Simavi annual report 2016

Executive Summary

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Content

Glossary

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Preface

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Executive summary

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PART I REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD 1. Strategy 1.1 Trends in our field 1.2 Simavi’s vision, mission and strategy 1.3 Core values 1.4 Our Theory of Change 1.5 Our added value 2. Realising maximum impact through our programmes 2.1 Working towards a healthy life for all 2.2 Simavi’s impact in 2016 2.3 Case study: Ritu 2.4 Our advocacy work in 2016 2.5 Programme development 3. Diversified financing and innovative partnerships 3.1 Trends in our field 3.2 Fundraising objectives and activities 3.3 Income from private individuals 3.4 Income from companies 3.5 Income from other non-profit organisations 3.6 Income from lottery organisations 3.7 Income from government subsidies 4. A credible and daring brand 4.1 Our stakeholders 4.2 How we engaged with our stakeholders in 2016 4.3 Complaints 5. A professional organisation 5.1 Organisational development 5.2 Organigram 5.3 Executive board and management team 5.4 Employees 5.5 Internal organisation 5.6 Risk management 6. Financial review 6.1 Accountability 6.2 Income and expenditure 6.3 Financial key performance indicators 7. Our outlook for 2016 7.1 Realising maximum impact through our programmes 7.2 Diversified financing and innovative partnerships 7.3 Simavi as a credible and daring brand 7.4 Professional and colourful Simavi people 7.5 Financial outlook

8-64 8-14 9-10 11 11 12-13 14 15-33 16-22 23-24 25-29 30-33 33 24-41 35-36 36-37 37 28 38-40 41 41 42-48 43 44-48 48 49-55 50 51 51-52 52 53 54-55 56-59 57 58 59 60-64 61-62 62 63 63 64

Annex: Programme output results

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PART II REPORT OF THE SUPERVISORY BOARD

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PART III ANNUAL ACCOUNTS

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Colophon

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Glossary

Terminology and abbreviations B Corporation

For-profit company certified by the non-profit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.

CBF

Central Bureau for Fundraising

CSO

Civil society organisation

CPD

United Nations Commission on Population and Development

DFID

UK Department for International Development

EASE

Economic and Social empowerment methodology

FIETS

Financial, institutional, environmental, technical and social sustainability

ICTC

International Coalition for Trachoma Control

MHM

Menstrual hygiene management

MFS

Medefinancieringsstel (Co-financing System), the name of the subsidy for development cooperation provided by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs that ended at the end of 2015.

NGO

Non-governmental organisation

SDC

Swiss Development Cooperation

SDG

Sustainable Development Goals

Social accountability

Communities are mobilised and empowered to understand their rights and responsibilities. They are trained in effective methods to systematically collect evidence on situations where there rights are not met, to voice their needs and to create linkages with the government. This helps communities to create an environment where governments and service providers implement policies and improve services, leading to structural improvements in WASH and SRHR and to less inequality. Social accountability breaks social and systemic barriers in contexts where national policies seem to be adequate, but where, in reality, these policies are insufficiently implemented and where inequality prevails.

SRH

Sexual and reproductive health

SRHR

Sexual and reproductive health and rights

RHSC

Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition

UFBR

Unite for Body Rights programme

WAI

WASH Alliance International

WASH

Water, sanitation and hygiene

Preface

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Executive Summary

photo: Raymond Rutting

Keep calm and carry on photo: Huib van Wersch

Looking back on 2016, the first thing that springs to mind is how eventful it has been. The year was marked by some surprising and momentous twists and turns, and we feel it is worth reflecting on this.

The vote for Brexit in June and the election of President Trump in November were both unexpected and reflect a groundswell of disaffection. Do they herald a trend towards further polarisation between people, countries and ideologies? This uncertainty adds to the major challenges we face, such as the refugee crisis, climate change and the growing inequalities in the world. Problems such as these require a concerted effort and call for a united political front. They make international development cooperation more important than ever. Not only is development cooperation a force for good, but it creates stability, both within and between nations.

Despite these tumultuous times, 2016 was the year we raised the bar and challenged ourselves to increase the impact of our work. Simavi began the year full of expectation, confidence and enthusiasm. We revisited our vision, mission and Theory of Change and refocused the four cornerstones of our strategy. We are determined to be as effective as possible in realising our vision: a healthy life for all.

In recent years the development sector has embraced evidence-informed programming and impact measurement, and we too have seized this opportunity to improve our performance.

We adapted our vision on monitoring & evaluation to match our revised Theory of Change and I am confident that the evidence-informed approach to setting up core interventions that we have adopted will magnify our impact. In 2016 we started no fewer than nine new programmes and a one-year extension to the WASH Alliance International. The interventions in two of these programmes have been set up with a strong emphasis on rigorous scientific evidence, control groups, efficiency measurements and value for money.

Besides making an impact, we are drawing heavily on our innovative talent. For example, in our Ritu menstrual hygiene management programme in Bangladesh we are working with research institute TNO to develop an affordable biodegradable sanitary napkin. And in our Going for Gold programme we have joined forces with Solidaridad and Healthy Entrepreneurs to offer a unique skillset of expertise, networks and methodologies that will lead to improved health and economic opportunities for women in mining communities in Ghana and Tanzania.

At the very end of last year we said farewell to our old office in Haarlem and began this year in our fantastic new office in Amsterdam. It feels like home already and the delightful new environment has re-energised our efforts.

Finally, I would like to thank our partners and donors, and especially my outstanding and highly professional colleagues. Together we are making a difference in the lives of millions of people and I very much look forward to continuing this work in the years to come!

Ariette Brouwer Managing Director

Preface

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Executive Summary

Having celebrated our 90th anniversary in 2015 and successfully attracted much new funding for our programmes, we began 2016 full of anticipation, confidence and enthusiasm. We said we would take our work to the next level, and we have: we revisited our mission and strategy and took important steps towards maximising our impact through evidence-informed programming. The year was also a turning point, as we completed several large programmes and started implementing nine new sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes, as well as a one-year extension to the WASH Alliance International. On top of that, the quality of our communication was recognised as our Annual Report 2015 was nominated for PwC’s Transparency Prize1 and our Dutch website was nominated for the Website of the Year award.

Our strategy revisited – A healthy life for all We continued our strategic review launched in 2015 with the goal of making even better choices to ensure that Simavi’s interventions are as effective as possible in achieving our vision of a healthy life for all. This led us to revisited our Theory of Change. To reflect our renewed vigour and sense of purpose, we restated our vision and mission in more concise terms, broadened our ambition to ‘a healthy life for all’ and refocused the four cornerstones of Simavi’s strategy.

Learning and adapting to maximise impact To maximise the impact of our new programmes we developed an evidence-informed programme design method that uses all the evidence available to ensure that interventions are effective and efficient. This is backed up by a new monitoring & evaluation framework. Instead of evaluating the direct results of our programmes, such as the number of people trained in SRHR, we now aim to demonstrate what they actually contribute towards the final goal of a healthy life for all. We are working with the Impact Centre Erasmus to identify the interventions that are most successful so that we can learn from them and adapt our programming to ensure that every euro is spent as effectively as possible.

Building on past achievements with more effective new programmes Several large programmes came to an end in 2016. At the same time we set up new programmes in nine countries with a strong emphasis on rigorous scientific evidence, efficiency measurements and value for money. In 2016, we launched no fewer than nine of them (Get Up Speak Out, Marriage: No Child’s Play, Going for Gold, Unite for Body Rights Bangladesh, Ritu, Watershed, Wash & Learn, Trachoma SAFE Communities, and Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene in East Indonesia) and a one-year extension to the WASH Alliance International.

These new programmes are still in their initial stages and will run for three to five years, so it is too early to estimate or demonstrate their impacts. Over the coming years we will measure the magnitude of the positive changes made in the lives of individuals and adapt our interventions according to the demonstrable impacts our programmes are making. In total, we completed the inception phase of 8 new programmes, began the implementation of 3 programmes and evaluated 3 programmes.

An expanded network for a wider reach We also invested in expanding our international network. One of the fruits of this process is Girls Not Brides Netherlands, the 8th official National Partnership of Girls Not Brides. It was launched

by Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau, chair of Girls Not Brides, and the directors of Simavi, Plan Netherlands and Stichting Kinderpostzegels Nederland on behalf of the three Dutch alliances that work to prevent child marriages. The new Dutch National Partnership will share knowledge and work on joint initiatives to prevent child marriages both nationally and internationally. Simavi also became a member of the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC), a network of organisations that works to ensure that people in low- and middle-income countries can obtain, choose and use highquality reproductive health. Simavi aims to prioritise youth SRHR, menstrual hygiene management and abortion on the RHSC’s agenda.

1 The Transparency Prize (Transparant Prijs) is an initiative of PwC Netherlands and awarded to socially relevant organisations that are most transparent in their reporting about their impact, results and what they stand for.

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Executive Summary

Two foundations joined the ranks of our donors. With Sightsavers we developed a subproject in Tanzania on the prevention of trachoma, an avoidable disease that causes blindness. And the David and Lucile Packard Foundation gave financial support to our new project in Mangochi district, Malawi as a winner of its Innovation Award. A mobile app will enable young people, health providers and district authorities to rate the performance of youth-friendly sexual and reproductive services in five health facilities in the district.

Setting the agenda In our national advocacy work, Simavi led the Water NGO Platform’s policy influencing working group, one of Netherlands Water Partnership’s main successes in 2016. Through a major input to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ new WASH strategy, the platform took a significant step towards achieving its commitment to provide 30 million people with safe drinking water and 50 million people with improved sanitation facilities. The ministry adopted 10 of the 11 recommendations proposed by the platform.

A highlight of our international advocacy was the round table on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Climate Agreement held in June. Simavi was invited as an expert to explain the role of water and sanitation in both agreements. We repeated our message that no-one must be left behind and argued for systems change. Both this roundtable and the amendment during the budgetary discussions give us a valuable springboard to influence the new Dutch Parliament after the elections of 15 March 2017.

The future is bright We are proud of what we have achieved so far, and there is still much more to do. We believe in our approach and the added value our revised Theory of Change will deliver. It reflects our vision of a healthy life for all and underpins the programmes and partnerships we launched in 2016.

Moreover, the new Sustainable Development Goals provide momentum to scale up our efforts.

And by focusing our efforts on setting up core interventions in evidence-informed programmes, we are sure we can make a real difference.

All in all, 2016 was an eventful year for Simavi. It was a year in which we raised the bar and challenged ourselves to magnify the impact of our work. It was also the year we said farewell to our old office in Haarlem and found a new home in Amsterdam. We began 2017 in our brand new office bright and are eager for future successes.

Executive Summary

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PART I Report of the executive board 1. Strategy

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Executive Summary

photo: Raymond Rutting

1.1 Trends in our field

In more than 90 years working in developing countries we have seen many changes in society, technology, the environment and in international development. We have always kept a close eye on the trends relevant to our mission and the impact they have on our work. The following trends in particular influenced our work in 2016.

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals Finalised in September 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replaced the Millennium Development Goals at the end of 2015. For the next 15 years countries around the world will pursue a wide range of initiatives that address the root causes of poverty: from education to safe water and sanitation, from health and well-being to climate change, and from sustainable consumption and production to peace and justice.

