The CSOs worked with coaches to refine their proposals in terms of coalition building, leadership and engaging with government counterparts. The GPSA will launch an online Knowledge Portal in Spring 2014, which will host, share, and disseminate relevant knowledge products, and facilitate networking around social accountability. Also, GPSA partners with 3 universities (Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Stanford) to develop a research component in several projects that the GPSA will be funding, to generate insights into the circumstances under which social accountability mechanisms produce better development outcomes. Targeted results Each activity funded by the GPSA is intended to yield measurable and realistic results in one or more of the following “pillars of governance”: transparency; representation and voice; accountability; and learning for improved results. Results are tracked against a results framework that is developed for each project. Key social accountability activities or approaches that GPSA supports include budget literacy campaigns, citizen charters, citizen report cards, community contracting, community management and/or contracting, community oversight, community scorecards, grievance redress mechanisms, independent budget analysis, and participatory budgeting, among others. Governance structure The GPSA’s decision-making body is the Steering Committee (SC), which sets strategic directions for the Partnership and decides on grant allocations for CSO projects. It is chaired by a member from the World Bank and comprises a broad and balanced constituency of development partners. The ten members of the committee include 3 donor partners, represented by Riina-Riika Heikka (Finland), Martin Abregu (Ford Foundation) and Annabel Gerry (DfID); 3 members from CSOs, represented by Lindsay Coates (InterAction), Said Issa (ANSA-Arab World), and Akwasi Aidoo (TrustAfrica); and 3 members from the governments of Malawi, Dominican Republic and Bangladesh. Sanjay Pradhan, Vice President of World Bank Institute, is the Bank’s representative. The SC is supported by a small Secretariat in the World Bank Institute. How is the GPSA funded? GPSA is funded by a Multidonor Trust Fund (MDTF) to which the World Bank committed US$ 20 million. Other donors include the Ford Foundation, which has contributed $3 million, and the Aga Khan Foundation contributes $ 500,000. Furthermore, the Open Society Foundations (OSF) has set aside $ 3 million in parallel funds for GPSA projects. After an initial piloting in several countries and based on evaluation of experiences, the GPSA seeks to broaden the Partnership to include more countries and incrementally scale up its reach. Through active mobilization of resources, GPSA aims to reach overall funding goals of US $75 to 125 million over the next seven years. Global Partners Partnership is a key element of the GPSA, which helps to optimize the program’s reach and impact. To date, more than 100 ‘Global Partners’ have expressed their endorsement for the goal and strategy of the GPSA. These organizations are reinforcing the partnership by contributing their technical expertise, networking and funding. The coalition continues to grow and includes organizations from civil society, CSO networks, foundations, academia and international organizations (see GPSA website for full list). www.worldbank.org/gpsa