In 2016, Simavi continued its efforts to keep sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) on the international agenda. These are described in section 2.4. Both SRHR and WASH are well represented in the SDGs, which gives us an enabling international framework. In 2016 we continued our lobby & advocacy and policy influencing for better representation of SRHR and WASH in the SDG indicators. We also started to explore how we can use these indicators to strengthen the impact of our programmes. Our work on lobby & advocacy and policy influencing lies at the heart of our new Theory of Change.

Evidence-informed programming Within the development cooperation sector there is a growing emphasis on evidence-informed programming and impact measurement. This puts the work of development organisations like Simavi in the spotlight and we are taking full responsibility for demonstrating the impact of our work. We are also responding to this trend by defining a new vision on monitoring & evaluation that matches our new Theory of Change and by adopting evidence-informed approaches to planning core interventions. For example, we are setting up interventions in Bangladesh, Ghana, Tanzania that will be based on rigorous scientific evidence and incorporate randomised control groups, with the aim of delivering value for money.

Aid and trade As the link between aid and trade is a logical and lasting one, Simavi continues to embrace the trend of closer cooperation between civil society and the private sector in working to reach common goals. We work with several private partners that have a similar mission and vision and are strongly committed to the goals we have in common. We maintain relationships with the private sector where they have an intrinsic value and lead to mutual learning and the exchange of experiences. A good example is our relationship with the Dutch engineering company Witteveen+Bos, with whom we run a programme in Tanzania to improve WASH facilities at public primary health facilities.2 In 2016 we entered into partnerships with a number of private and semi-private companies, including several water companies in the Netherlands. You can read more about our partnerships in Chapter 3.

The shifting geography of poverty In recent decades many low-income countries have developed into middle-income countries, where the vast majority of the world’s poor now live.3 While governments should always take responsibility for providing essential SRHR and WASH services, development cooperation remains vital in regions in extreme poverty, while in middle-income countries where governments have the budget to provide these services, lobby & advocacy has become an effective strategy to ensure they fulfil this responsibility. In 2016, Simavi continued to stress the message that all governments bear the duty to provide essential SRHR and WASH services, and to strengthen their capacity to do so. We also continued our work to empower individuals and communities to articulate and defend their needs and rights. With this aim of empowerment in mind, we have put strengthening our local partner organisations at the core of our new Theory of Change. By strengthening the organisational, thematic and lobby & advocacy capacity of local civil society, we enable people at 2 Read more about this programme at https://simavi.org/what-we-do/programmes/mkaji-programme/ 3 See, for example, http://www.ids.ac.uk/go/idsproject/the-new-bottom-billion Strategy

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the grass-roots, district and national levels to hold governments accountable for progress in the areas of SRHR and WASH in the light of the SDGs. The erosion of the traditional North–South divide Southern CSOs – those located in developing countries – are closest to the issues and the people they serve. Simavi has been bolstering the capacity of its Southern counterparts for years, because we believe this increases sustainability and multiplies impact. We are delighted to see how many of them have grown into professional organisations with an audible voice in the global development community. To make Simavi’s added value towards our partner organisations more explicit, we have made a start with defining our capacity-strengthening strategy and made an inventory of the methodologies and tools we use to provide technical assistance to our partners. In 2016, we continued and improved our local presence in Indonesia, Tanzania and Bangladesh, and we set up a local presence in Uganda. In the coming years we will continue to expand our field presence, based on our long-term strategy and decentralisation impulse.

Climate change This rising global trend presents us with new challenges, but also opportunities. In many As the observed trends in the climate intensify, there is a growing risk of droughts and floods, which compromise food and water security, increase the risk of conflict and directly affect people’s health, especially the health of the most vulnerable. WASH in particular is severely affected by climate change. Insufficient safe water wreaks havoc with sanitation and hygiene, but too much uncontrolled water is just as damaging. Simavi is responding to these challenges with innovative programmes designed to work with the changing environment. For example, in 2016 we continued to promote elevated toilet blocks, which are raised to cope with floods, and better faecal sludge management systems, which improve not only sanitation but also the soil and thus food security.

We also stressed the importance of integrating WASH into wider climate adaptation programmes and funding. We continue to develop WASH programmes with a strong link to climate change and actively lobby policymakers and donors to integrate WASH, which focuses on quality and equity, into integrated water resources management.

Rapid urbanisation As urbanisation in Africa and Asia is rapid and sometimes uncontrolled, it presents us with new challenges – but also opportunities. In many instances, social structures in urban and peri-urban environments are similar to those in rural areas. That means Simavi can rely on its nine decades of experience in social and community mobilisation, such as our experience in sanitation marketing.

In order to reach the poorest of the urban poor (mainly people living in informal settlements or slums), in 2016 we continued to shift our focus from primarily rural areas to a portfolio that includes urban and peri-urban areas.

The rapidly growing urban population also presents us and our private partners with a market and a demand for SRHR and WASH services. As we firmly believe in cooperation between civil society organisations and the private sector, in 2016 we used this factor to explore viable business models and expand our partnerships with the private sector.

Declining political support for development cooperation Over the last few years we have observed a decline in popular and political support for development cooperation in favour of issues like humanitarian assistance in response to migration and to natural and man-made disasters. Simavi strongly believes that working on sustainable development by addressing SRHR and WASH issues is meaningful and has a positive impact on these issues. That is why we will reinforce our work by adopting evidence-informed programming and impact measurement, as described above. We also want to become less dependent on the Dutch government and on political trends. To diversify our financial basis we are mobilising private sector involvement and working more closely with private foundations and our private donors (see Chapter 3).

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Strategy

1.2 Simavi’s vision, mission and strategy

Vision Good health is the basis of everything. It enables you to develop yourself socially and economically, take matters into your own hands and pursue your dreams. With good health, you can look after yourself and your family and lift yourself out of poverty. That is why Simavi works towards a healthy life for all.

Mission To achieve a healthy life for all we work to ensure that disadvantaged people in low- and middleincome countries practice healthy behaviours based on their own free and informed decisions.

Our impact The only way to create lasting change is by sustainably investing in people’s health. We believe that there are two crucial factors that determine good health and well-being: sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). To enable disadvantaged people, especially women and girls, to enjoy a healthy life, we empower them to: • improve their hygiene practice and make use of sustainable drinking water and sanitation services, and • make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and rights … free from discrimination, coercion and violence.

Strategy As well as revising our Theory of Change, we have refocused the four cornerstones of Simavi’s strategy for 2017–2021: • Realising maximum impact through our programmes • Diversified financing and innovative partnerships • Simavi as a credible and daring brand • Professional and colourful Simavi people We will explain and elaborate on these priorities in the following chapters.

1.3 Core values

We have defined five core values that help us to state what we stand for, drive our decisions, realise our ambition and describe how we work.

Sustainable: In everything we do we aim for structural change, respecting people and the planet. To ensure lasting impact, our activities are designed to be meaningful, efficient and effective.

Empowering: We believe in the power and passion of people to develop their talents and make a difference. We lead by example, think outside the box and challenge the status quo.

Connecting: We put our heart and soul into what we do. We are open, authentic and empathetic. We continuously learn and improve by cooperating and sharing. Together we can go further.

Inspiring: We strive to be a source of inspiration for everyone in our field. We encourage creativity and innovation and are open to new ideas and perspectives. We work tirelessly to make a positive change in the lives of others. Our enthusiasm is contagious.

Just: We believe in the right to a healthy life for all. We respect people’s equal rights and endeavour to ensure everyone has an equal chance and is treated fairly. We respect differences between people, cultures and organisations.

Strategy

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1.4 Our Theory of Change

In order to empower people to improve their health, we take an integrated approach with three components. First, we strengthen knowledge so that individuals can make informed decisions about their health and bodies. Second, we create a supportive environment in which the needs and rights of individuals are respected and upheld by relevant stakeholders. Third, we help individuals to gain access to the good quality sustainable services they need to improve and maintain their health.

“I want to improve my health and I know how to, I am allowed by my environment to improve my health, and I have access to sustainable and quality services to improve

my health. This allows me to practice healthy behaviours based on my own free and informed decisions.”

It starts in the community, where certain social norms and values restrict opportunities for individuals, particularly women and girls, and limit their ability to make informed choices about their health – free from discrimination, coercion and violence. Recognising that everyone has the right to a healthy life, Simavi takes a rights-based approach to remove these barriers.

To make this change, we work with partner organisations which are rooted in and understand their communities and the national context. We strengthen the capacity of civil society organisations to represent the health needs and rights of communities at local, national and international levels. We do this by giving tailored support and technical assistance to boost our partners’ organisational capacity, their technical capacity and expertise, and their capacity for lobby & advocacy. We strengthen their capacity to position themselves among a wide range of relevant actors, linking with, among others, communities, grass-roots movements, civil society, governments and the public and private sector. In doing so, we support civil society in playing its crucial role to make sustainable changes towards a healthy life for all.

Communities Our partners engage with people and create awareness at the community level about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). We emphasise social inclusion and gender equality to encourage the removal of sociocultural barriers which have a significant impact on the health and well-being of women, girls and socially excluded groups.

When people become aware of these issues, they are encouraged to set up community structures, such as local health groups and school WASH committees, and to monitor the health status in their communities and hold local institutions to account. With these functional community structures and a genuine prioritisation of SRHR and WASH in communities and districts, we strengthen the call for sustainable, gender-sensitive and inclusive SRHR and WASH services and policies.

Civil society To strengthen the call for SRHR and WASH for all, Simavi enhances the skills of our partners to work with other civil society actors, pass on their knowledge and join forces to lobby more powerfully and magnify their impact. We encourage them to take a stand at regional and international levels by linking up with relevant platforms and networks and engaging in constructive dialogue with duty bearers.

Government and public & private sector We work with our partners to engage with governments and the public and private sector and strengthen the capacity of these actors to work on SRHR and WASH in a socially inclusive and gender-sensitive manner. By increasing their understanding of these issues and improving the skills they need, we ensure government actors and service providers prioritise action to resolve them, such as stimulating changes to social and cultural norms through school curricula and public information campaigns, providing the necessary physical infrastructure, and amending policies and legislation to incorporate the rights of their citizens to these SRHR and WASH services. Duty bearers will then be fulfilling their responsibilities to respect the SRHR and WASH needs and demands of their citizens.

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Strategy

International policy influencing To support our programmes in the countries where we work, Simavi advocates strong political and sufficient financial support at Dutch, national (local, in-country) and international levels, for both SRHR and WASH, to ensure a healthy life for all. Implementation of the SDGs is a major element in this regard. Where possible we involve local partners in our advocacy efforts. For example at global level we often strategise with and support local partners to join international platforms such as the Commission on the Status of Women and Sanitation and Water for All. We also work in alliances (e.g. End Water Poverty, Reproductive Health Supplies Network) to strengthen our message.

A Healthy Life for All. We aim to ensure that disadvantaged people in low and middle income countries practice healthy behaviours based on their own free and informed decisions.

O UT CO M E

Disadvantaged people, omen and girls, are empowered to w y l l specifca Make informed decisio ns regardin g their sexual and repr oductive health and rights

LO NG -T ER M

ces and eir hygiene practi Improve th drinking e l b a n i a t s u s f o make use anitation services water and s

...free from discrimination, coercion, and violence

O UT CO M E

I know how to

and I want to • I am allowed to • I have access to Supportive and enabling environment

Sustainable quality services

IN PU T

LO BB Y

AD VO CA CY

PO LIC Y IN FL UE NC

O UT PU T

IN G

Informed decision making

Organisational

Thematic

Lobby & Advocacy

Partner capacity strengthening

In Chapter 2 we describe how we translate each component of our Theory of Change into action on the ground.

Strategy

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1.5 Our added value

We have been working to improve the health of disadvantaged people since 1925. In all that time we have constantly adapted our methods to suit the changing landscape of development and the needs of our beneficiaries. To continue to make a real difference, we nurture and safeguard the four competencies that form the core of our work.

We strengthen the lobby & advocacy, organisational and thematic capacities of local CSOs Our work is rooted in local communities. In the many years Simavi has been active, we’ve built up an extensive network of reliable and capable local partners in the nine countries where we work. We’ve acquired a deep understanding of the religious, ethnic and cultural sensitivities in every community we work with, which is vital in implementing communitybased programmes that can achieve lasting change.

We strengthen our local partners’ capacity to ensure the community’s demands are voiced to influence regional, national and international stakeholders within applicable legislative and regulatory parameters. We make sure they have the organisational capacity needed to implement projects and programmes correctly and effectively. And we provide the thematic knowledge our partners need to take a sustainable approach to SRHR and WASH. We create synergies and partnerships We’ve established extensive local and international networks in SRHR, WASH and beyond.

We look to create new synergies and partnerships within our networks, bringing together partners whose expertise complements each other. We’re equally at home working with the private sector, government agencies, international foundations, knowledge organisations, CSO networks, local partner CSOs and the people using health services.

We know how to manage complex programmes We manage programmes that are designed to reach entire regions and districts. We bring organisations together to co-create SRHR and WASH solutions, and are as such the linking pin between organisations and areas of expertise. These international alliances and consortia include multiple stakeholders and enable us to reach scale. For example, we lead the Going for Gold programme, a five-year programme with three consortium partners and a budget of €7 million in two African countries. Together with a Bangladeshi media and communication agency and Dutch research organisation, Simavi (in the lead) started the Ritu programme, a three-year menstrual hygiene management programme with a total budget of €3.5 million in Bangladesh (see section 2.3). We also continued in our role as the lead agency of the WASH Alliance International, a consortium that submitted a proposal for a multi-year, multi-million WASH programme in seven countries; and we continued to lead MKAJI, a six-year, $8 million programme in Tanzania funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

We are a learning organisation focusing on impact Simavi does not shirk its responsibility to demonstrate the impact of our work – for two reasons. First, it is important to test our vision and Theory of Change in the light of its impact. Second, we want to show the impact of our work to the donor community, the public and the development sector. We are responding to the trend of evidence-informed programming by defining a new vision on monitoring & evaluation that matches our new Theory of Change and by putting stronger emphasis on setting up core interventions in an evidence-informed manner.

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Strategy

2. Realising maximum impact through our programmes

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Executive Summary PART I Report of the executive board

Strategy 15 photo: Geert Snoeijer

2.1 Working towards a healthy life for all

Between 1990 and 2015, 2.6 billion people around the world gained access to clean water, 2.1 billion people gained access to a toilet and the total annual number of deaths from diarrhoea among children under-five decreased by more than 50% – from over 1.2 million in 2000 to half a million in 2015. The number of under-five deaths worldwide has declined from 12.7 million in 1990 to 5.9 million in 2015. This translates into 19,000 fewer children dying every day in 2015 than in 1990.

Maternal mortality rates have also decreased. In 1990, 400 women per 100,000 died in childbirth, but in 2010 this number had fallen to 210 (sources: WHO, Unicef).

Despite the significant and encouraging progress that has been made over the years, there is still a lot to be done to eradicate poverty. Simavi understands that good health is the essential condition for improving people’s lives. With good health, you can look after yourself and your family, and lift yourself out of poverty. We focus on the two crucial factors that determine good health and well-being: sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Over the past 90 years we have acquired an extensive body of knowledge on how to successfully develop and implement programmes to improve people’s health and rights – and we are still learning every day.

We work to ensure that disadvantaged people, especially women and girls, in low- and middleincome countries practice healthy behaviours based on their own free and informed decisions.

To enable these people, especially women and girls, to enjoy a healthy life, we empower them to improve their hygiene practice, make use of sustainable drinking water and sanitation services, and make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and rights – free from discrimination, coercion and violence. As decision-making is a male privilege in most communities where we work, positive male involvement in our SRHR and WASH interventions is crucial to bring about the desired outcome: a healthy life for all.

2.1.1 How we operate Simavi aims to provide an integrated package of interventions best suited to the local context.

We do that by strengthening the organisational, thematic and lobby & advocacy capacities of our local partner organisations. Our local partners empower people to improve their health through interventions related to all three components of our Theory of Change: informed decision-making, a supportive and enabling environment, and sustainable quality services. Below we describe how we translate each component of our Theory of Change into action on the ground.

Informed decision-making – ‘I know how to and I want to’ Obviously, to make free and informed decisions, you need information. So, the first thing we do is to strengthen knowledge of individuals so that they can make informed decisions about their health and bodies. For example, we train local residents to serve as peer educators on SRHR and WASH. They serve as role models in the community or school and can be approached for help, information and advice. They are key people in the empowerment process. In addition to providing training, we often use mass media to convey messages on SRHR and WASH and hold large awareness-raising events in schools and communities.

Examples of our awareness-raising and education activities include providing existing community health workers with information on prenatal screening for pregnant women to identify lifethreatening pregnancy complications. The community health workers can refer women to health clinics for testing. At schools, Simavi partners provide youth clubs with essential comprehensive sexuality education to pass on to their peers at school. And Simavi partners give information on menstrual hygiene management (MHM) to both mothers and fathers to ensure their daughters have access to sanitary pads and MHM friendly toilets so that they can still go to school when they are having their periods. Education and awareness-raising are key steps in effecting behavioural change, such as visiting a prenatal care provider or using a latrine.

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Realising maximum impact through our programmes

A supportive and enabling environment – ‘I am allowed to’ Second, for people to put their health and hygiene choices into practice, the social environment in which they live must allow them to do so, and ideally should actively encourage them to do so.

We create a supportive environment in which the rights and needs of individuals are respected and upheld by relevant stakeholders. We also engage with government health and WASH providers to inform them about national laws and regulations and make them fully aware of their roles and responsibilities.

We support civil society in influencing and strengthening the capacity of local, district and national institutions to deliver SRHR and WASH policies, planning and practices. By establishing local advocacy and social accountability mechanisms we make citizens’ voices heard by those who bear the duty to provide the services. This is a powerful instrument in promoting dialogue and accountability between the people who use these services, civil society organisations, government agencies, and public and private service providers. Because advocacy is crucial for sustainable change but often escapes easy quantification, we dedicate section 2.4 to an in-depth discussion of our SRHR and WASH advocacy efforts in 2016.

Sustainable quality services – ‘I have access to’ Finally, we work with people to gain access to sustainable, high-quality services provided by the responsible bodies. Joining with governments and end users, we invest in the construction of WASH facilities in schools and health centres, strengthen the capacity of service providers and create sustainable access to sanitation, drinking water and hygiene facilities. We also encourage local health clinics to provide youth-friendly services to ensure adolescents are not denied access to contraceptives or SRH services, or too ashamed to ask for them.

Sustainable and accessible SRHR and WASH services in communities promote better health. For example, improved SRHR services give women and girls better access to information and enable them to adopt safe sexual and reproductive health practices, leading to less maternal mortality and morbidity. Access to and use of safe sanitation and drinking water reduces the incidence of diarrhoea, and handwashing facilities improve hygiene and block the spread of diseases.

In addition to creating access to these services, we ensure they are properly used. We also improve their quality by training health workers and other community members (including youth). This stimulates awareness and spreads information and knowledge on SRHR and WASH, which helps the community demand the quality it deserves.

We identify actions that lead to solutions that match the community’s priorities. We then implement and evaluate these solutions. This strengthens communities’ capacity to organise themselves, to understand their health problems, to know how to reduce health risks, to articulate their needs and demands, and to manage communal SRHR and WASH facilities so that they are maintained for a long time to come.

Our wide range of activities are implemented in comprehensive programmes that each have their own objectives, scope and timeframe. In the next section we introduce the main programmes that Simavi implemented in 2016.

2.1.2 Simavi’s SRHR and WASH programmes in 2016 In 2016, Simavi finalised several large programmes and invested in new SRHR and WASH programmes in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, where we operate in strong alliances and partnerships to sustainably invest in people’s health. At the same time we secured a one-year extension to the WASH Alliance International (WAI).

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17

We are in the process of adopting evidence-informed programming and impact measurement methods (see section 1.1) and have already laid the groundwork needed to learn more about the impact of two of our new programmes. Assisted by the Impact Centre Erasmus, we have introduced a stronger, evidence-informed planning process for the core activities in the Going for Gold and Ritu programmes, which also take a combined approach to SRHR and WASH right from the start (see case study, section 2.3). This is providing valuable feedback on the way we work and how our programmes are built. We discuss our monitoring & evaluation in more depth in section 2.2.

Our main programmes in 2016 are described briefly below:4

Going for Gold (GfG) (with Solidaridad and Healthy Entrepreneurs): a programme to economically empower women in and around artisanal and small-scale gold mining communities in Ghana and Tanzania.

Phase: Inception. Start-up workshops and the official launch were held in Ghana and Tanzania.

The first training on the EASE (Economic and Social Empowerment) methodology5 has been conducted in both countries and the needs assessment finalised. The ToC has been adapted and baseline studies have started.

We also work with Healthy Entrepreneurs in Uganda on Healthy Business, Healthy Lives, an innovative solution to sustainably improve access to health information, contraceptives and affordable medication to combat poverty-related diseases. This business model for a sustainable medicine and health products supply chain was established by Simavi, the social business Healthy Entrepreneurs, local partner Emesco Development Foundation and the Kibaale District Health Office.

Ritu (with Bangladeshi media and communication agency RedOrange and Dutch research organisation TNO, supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands): a programme to promote menstrual hygiene management in Bangladesh. Our main goal is to structurally improve the health, well-being and social and economic participation of women and girls.

Phase: Inception. A thorough needs assessment has been conducted and the baseline study was recently completed.

Get Up Speak Out (GUSO) (with Rutgers, IPPF, CHOICE, Dance4life and Stopaidsnow): a programme to strengthen civil society organisations to make them more effective in addressing young people’s sexual and reproductive rights and needs. Simavi implements this programme in Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda and Bangladesh.

Phase: Inception phase. We started implementing during the second half of 2016.

4 More detailed programme information can be found at www.simavi.org/what-we-do/programmes 5 The EASE methodology uses a saving group process of three successive components to increase women’s economic and social empowerment.

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Realising maximum impact through our programmes

Making Periods Normal (with Rutgers and Women on Wings): a programme to improve the health and well-being of 660,000 women and girls in the intervention areas in India.

In addition, the consortium seeks to raise awareness among Dutch women about the psychological, social and medical impact of poor MHM for women and girls in India.

Phase: Implementation. 2016 was the last year of full implementation, we will start evaluating the programme (both qualitatively and quantitatively) in 2017. We want to pilot the Most Significant Change methodology6 as the qualitative evaluation approach. The search for new funding to continue implementation has started.

Marriage: No Child’s Play (More Than Brides Alliance – with Save the Children, Oxfam Novib and the Population Council): a five-year programme to reduce child marriage and its adverse effects on young women and girls. Simavi’s partners in India and Malawi focus on providing alternatives to child marriage through improved access to education, economic opportunities and child protection systems for girls and their families.

Phase: Inception. The first year was mainly about starting up a new alliance. The in-country and Northern partners had to familiarise themselves with the working methods and complexity of a programme with seven outcomes.

On behalf of the three Dutch alliances that work to prevent child marriages, the directors of Simavi, Plan Netherlands and Stichting Kinderpostzegels Nederland launched the Girls Not Brides Netherlands partnership together with Princess Mabel of OrangeNassau, chair of Girls Not Brides. This is the 8th official National Partnership of Girls Not Brides. In this new Dutch National Partnership, we will share knowledge and work on joint initiatives to prevent child marriages both nationally and internationally.

Unite for Body Rights Bangladesh (UBR) (with Rutgers, BracIED, Bandhu, Nairipokkho RHSTEP, FPAB, PSTC, BNPS, DSK, BAPSA): a programme to support nine local implementing partner organisations in improving the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people, women and marginalised groups. The programme is a continuation of the Unite for Body Rights programme that ended in 2015.

Phase: Inception. In this programme, Simavi provides technical assistance on planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning on social accountability.

Football for Water (F4W) (with the Dutch football association KNVB, Vitens-Evides International (VEI), Unicef The Netherlands, Aqua for All and Akvo): a programme to improve the health situation of primary school children and their families in Kenya and Ghana by providing access to water and sanitation facilities in combination with education on life skills and proper hygiene behaviour. F4W is a public-private partnership between the WASH sector and the world of football.

Phase: Evaluation. During 2016 we consolidated the results of the programme to ensure that the required standards were reached at all schools.

6 The Most Significant Change (MSC) technique is a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation. It involves different programme stakeholders to define, select and analyse together the changes brought by the programme.

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Improved WASH services Dhaka: a programme by the Water Operator Partnership (WOP), a public-private partnership between Vitens-Evides International (VEI), public drinking water company DWASA, Simavi and local partner Dustha Shasthya Kendra (DSK) to enhance DWASA’s operations and performance, with a focus on capacity building of public drinking water, sewerage organisation and realising sustainable WASH efforts in Dhaka.

Phase: Evaluation. During 2016 the local partner consolidated all the activities in the low-income communities that are part of the programme and a study to obtain insights into the impact created was carried out.

Maj kwa Afya ya Jamii (MKAJI) (with Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Simavi, Witteveen+Bos and Tanzanian partners CBHCC, PATUTA and UFUNDIKO): a programme to upgrade water supply and sanitation systems in 100 primary health facilities in the Dodoma region of Tanzania.

Phase: Implementation. During 2016 the programme improved WASH facilities at health facilities, improved knowledge of hygiene issues among their staff and the surrounding communities and strengthened the governance of and community participation in water management at these public primary health facilities.

Trachoma SAFE Communities: an ongoing programme with two sub-programmes: Trachoma SAFE Communities (funded by Simavi and a Dutch foundation) and Trachoma SAFE Programme Tanzania (funded by Sightsavers on behalf of ICTC/DFID). The aim is to prevent the spread of trachoma disease by changing community behaviour towards good personal hygiene and environmental sanitation practices and to develop and test key WASH projects in schools to encourage face washing and healthy hygiene and sanitation behaviour.

Phase: Inception. Both sub-programmes started in 2016 with an inception phase, baseline study and development of an improved monitoring system.

Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene in Eastern Indonesia (SEHATI): the SHAW programme in Indonesia was completed in 2015, but continued in 2016 through the SEHATI programme, funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Indonesia. The specific objective of this programme is that by 2018 the local government authorities (at district, sub-district and village level) in seven districts in Eastern Indonesia ensure sustainable sanitation and hygiene through implementation of the five pillars of STBM (communitybased total sanitation).

Phase: Implementation. We completed the inception phase in 2016 and made organisational capacity assessments of the local partner organisations. The local partners started implementing their programmes based on the inception phase results.

WASH & Learn: an East Africa Community and School WASH Learning and Exchange programme that started in 2016 and is financed from the Walking for Water event, Aqua for All and Rotary district 1570. This three-year programme takes an integrated WASH approach to water supply, sanitation and hygiene behaviour improvements in schools and in the surrounding communities in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Phase: Inception. During the 2016 inception phase the local partners developed their projects, carried out a baseline study and worked on the technical details for the proposed improvements to the WASH services.

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WASH Alliance International (WAI): a follow up to the WASH Alliance 2011–2015 programme. The WAI collaborates with nine thematic partners in the North and a broad group of Southern and Northern civil society organisations on implementing integrated WASH programmes. Simavi is the lead agency for WAI. The aim for 2016 was to provide safe water to an additional 140,000 people and improved sanitation to an additional 160,000 people for ₏18 per person, to diversify and expand our funding base, both internationally and in the countries, and to learn and innovate on sustainability and acceleration.

Phase: Evaluation. The one-year extension activities were implemented and the evaluation report will be submitted in May 2017. During 2016 the Alliance also worked on developing a programme jointly with SNV and Plan Netherlands to secure funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the coming five years.

Watershed: Empowering Citizens (with IRC (lead), Wetlands International, AKVO and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs): a WASH lobby & advocacy capacity building programme to improve governance of the WASH sector, responsive to the interests of marginalised groups.

Phase: Inception. During the 2016 inception phase the country programmes were developed in more detail and a baseline study was carried out.

What went differently than expected Sometimes our programmes do not go quite as we expect. Since Simavi is a learning organisation, we pay a lot of attention to factors that contribute to unexpected or undesired developments and outcomes. We give two examples of these below.

Building on the success of the first phase of the Unite for Body Rights programme in Bangladesh, Simavi successfully supported the UBR2 Alliance in applying for funding from the Royal Embassy of The Netherlands (EKN) in Dhaka. As a lot had been invested in the capacity of the Alliance as well as the quality of the programme in the first phase of UBR, the ownership of the programme was fully transferred to the Bangladeshi partners which we regard as a great achievement. Therefore, Simavi and Rutgers planned to act only as technical advisors instead of donors. In 2016, all partners took some time to adapt to their new roles. It was found that the current set-up of the Alliance Secretariat did not match the ambitions of the programme. Simavi played a role in advising both EKN and the Steering Committee on the way forward. In 2017, the Secretariat will be restructured and will be focused on supporting the implementation of the programme. Simavi will support the Alliance on the integration of social accountability tools to support the work in the field. Similar to last year, Simavi will keep on supporting the PME group of the Alliance in its work on monitoring and evaluation of the programme.

Trachoma is the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness. In our Trachoma SAFE Programme, Simavi works in Tanzania to prevent the further spread of trachoma by changing community behaviour towards good personal hygiene and environmental sanitation practices. According to the local health department, Simanjiro district in the Manyara region of Tanzania has a trachoma prevalence rate of 65%. The implementation activities for the Trachoma SAFE Programme were planned to take off in September 2016. At the start of the project Simavi and Helen Keller International (HKI) agreed to work together where possible, as both organisations are implementing a programme on facial and environmental cleanliness to prevent trachoma. This meant that an integrated monitoring & evaluation framework and a protocol for carrying out the baseline study for both projects had to be developed. This took more time than expected as the research focus of the project required an extensive monitoring & evaluation plan to measure the impact of the four different Simavi interventions. Integrating the impact, outcome and outputs of the HKI and Simavi projects into one comprehensive framework led to some constructive discussions, but also took longer than anticipated. To avoid interference with the baseline study, implementation was therefore delayed Realising maximum impact through our programmes

21

until April 2017. Despite these delays, all stakeholders agree that the monitoring & evaluation framework provides a sound basis for both monitoring and implementing the project. The delay in implementation has been discussed with Sightsavers, who are currently evaluating a proposed extension to the implementation period.

Learning and adapting to maximise impact In 2016, we completed the inception phase of 8 new programmes, began the implementation of 3 programmes and evaluated 3 programmes. Appendix I contains a list of indicators we measured in 2016.

P R O G R A M M E S AT T H E E N D 2 0 1 6 / B E G I N N I N G 2 0 1 7

INCEPTION

I M P L E M E N TAT I O N

• Going for Gold

• Get Up Speak Out

• Maj

• Making

• WASH

• Football

• Watershed:

(GUSO)

kwa Afya

Periods

Alliance

for Water

Empowering Citizens

• Sustainable Sanitation

ya Jamii

Normal

International

(F4W)

• Ritu

and Hygiene in Eastern

(MKAJI)

• Unite for Body Rights

Indonesia (SEHATI)

Bangladesh(UBR)

(WAI) • Improved WASH services Dhaka

• WASH & Learn

E VA L U AT I O N

• Trachoma SAFE Communities • Marriage: No Child’s Play

As most of our current programmes started in 2016 and will run for three to five years, it is too early to estimate or demonstrate what long-term impact they will have. What we can say, and what we show in Appendix I, is an overview of the activities we are conducting within our programmes that are already in their implementation phase. This overview gives an idea of the concrete steps we are taking today to achieve impact tomorrow.

We believe our impact cannot be measured simply in terms of the number of people reached, but that it is also about the magnitude of the changes made in the lives of these individuals. Changing behaviours and deeply impacting people’s lives takes time. In 2016, we focused on designing and getting ready to implement meaningful, comprehensive and impactful programmes. The time and effort we dedicate to monitoring & evaluation will allow us, in the long run, to assess both the width and the depth of the impact our programmes will have.

We continue to learn and adapt our interventions according to the impacts we can prove our programmes have made. In the next section we go into the changes we have made to our monitoring & evaluation in 2016 to better measure our impact.

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Realising maximum impact through our programmes

2.2 Simavi’s impact in 2016

In the past, our monitoring & evaluation concentrated on direct results, such as the number of people trained in SRHR, the number of people washing their hands, the increase in knowledge and increased access to services. Although even these results are not always easy to measure, Simavi wants to go further still and demonstrate what our results actually contribute to the final goal of a healthy life for all. It may seem obvious that these direct results all count towards achieving the final goal, but research has shown that solutions that appear logical and adequate may not actually tackle the problem or be the most effective way to achieve the ultimate goal. Given Simavi’s desire to increase its impact, we need to improve our understanding of which approaches or interventions make the most effective contributions to the impact of our work. Because it is much more complicated to demonstrate the ultimate impact of our programmes than to measure immediate results, this strategic choice has several important consequences.

The first consequence is that measuring impact requires more resources, in terms of both time and funding. This is because determining whether a change is significant for the target group as a whole requires data collection on a larger scale. And if we really want to assess Simavi’s added value, we also need to be able to compare the changes in the programme target group with a control group, a similar group that did not participate in the programme. Where scientific evidence for an intervention is weak, we will, where possible, acquire that evidence through more rigorous impact evaluations. Moreover, the results will not only demonstrate the effectiveness of one specific programme, but also contribute to the sector-wide evidence base on the impact of SRHR and WASH interventions. We aim to limit the costs of impact measurement by focusing our efforts on a limited set of Simavi interventions and by seeking collaboration with others in the sector to jointly build a stronger evidence base. We believe this will ultimately result in a more efficient use of funds and a greater overall impact.

Secondly, results at the impact level take longer to materialise than the immediate results of activities. For example, changes in levels of knowledge can be measured right after a training or event, but it takes longer to see whether or not the incidence of child marriage or disease has been reduced, and by how much. This means we can only measure progress at a much later date, often years after a programme has come to an end. Patience will be required.

A third consequence is that a new measurement strategy requires a different way of working.

Evidence-informed programming for more impact not only requires more resources and more patience in terms of results, it also requires an open and brave mind-set. Focusing on impacts means abandoning assumptions and embracing the conclusions of objective and rigorous research to further enrich programmes. It demands critical reflection on the reasons or justifications for methods and interventions that may have underpinned some of our activities for years. It involves questioning the effectiveness of certain solutions that may be widely supported in the sector, including by donors, but for which evidence might be lacking, or even negative. It also raises questions such as how far organisations like Simavi are responsible for generating evidence at the impact level, and what opportunities there are for collaboration with research institutes to ensure high-quality research data to inform SRHR and WASH programmes. These are topics that will be on our agenda in 2017 as we pursue and develop our impact-led approach.

Evidence-informed programming In 2016, we laid the groundwork needed to learn more about the impact of our new programmes.

This was extremely valuable and resulted in a different approach during the inception phase for the Ritu and Going for Gold programmes. The process is described below.

In our new approach we first review the assumptions in the initial programme design against the available scientific evidence. A thorough needs assessment by an external consultant provides more information about specific conditions in the selected geographical area. Based on the conclusions from the evidence review and context-specific information from the needs assessment, we then revise the programme’s Theory of Change. During this revision, it is essential to remain focused on the ultimate impact to be achieved by the programme. This may lead us to remove some interventions, for example, or to focus on a smaller target group in order to achieve more impact.

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Since Simavi always works in partnership with other organisations, a key step in this process is to jointly redefine the ultimate impact and make shared and organisation-specific interests explicit.

Not only does this strengthen partnerships, but it also makes for more effective collaboration and decision-making. Although these processes have been very fruitful in the past year, they have not been without their challenges. To start with, all the organisations involved need to be on board with the evidence-informed approach, and this sometimes required a shift in thinking from the proposal development stage. It also requires a significant time investment in the early stages of the programme. In the future we aim to take this a step further and have already adopted an evidence-informed approach for the proposal and partnership development stage.

After the review of the programme’s Theory of Change, a programme monitoring & evaluation framework is developed. The point of departure for this framework is not accountability to the donor, but what we want to learn from the programme. This will probably require a more ambitious monitoring & evaluation plan, depending on the type of programme, the level of innovation, its relation to Simavi’s Theory of Change and who we are collaborating with. Based on our ambitions, we may, for example, monitor the programme with a rigorous randomised control trial (a study that compares the target group with a similar group not affected by the programme), choose to do more operational research or closely monitor certain components of the programme.

Measuring impact also has implications for programme implementation because achieving optimal results depends in part on the sequencing of interventions. For example, all the physical facilities need to be in place before we start with awareness-raising, because it can be discouraging if people are made more aware about hygiene before the facilities have been built or installed. Our partner organisations in the countries where we work must therefore also be fully on board and willing to adapt their way of working. In 2017 we will work together towards achieving more impact by continuing our learning process on evidence-informed programming.

In the next section we showcase our Ritu programme, one of the first programmes to be developed in an evidence-informed programme design process.

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2.3 Case study: Ritu

Ritu (2016–2018) is a programme to promote menstrual hygiene management in Bangladesh.

Simavi is implementing this programme jointly with Bangladeshi media and communication agency RedOrange and the Dutch research organisation TNO. The programme is funded by the Royal Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Dhaka (total budget: €3.5 million). For Simavi, this is a unique programme as it combines SRHR and WASH from the start, it covers all three components of our Theory of Change, and it is the first time Simavi has implemented such a rigorously evaluated programme.

7 one fifth of the world’s population consists of More than

women of reproductive age.

On average, a woman spends

seven years

of her life menstruating.

As menstruation is a natural and essential part of the reproductive cycle,

menstrual health

is

an important aspect of sexual and reproductive health.

Situation Menstrual health is a highly relevant theme as it plays a role in the interplay between health, hygiene and development issues. Though menstrual health has recently gained attention in the global development agenda, it is still a taboo subject in many places around the world.

— Mahfusa (11) lives in Mohopur Village, Netrokona, Bangladesh.

When talking to her about restrictions that women face during menstruation, she said: “I noticed that my mother sometimes doesn’t cook and my auntie comes to do the cooking. I didn’t know why, but now I realise this might be because she is menstruating then.”

Cultural beliefs and social norms surrounding menstruation can vary per region or community, but they generally restrict the participation by women and girls in society during their periods. For example, in many areas girls and women are not allowed to visit the mosque, to cook or to sleep in the same bed as their husband. As men are not supposed to see the cloth that women and girls use during their menstruation, women tend to hide their washed cloth in dark places instead of drying them in the sun. In addition, limited access to clean water, proper sanitation facilities and sanitary products make it difficult for women to manage their menstruation hygienically. Where schools do not have toilets, this can be a barrier for girls to attend and it is known to be a factor in girls not attending school. The result is that many girls and women around the world face considerable physical and social challenges during their menstruation. They experience discomfort and an increased occurrence of infections. Girls tend to feel insecure during their menstruation and are constantly worried about leaks and being teased by boys.

In Bangladesh, social norms and cultural beliefs concerning the body and blood preclude any open discussion of menstruation. Mothers do not talk about menstruation with their daughters and teachers are too shy to discuss the topic in their classrooms. Girls are therefore often not prepared for their first period and women and girls lack the necessary skills and information to hygienically manage their periods.

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photo: Jerry de Mars

Goals When a girl starts menstruating it marks her transition into womanhood. With that transition comes a broader set of restrictions and roles that the girl is expected to adopt. Besides interventions to improve menstrual health, Ritu also aims to address a broader set of barriers that girls face during their adolescence.

— Tanisha (11) lives in Fulbania Village, Bangladesh: “Recently my parents stopped me from playing with boys anymore. I am only allowed to play with my male cousins, but not with my other male friends. I really don’t like this!”

The goal is to enable every girl and woman in Bangladesh to manage their menstruation and not be hindered during their period from going to school, working or participating in everyday life. This will empower girls and women by increasing their social and economic participation. More specifically, the programme aims to raise the social and economic participation of girls between 9 and 13 years old living in Netrokona, Bangladesh and achieve the following impacts on health and well-being: • increased knowledge and improved attitudes to and practices for menstrual hygiene among girls, boys, men and women; • increased commitment towards MHM by the government and civil society in Bangladesh; • girls have access to better MHM facilities at schools and affordable and biodegradable sanitary napkins.

— KumKum, Ritu Programme Manager in Bangladesh: “Ritu will ensure that girls get access to information and MHM facilities, which will help to reduce absenteeism in schools and weaken the taboos. This will allow girls to take steps towards the goal of wellbeing and empowerment. As Ritu is contributing to improving the overall condition and position of girls and women, it is a very important issue to me.”

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Evidence-informed programming The Ritu programme was compiled in an evidence-informed programme design process. There are two important benefits to this: 1. The mix of chosen interventions is based on a combination of available evidence from rigorous impact studies, programme evaluations and in-depth field research into the specific situation in Netrokona.

The programme started with a six-month inception phase, during which evidence was gathered.

Using this evidence, the Ritu team and the team from the Impact Centre Erasmus selected a mix of interventions that will create maximum impact. For example, as there is evidence that interventions in schools have a positive impact on girls’ menstrual health, the focus of the programme is on school interventions. It was also found that WASH facilities need to be in place for girls to practice newly learned behaviour. We therefore carefully sequenced our interventions so that the toilets are ready before we start teacher training. Another example is that in our needs assessment7 we explored the traditional and potential roles of mothers and fathers in girls’ menstrual hygiene.

Mothers were found to be the key providers of menstrual hygiene information to girls, including the restrictions that girls need to adhere to. They will therefore be given information on menstrual hygiene and the skills to share this with their daughters. Fathers play a minimal role in information sharing, but do play a role in managing the family income. The programme will therefore focus on encouraging fathers to prioritise expenditure on sanitary napkins and WASH facilities to support their daughters in managing their menstruation.

2. The interventions will be evaluated in a randomised controlled trial to fill in gaps in the existing evidence.

In our evaluation we also aim to generate the first rigorous evidence on the impact that MHM interventions in schools have on school attendance and performance. During the programme, the attendance and performance of girls will be monitored closely in implementation and control schools. In addition, we will measure the impact of our interventions on the overall well-being of girls during their menstruation as well as their broader SRHR and WASH impacts. We will also evaluate learning questions that can inform future Simavi programmes. One of the learning questions that we will explore is the added value of community interventions, as this is one of the three pillars of Simavi’s Theory of Change. Since there is little evidence on this, we will compare school interventions with school and community interventions.

Interventions Simavi will implement the three pillars of our Theory of Change in close collaboration with our local partners. The programme combines SRHR and WASH interventions in schools and communities.

Our local WASH partner DORP uses a budget tracking method that involves school management committees and students in identifying the MHM needs of their schools and helps them to access funding from the local government. We will follow the same process in communities. We aim for strong community involvement in obtaining the resources needed to install the toilets. We will also educate parents and give them support with building MHM friendly toilets. MHM friendly toilets are easily accessible for girls, have clean water, soap, discreet waste disposal and sufficient space for girls to manage their menstruation.

Our local SRHR partner BNPS will train schoolteachers to give menstrual health lessons to educate girls and boys about menstruation. We will work with headmasters, teachers and school management committees to create a menstrual health friendly school environment in which girls have the necessary facilities and feel comfortable attending school during their menstruation. In communities we will work with women’s leaders to educate and activate parents to support girls during their menstruation.

7 Read more about the needs assessment at https://simavi.org/long-read/menstrual-hygiene-managementbangladesh-needs-assessment/ Realising maximum impact through our programmes

27

At the national level, we will create a platform of NGOs and government and private sector stakeholders to learn from each other and jointly advocate for the inclusion of more elaborate information on menstrual health in the secondary school curriculum.

— Zobair Hasan, chief of the research, evaluation and monitoring division at DORP: “As far as I know, this is the first time in Bangladesh that menstrual hygiene management is to be addressed by implementing both WASH and SRHR concepts. It will give us an opportunity to make lasting changes on the ground (in schools as well as in the community) while at the same time providing a model to replicate in other parts of the country, if we can convince the national government through various advocacy initiatives.”

— Shahida Panvin, M&E Officer at BNPS “There is a lot of information in the Ritu module that we developed together with Simavi. We will use the motivational session in the Ritu module to motivate parents to make their toilets suitable for menstrual hygiene management.”

In addition to the targeted interventions in Netrokona, RedOrange will train journalists and implement a nationwide media campaign, including TV series and famous role models, to start the conversation about menstruation.

TNO will work closely with a local private partner to produce and distribute the biodegradable sanitary napkins. The aim is to make an affordable product that meets the needs of the girls and women in our programme and at the same time does not burden the environment.

Status The inception phase was completed successfully and we are currently in the first year of the programme. The baseline survey has been carried out and the results will be presented to us in April 2017. As soon as the survey was finalised, our WASH partner DORP started working on toilets in schools that were identified as ‘easy fix’ and has already installed 18. According to plan, RedOrange will start the school campaign in these schools, after which our SRHR partner BNPS will train the teachers at these schools.

The Ritu platform was launched at the end of 2016. This successful event was attended by 50 organisations, including representatives from existing alliances that will come together under the platform. The core committee of the platform will now work on defining the advocacy focus.

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Realising maximum impact through our programmes

photo: Jerry de Mars

The Ritu programme makes use of the following strategies: • Educate girls and boys in schools and inform parents and communities in Netrokona.

• Ensure an MHM friendly school environment by training teachers and installing WASH facilities.

• Enable mothers to give correct information to their daughters and help them manage their menstruation.

• Enable fathers to support their daughters in their menstrual hygiene management through the provision of sanitary napkins and access to WASH facilities.

• Start a national dialogue on menstruation.

• Inform the public through TV series, radio shows and role models.

• Share information through the Ritu website and the Ritu Facebook page.

• Train journalists in menstrual health reporting.

• Promote the establishment of MHM friendly WASH facilities in schools and communities.

• Involve girls, boys and school management committees in resource mobilisation for WASH facilities in schools and communities.

• Build the awareness-raising and knowledge-sharing capacities of NGOs and CSOs in Bangladesh.

• Create a network of stakeholders that share information and jointly raise awareness on MHM. • Share best practices and lessons learned on the Ritu platform.

• Build the capacity of local NGOs to share information and educate people about menstrual health.

• Advocate for more comprehensive information on menstrual health in the secondary school curriculum.

• Mobilise the Ritu network for joint advocacy.

• Build the capacity of local NGOs to advocate for improved menstrual health.

• Develop, produce and distribute a biodegradable sanitary napkin in close collaboration with the private sector.

• Liaise with the private sector to create business opportunities in the provision of biodegradable menstrual hygiene products.

• Apply evidence-informed programming in collaboration with the Impact Centre Erasmus.

• Develop the Theory of Change and interventions based on rigorous evidence collected from desk research and a local needs assessment.

• Integrate ongoing learning through piloting, monitoring and a rigorous impact evaluation to maximise impact and develop a scalable programme.

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2.4 Our advocacy work in 2016

2.4.1. Advocacy to ensure a healthy life for all In 2016, we took our advocacy efforts to the next level by strengthening the links between policy influencing efforts at the local, national and international levels. The renewed strategy is: to advocate for strong political and sufficient financial support in the Netherlands and at the national (local, in-country) and international levels for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to ensure a healthy life for disadvantaged people in Africa and Asia.

Simavi’s advocacy efforts build upon and strengthen the current programmes. Even though our influencing efforts in 2016 were different for SRHR and WASH, we managed to bring Simavi’s two working areas closer together and we are determined to get better at combining and integrating these themes.

Our advocacy uses human rights arguments and evidence in an effort to improve the health of people in disadvantaged communities in the countries where we work. We have set the following priorities for 2016–2020: adolescent & youth SRHR (combating child marriage, contraceptives for young, unmarried women); maternal health & reproductive rights (safe legal abortion); menstrual hygiene; integrated WASH (hygiene is a crucial part of WASH) and social sustainability/inclusion (one of the five FIETS principles of sustainability).

In this section we explain in more detail the results of our influencing work in the Netherlands and at the national (local, in-country) and international levels.

2.4.2. Advocacy in the Netherlands In 2016, for many organisations funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs changed from capacity building (MFS II co-funding system) to lobby & advocacy (Dialogue and Dissent strategic partnerships). New alliances were formed and power balances were reset.

SRHR advocacy Engagement with the different national networks was a priority to ensure that SRHR remains on the Dutch political agenda for the coming years and is allocated a sufficient share of the development cooperation budget. The networks we engaged in were Share-Net, WO=MEN, Partos and the national SRHR advocacy platform. The SRHR advocacy platform is a new entity that can be seen as the successor to the advocacy arm of the SRHR Alliance (which ended in 2015).

The upcoming Dutch parliamentary election in March 2017 gave a special dimension to our advocacy efforts. The SRHR advocacy platform sent a letter to all the political parties in the Netherlands arguing the case for making SRHR a priority focus of Dutch development cooperation policy. This letter focused on abortion, sexuality education and anticonception for young people and unmarried women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights. The letter explains the results of the Unite For Body Rights programme (2011–2015) and the Access to Services and Knowledge programme (2013–2015), highlighting the positive effects of investing in SRHR and stressing the continuing need to invest in SRHR. WASH advocacy Simavi led the way in the Netherlands by organising a strategy day for water NGOs in January, which was held jointly with the Netherlands Water Partnership’s Water NGO Platform. The strategy day was well received and helped organisations to understand and respond to the implications of important international changes, such as the dedicated UN water goal.

9 You can read the publication online at The Water NGO Platform’s policy influencing working group, which was led by Simavi, was one of http://simavi.org/quick-read/mainstreaming-sexual-and-gender-diversity-in-srhr/ its main successes in 2016. The platform successfully influenced the new WASH strategy prepared 30

Realising maximum impact through our programmes

by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to achieve its commitment to provide 30 million people with safe drinking water and 50 million people with improved sanitation facilities. Of the 11 recommendations proposed by the platform, 10 were adopted by the ministry; only the recommendation to include local communities in decision-making was not included in the draft versions of the WASH strategy.

In February a delegation from the Water NGO Platform had a meeting with Minister Ploumen to discuss the new strategy. Our joint aim was to ensure that in the new strategy no-one is left behind.

With IRC and Wetlands International (partners in the Watershed programme) we developed a strategy on how the Dutch government could increase the budget for drinking water and sanitation. One of the first steps was to raise this issue during the annual budget discussions in parliament. The SP (Socialist party) pushed for an amendment to raise the budget for drinking water by €500,000, a symbolic amount to raise awareness. The amendment did not receive enough support to be accepted, but the point was made.

A final highlight was the round table on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Climate Agreement in June. Simavi was invited as an expert to explain the role of water and sanitation in both agreements. This enabled Simavi to repeat our message to leave no-one behind and to argue for systems change. Both this roundtable and the amendment during the budgetary discussions provide good opportunities for influencing the new parliament after the elections on 15 March 2017.

Influencing the next government The migration crisis emphasised the importance of international development, but also the need for politicians to remain focused on sustainable development in the long run. The costs of housing refugees for the first year are paid from the development cooperation budget, which meant serious cuts to expenditure on the planned programmes. This prompted Simavi to prepare for the parliamentary election in March 2017. Through the Partos election working group and the SRHR platform and WO=Men, we influenced members of parliament and the political manifestos of several parties, D66 (Liberal progressives) and CDA (Christian democrats) in particular. We concentrated on influencing these parties to maximise our impact, because we expect that with the PvdA (Labour) and the VVD (Liberals) they will play a crucial role in the formation of the new coalition government.

We ensured women and girls are explicitly mentioned in D66’s manifesto. For the CDA, we pushed for the inclusion of the solidarity mechanism that 0.7% of GDP should be spent on development cooperation.

2.4.3. International advocacy Simavi’s international advocacy is directly linked with our in-country advocacy work. We aim to raise the profile of both SRHR and WASH at the international level and convince governments to meet their international development commitments. Moreover, we draw attention to changes that negatively affect SRHR and WASH and strengthen recognition of the SRHR and WASH priority areas as universal human rights that should be respected, protected and fulfilled.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development covers a broad set of 17 SDGs to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. Simavi believes that all the SDGs are important in achieving Simavi’s mission to ensure a healthy life for all. However, within our work on SRHR and WASH there is a special focus on the following goals: SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation). While it is important to continue monitoring progress made with the SDGs, to make more of an impact internationally Simavi must be recognised by the United Nations. We therefore applied for Consultative Status at the United Nations. Our application is still being considered. Consultative status will provide Simavi with access to not only the United Nations Economic and Social Council, but also to its subsidiary bodies and to the various UN human rights mechanisms and ad-hoc processes, as well as special events organised by the President of the United Nations General Assembly.

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In 2016 Simavi became a member of the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC), a network of organisations that works to ensure that people in low- and middle-income countries can obtain, choose and use high-quality reproductive health. During the 17th General Membership Meeting of the RHSC, Simavi supported the lobby for the prioritisation of youth SRHR, MHM and abortion on the agenda of the coalition. Simavi was chosen to chair the youth SRHR circle, and exchanged information and experiences on MHM and lobby for abortion.

In 2016 we took part in a number of other international network meetings and conferences with a clear SRHR/WASH advocacy objective: • the World Water Week; • the Water and Health Conference; • the Africa Water Week; • the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP); • Women Deliver’s 4th Global Conference (WD2016); • the European NGOs for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Population and Development Conference; • the United Nations Commission on Population and Development (CPD49).

During CPD49 two resolutions were negotiated and adopted: one on ‘strengthening the demographic evidence base for the post-2015 development agenda’ and one on actions for the ‘further implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development’. A priority at CPD49 was to engage with the large SRHR advocacy community. As well as attending plenary meetings, we met with delegations and influential people. Simavi endorsed two oral statements: the Youth Oral Statement and a statement by Arrow (Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women) on enabling women to be equal citizens in all aspects of their life by ensuring their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

At the Women Deliver’s 4th Global Conference (WD2016) the focus was also on the implementation of the SDGs. The WD conference is the largest gathering on girl’s and women’s health, rights and well-being. Simavi’s main objective during WD2016 was highlighting the importance of menstrual hygiene and promoting Simavi’s position as an expert in the area of MHM linking SRHR and WASH advocacy.

Just before the Africa Water Week in Dar Es Salaam, Simavi helped to organise the Africa Civil Society Forum, which was a useful opportunity to formulate a joint statement by the CSO community.

This helped to successfully influence the outcomes of the Africa Water Week on the topics of social inclusion and the human rights to water and sanitation. Because this conference took place in Tanzania, we were able to show the positive results of our MKAJI programme to the national government officials.

2.4.5. In-country advocacy Our in-country advocacy work focused on improving the advocacy capabilities of our local partners and providing them with assistance and tools to move SRHR and WASH higher up the list of priorities at the national, regional and international levels. Social accountability interventions are an important aspect of in-country advocacy work and enable citizens and civil society actors to articulate their needs to governments and decision-makers.

To generate greater interest in SRHR and WASH we cooperate with our partners to use evidence from the local level in our advocacy work at the international level and vice versa. An example of how we link in-country advocacy to international advocacy is our advocacy towards the Universal Periodic Review of human rights.

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The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a unique process which involves a review of the human rights records of all UN Member States. The UPR is a State-driven process, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, which provides the opportunity for each State to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfil their human rights obligations.8 In one of the countries where we work, we held a writeshop on human rights and the UPR for five partners. One of our partner organisations submitted a shadow report to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The report noted the inclusiveness of the human right of everyone to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. More specifically, it raised concerns about compliance with the country’s international human rights obligations related to SRHR.

2.5 Programme development A dynamic partner base With the dissolution of the traditional North–South paradigm in mind (see section 1.1), we concluded that in some countries we were not adequately equipped to turn all aspects of our Theory of Change into practice. As this could frustrate efforts to achieve our ultimate goal of a healthy life for all, we decided to identify new in-country partners that have a successful track record in the areas of our Theory of Change where we currently lack sufficient in-country expertise. We have established a partner identification budget for identifying new partners, training existing ones and initiating start-up projects with them. In 2016 we conducted partner identification missions and started up small programmes in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania and Nepal. In future we will continue to systematically invest in renewing our partner portfolio, ensuring that we cover all aspects of our Theory of Change and increase our capacity to implement and scale up programmes in a dynamic and sustainable way.

In the next chapter we will reflect on how we are broadening our funding bases and developing new partnerships.

8 http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/UPRMain.aspx

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3. Diversified financing and innovative partnerships

34

Executive Summary

photo: Jerry de Mars

3.1 Trends in our field

The global context in which Simavi works is dynamic and complex. International trends such as climate change, urbanisation and the growing cohort of young people affect not only the lives of our beneficiaries, but also the way we work.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set new targets and indicators for a more sustainable and developed world. They set out what we need to do not only in developing countries, but in all countries. As these global goals depend on action by businesses and private stakeholders as well as governments and civil society, they call on us to form new partnerships. Working in such partnerships and cross-sectoral collaborations marks the transition to a new development cooperation paradigm that will be key to achieving the SDGs. But much remains uncertain. How exactly do the SDGs relate to companies, and will they influence their operations? Will governments in developed and developing countries change their policies and budgets? What should our role be in this process? It is increasingly obvious to us that we need to work with a range of different stakeholders and that the ability of people and institutions to deliver development is influenced by a web of dynamic factors. We need to understand how these complex systems work so that we can change and work through them to achieve our development objectives.

Applied to water and sanitation services, for example, the systems approach would look beyond the immediate benefits of a new water point or latrine and consider the web of financial, institutional, technical, environmental and social relationships, as well as the incentives and rules, that will affect the functioning of that water point or latrine over the long term.

Climate change demands that we develop projects in new ways that promote resilience. WASH projects, for example, need to incorporate an environmental approach, such as integrated water resources management. The growing cohort of young people makes SRHR projects even more relevant, as this demographic is a promising new market for SRHR services. In urban (but also rural) areas with enough demand, this gives small businesses an opportunity to develop products for the base of the pyramid. Simavi is using its experience to support small entrepreneurs.

In many of the countries where we work we see a shrinking of the civic space. In some countries the restricted space for civil society actors and a growing conservatism make working more difficult. In particular, working on sensitive issues such as safe motherhood and abortion is becoming a much bigger challenge as financing for these types of programmes is cut back or even prohibited. A recent example is the gag rule issued by President Trump, which bans international NGOs from providing abortion services or offering information about abortions if they receive US funding.

To be able to work towards our goals, Simavi must stay abreast of these global trends and define – and sometimes redefine – its added value in this very complex process of creating change.

Changes in the donor landscape Political support for development aid is decreasing. The Dutch government’s budget for Official Development Aid has fallen further to 0.46% of GNP. In 2009, it was over 0.7%. The way this aid is being spent is also changing as the focus shifts to public-private partnerships and channelled approaches, such as climate finance (see also section 1.1). The competition for the available funds is fierce.

Private donors, businesses, institutions and philanthropic foundations are all looking for better ways to improve the world and increasingly seek to create tangible value. Donors want to invest in organisations that are able to create the most impact. To achieve our vision of a healthy life for all we are working with the Impact Centre Erasmus to maximise our impact. We are identifying the interventions that are most successful so that we can learn from them and adapt our programming to ensure that every euro is spent effectively.

Other factors are also changing the way donors operate. They increasingly favour organisations based in developing countries over international NGOs, and they also tend to focus on business approaches and innovative financing, and support consortia instead of individual organisations.

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All these trends have informed the development of our strategy and objectives for 2016.

3.2 Fundraising objectives and activities

Objectives We had two primary fundraising objectives for 2016: 1. Diversify our donor base and explore new types of partnerships 2. Increase our – unrestricted – revenues from our Dutch constituency by intensifying our relationships with individual donors, the Dutch private sector and Dutch foundations Activities Diversify our donor base In 2016, we further invested in developing new relationships with non-Dutch donors (bilateral agencies and foundations) and partners. Our aim is to become less dependent on subsidies from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At several international conferences, including the International Family Planning Conference held in Bali and Women Deliver held in Copenhagen, we presented our SRHR projects and showed the impact of our work. We also participated in the annual meeting of the Reproductive Health Supply Coalition in Seattle, where we presented our Youth and SRHR advocacy work. In the field of WASH, we attended three important conferences where we learned more about new trends and best practices: the International Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden; the Water and Health Conference in Chapel Hill, USA; and the Rural Water Supply Network in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. At the International Water Week and the Water and Health Conference we organised two meetings about our Watershed programme. Conferences are also important opportunities to meet potential donors, learn more about their priorities and the challenges they face, and how Simavi can address them.

We also developed our relations with other development organisations. We want to combine our strengths and expertise so that we can develop more comprehensive proposals and tackle more complex problems. We also see a growing interest among donors and businesses for developing market-based proposals in which NGOs such as Simavi create a demand for a product. Simavi will explore the opportunities for suitable collaborations of this type in the coming years.

Increase revenues We had anticipated that 2016 would be the year when we would see an increase in revenues from our Dutch constituency as a result of our fundraising efforts in previous years. In some areas we were indeed successful.

Our private donor income has doubled since 2012 and we made plans for further growth in the coming years. We launched a legacy campaign and, looking at the promising results so far, we will continue to invest in this area.

Our school fundraising events showed a mixed picture. We managed to reach our impressive goal of 10,000 schoolchildren participating in our new King’s Games event, but at the same time we saw a substantial reduction in the number of schools joining our Walking for Water event. We developed a marketing plan with our partners Aqua for All, Amref Flying Doctors, ZOA and the Rotary to significantly raise participation in this wonderful event.

In 2015 we launched the Circle for Change during our 90th anniversary. This major donor programme did not get off to the flying start we anticipated, so we will be adapting our efforts to attract greater participation in this network.

Our private sector target groups (corporates and foundations) are pushing on with the professionalisation of their grant-making policies. In response to this trend, we have improved how we demonstrate our impact and our added value. This sometimes led to successful applications, but in other cases our proposal was turned down because it did not sufficiently match the aims of the grant-making body.

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The table below shows our total income in 2015 and 2016 from all sources.

INCOME

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

1,515

1,204

1,703

239

225

235

1,012

940

1,595

8,719

10,742

10,278

Income Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for alliance partners

4,269

3,353

5,681

Income from other non-profit organisations

1,130

1,730

910

16,884

18,194

20,402

(x 1,000 Euro) Income from private individuals Income from companies Income from lottery organisations Income from government subsidies

Total income raised

In the following sections we describe our different target groups and partnerships.

3.3 Income from private individuals

3.3.1 Donations and gifts Our objective for 2016 was to raise €1,054K from 23,000 individual donors. We eventually raised €1,024K from 20,223 individual donors (2015: €954K from 19,258 individual donors), only just below our target but €70K more than in 2015. We tried a new way of reaching prospects, via inserts in the NCRV TV Guide. Although a less expensive way of reaching new prospects and recruiting new committed donors than other options, we recruited fewer donors than expected. The good news, however, was that the average gift made by these donors was €4 more than last year. We will continue to work on improving our prospecting strategy.

The increase in individual donations this year is further evidence that the strategy we’ve been using since 2013 to attract new individual givers and engage existing givers is working. We have been increasing our efforts to increase the commitment of our existing donors by diversifying the content in our direct mailings (see sections 4.2.3 and 4.2.4) and personalising our approach (see section 4.2.9). This has encouraged many new and existing donors to support Simavi’s work with a larger or more regular donation. We have therefore developed a plan to further increase our donor base over the coming years.

3.3.2 Legacies and bequests In 2016 we received €491K from legacies. In 2015 we developed a strategy to increase our revenue from legacies and bequests in the longer term. Early in 2016 we prepared communication materials, including a legacy brochure, and started approaching a segment group within our donor base to inform them about the possibilities for pledging legacies to Simavi. We also ran a campaign with and around readers of Elsevier magazine. The results have been encouraging so we decided to continue our legacy and bequest strategy in future years.

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3.4 Income from companies

In 2016 we set out to find new ways to collaborate with the private sector on achieving common goals. Together with Dunea and Waternet we investigated opportunities for developing programmes for the Sustainable Water Fund, (Fonds Duurzaam Water), a public-private partnership facility. The third call for the Sustainable Water Fund was published in mid-2016 and focused on three main themes: integrated water resources management, effective water use, irrigation and WASH. Simavi investigated several opportunities to generate added value. This resulted in a submission that was approved by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, RVO): Tarkwa Circular Town Project with Safi Sana. In February 2017, we will submit a full proposal for this project, which is led by Safi Sana.

We have consolidated our partnership with the Dopper Foundation with a new three-year agreement on a water, sanitation and hygiene project in Nepal. Simavi is working with local partner SEBAC to improve the water and sanitation facilities in 20 villages in the Sindhupalchowk and Dolakha districts.

Twenty water supply systems will be built or restored and the communities will be informed about the importance of safe water and hygienic sanitation facilities and what they can do themselves to improve their situation. We will also give instructions about hygienic behaviour as a vital ingredient for making lasting health improvements. This will be done at kids clubs and schools and via health professionals and media campaigns.

We were approached by Corporate Social Responsibility Netherlands (internationaal Maatschappelijk Verantwoord Ondernemen iMVO) to participate in a working group with small and medium sized entrepreneurs in the chemical sector. This resulted in a proposition to develop a hand sanitiser/ soap for the poorest groups. The aim is to develop a pilot in India in 2017.

With funding from Made Blue, a B Corporation, and others we managed to finalise the Promoting Environmental Health for Rural Schools and Communities project in Khulna, Bangladesh. In this project we worked on community-based water supplies, school and public toilets, and awarenessraising around proper sanitation and hygiene practices. We also worked with the Dutch Water Foundation and Made Blue on a proposition for the hospitality sector. Made Blue will launch this proposition at the beginning of 2017.

Technology is an essential tool in reaching women and young people today. Simavi’s local partner Network for Enterprise Enhancement and Development Support (NEEDS) recognised this and started using mobile phones to reach and inform women and young people in an innovative way.

The Mobile for Mother application developed for use by community health workers was pilot tested and won a Vodafone Mobile For Good award in 2013. The project was scaled up and ended in 2015.

Research conducted from 2014 to 2016 into the use of maternal health tools in this programme show that the inclusion of mobile technology had positive effects on individual factors affecting maternal health uptake, led to improved maternal health knowledge and increased uptake of services during pregnancy and delivery.

3.5 Income from other non-profit organisations

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3.5.1 Campaigns and events Walking for Water campaign (Wandelen voor Water) Walking six kilometres with six litres of water on your back is part of daily life for many children in developing countries. During the Walking for Water campaign, 25,500 pupils from 425 Dutch primary schools experienced how hard this is to do. The event is an initiative by Aqua for All, which brings together companies, associations, public authorities and charitable organisations (including Simavi) to raise money and awareness of the water and sanitation problems facing schoolchildren in developing countries.

Diversified financing and innovative partnerships

Simavi is working with 63 companies, including our successful cooperation with District 1570 of the Rotary. In October, we took two Rotary members to Kenya to visit the project they are supporting through Walking for Water. As in 2015, the Rotarians came back ambassadors for life and will surely promote Walking for Water among their colleagues. Our ties with Rotary clubs in the Netherlands are becoming stronger and more clubs have already joined us in this event.

This year, we planned to raise €630K by involving 210 schools and 15,000 students and with 80% co-funding from Aqua for All. In total 11,177 students (144 schools) participated and they generated €523K (including the co-funding). Even though all our local Walking for Water events were a big success and we were complimented on our organisational skills, our revenue was lower than planned. Sixty-six fewer schools took part in the Walking for Water campaign than planned.

In view of this, we made a thorough evaluation of this campaign with all the target groups and revised our marketing strategy. We will implement this new strategy in 2017. Our aim is to create more brand awareness and generate a national movement to which schools can connect and want to be a part of.

The King’s Games: Become a Water Hero (Word een Waterheld) The King’s Games (Koningsspelen) is a fun annual event for Dutch primary school children held on the Friday preceding King’s Day (Koningsdag), a national holiday in the Netherlands. Each school is free to organise the event as it wishes. Knowing that many schools find organising activities for the King’s Games a challenge, in 2015 we ran a pilot for an innovative event, Become a Water Hero, which combines sports activities with fundraising for WASH in schools in developing countries. In 2016, we fine-tuned the event and planned to roll it out to 10,000 pupils at 50 schools and raise €200K. In the end, almost 10,000 pupils participated, but the average donation was much lower than for our Walking for Water event (King’s Games: €8.50; Walking for Water: €23) and thus lower than we had anticipated (€20). We will address this issue and have developed a plan to attract higher donations next year.

The feedback on the event from the participating schools was very positive. As schools do not always have enough time and capacity to organise an event, we brought in CIOS Amsterdam (a sports instructor training institute), whose Sport and Physical Education students can organise the events at schools as part of their internship. In this wonderful win-win situation, students have their internship, schools their organising capacity and Simavi has a unique new tool to recruit schools.

Special events and the ‘Take Action’ web tool Many companies, individuals and schools raised money for Simavi by organising special events.

For example, the Scantrial Team drove 7,000 kilometres through Scandinavia and collected €1,380 for Simavi. Boso for Life donated €1,000. For their 50 year anniversary, Eiling Installatietechniek donated €500 to Simavi. The Kariboe primary school in Heemskerk organised a ‘Smeltfeest’ event and raised €1,331 by selling arts, crafts and food from different countries. Other special events included the Mystery Mountain, the Meijendelloop walk and the Dam to Dam walk.

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The World Toilet Day campaign also attracted considerable donations from companies, including MTS Europroducts, Liekens and Badkamerwinkel.nl.

We have noticed a trend towards more peer-to-peer fundraising and aim to encourage these kinds of fundraising activities. We launched a ‘Take Action’ (Kom in Actie) page on our website (see: https://kominactie.simavi.nl) where people can start their own activity and be fundraisers for Simavi. In 2017 we will promote this new tool and ask people to use it to help Simavi raise more money and achieve our goals.

3.5.2 Foundations Dutch foundations In 2016 we continued and consolidated our relationship with several foundations, such as ASN Foundation, Foundation Flexiplan and Weeshuis der Doopsgezinden Foundation. In total we received support from 35 Dutch private foundations, totalling €194K. We continued to approach the foundations in a personal and professional way that goes beyond the traditional donor–recipient relationship. We view these relationships more as partnerships in which we work together to achieve good results.

Simavi hosted a visit to Ghana by the Debman Foundation to show them some aspects of Simavi’s work. Although the visit did not result in a firm agreement, we are investigating future possibilities for cooperation.

Together with Healthy Entrepreneurs, we submitted an application for the Achmea Foundation.

Unfortunately the Foundation decided the project idea was not in line with its priorities.

International foundations Large foundations in particular have significant thematic expertise as well as clearly defined strategies. Here, too, our personalised approach is paying off. A good example is our ongoing dialogue with Waterloo Foundation, which awarded us funding for two years to improve WASH in Tanzania. An anonymous donor enabled us to continue our work in Malawi on improving the position of young girls and preventing child marriages, and our work in Uganda to enable young girls to demand their sexual and reproductive health rights.

We also received support from two new foundations. With Sightsavers we developed a project in Tanzania on the prevention of trachoma, an avoidable disease that causes blindness. With support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, we will implement a new SRHR project in Mangochi district, Malawi. Simavi’s innovative project proposal earned an Innovation Challenge award from the Packard Foundation. Using a mobile-based tool to gather data, we will rate youth-friendly services in five health facilities to allow young people, health providers and district authorities to monitor the quality of youth-friendly service provision.

In 2016, we invested in expanding our international network, with the goal of developing new relationships with international foundations. We have several contacts in different stages, which we will further cultivate in 2017.

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3.6 Income from lottery organisations

The Dutch Postcode Lottery raises funds for charitable organisations committed to a greener and fairer world. It is the third largest private donor in the world, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. For each ticket sold, the Postcode Lottery donates 50% of the revenue to charitable organisations. Simavi has been one of the Postcode Lottery’s beneficiaries since 1998.

In 2014 the Postcode Lottery gave Simavi, Rutgers WPF and Women on Wings an extra donation of €2.1 million for our joint menstrual hygiene programme, Making Periods Normal, which saw its second full year of implementation in 2016. This project is a great success. The taboo has been broken and people dare to talk about menstrual hygiene and managing periods better. This second year has been a year of progress and improvement in many areas of the programme. Substantial progress has been made towards realisation of the programme targets. For example, we have now reached 176,152 women and 145,378 girls with direct awareness-raising activities and a further 120,000 with more indirect activities such as wall paintings, fairs and marches. The number of girls we have reached has increased significantly since the first year and we are confident that we will be able to reach our target of 660,000 women and girls by the end of the programme.

As in previous years, Simavi received a general grant of €900K from the Dutch Postcode Lottery in 2016. This support is of incredible value to us, as it can be used for any new initiative that is based on our mission and vision. We are grateful to the Postcode Lottery’s employees for their open and proactive attitude: Simavi and the Postcode Lottery are close partners who work together intensively. We draw attention to our partnership through our website and in our campaigns, our newsletters and social media.

3.7 Income from government subsidies

Nine new proposals were accepted in 2015 (Get Up Speak Out, Marriage: No Child’s Play, Going for Gold, Unite for Body Rights Bangladesh, Ritu, Watershed, Wash & Learn, Trachoma SAFE Communities, and Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene in East Indonesia) plus a one-year extension to the WASH Alliance International. This meant that in 2016 much effort went into setting up these projects. We also invested in developing relations with other governments, such as the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and USAID. We applied for a USAID grant on sustainable WASH, but unfortunately this was not honoured.

With the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs we discussed setting up a new WASH consortium to be led by Simavi. In line with the commitment by Minister Ploumen to provide 80 million people with sanitation and 50 million people with water, we set up a new consortium with the WAI, Plan Netherlands and SNV to develop a joint WASH programme.

More details about how each of our programmes is financed can be found in our annual accounts in Part III of this report.

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4. A credible and daring brand

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Executive Summary

photo: Huib van Wersch

Competition for funding is fierce, so it is essential to have a strong and credible brand. In 2016, we continued to build a strong brand by engaging with our existing and potential constituencies, by being in the right place at the right time, and by providing high-quality information to our stakeholders, both online and offline. As a valued partner in our areas of expertise, we stay on top of the news, tell the good and bad news as it is, and actively listen to our stakeholders. This helps us to build long-term relationships with our partners and lends us credibility among our donors.

The changes made to our Theory of Change and our focus on developing an evidence base to prove our approach works underline the need for a strong and credible brand and transparent communication. In this chapter we explain what our communication targets were for 2016 and what we achieved.

4.1 Our stakeholders

To achieve a healthy life for all, we need to mobilise many people and engage them in our work.

The following table defines our stakeholder groups and how we communicate with them.

Our stakeholders Type of stakeholder

Communication channels

Dutch stakeholders Cosmopolitans (40–65 years old)

Website, newsletter, social media, email, events, telephone

Our current individual givers (65+)

Mailings, newsletter, website, social media

Schools, teachers and schoolchildren

Mailings, website (Walking for Water, Become a Water Hero, ‘Take Action’ web tool), social media, telephone

Family and other foundations

Mailings, newsletter, website, reports, social media, telephone, events

Corporate sponsors

Mailings, newsletter, website, reports, social media, telephone, events

International stakeholders Institutional donors

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings (e.g. at conferences)

Philanthropic foundations

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings (e.g. at conferences)

Other NGOs, platforms and networks

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings (e.g. at conferences)

Politicians and policymakers

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings

Corporate partners with whom we develop public-private partnerships

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings (e.g. at conferences)

Knowledge institutions

Website, newsletter, social media, telephone, face-toface meetings (e.g. at conferences)

The media

Website, newsletter, social media, reports, email, telephone, face-to-face meetings

Local partners with whom we implement our programmes in the field

Email, telephone and face-to-face contact through our programme officers A credible and daring brand

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4.2 How we engaged with our stakeholders in 2016

4.2.1 Our Dutch and international websites We are constantly working to improve our two websites to attract more visitors and engage them more intimately. At the beginning of 2016 we changed the look and feel of our story formats and improved the navigation. Visitors now stay longer and click more intuitively through the site. Our efforts to optimise our websites have clearly paid off as our Dutch website was nominated for the Website of the Year awards.

Our donors can now also make online payments on our Dutch website, www.simavi.nl, via the Buckaroo online payment system. Our new ‘Take Action’ (Kom in Actie) web tool enables third parties to announce their own Simavi fundraising activities, which gives them online visibility and makes it easier to share their activities through social media and collect online donations. The module attracts a lot of traffic to the site as well.

Unique visitors 2015

2016 target

2016 actual

Actual growth

www.simavi.nl

77,000

105,000

105,956

+ 37.6%

wwww.simavi.org

15,742

15,000

29,638

+ 88.3%

Since our international website (www.simavi.org) targets an expert audience and does not advertise, the number of visitors remains lower than for the Dutch website. People spend an average of 2.56 minutes on simavi.org (our target was 2.5 minutes), which shows that they are actually reading the content. The average visit to the Dutch website lasts 1.02 minutes (our target was 1.30 minutes).

As part of our Always On strategy, we published an average of five news features on each website each month. The Dutch features put a human face on our projects, presented in an appealing story format. The international features contained up-to-date programme content relevant to our professional partners and institutional donors. The frequency, depth and variety of content underscored our status as a deeply engaged expert in the sector.

4.2.2 Social media In 2016 we continued to present relevant content in a clear and engaging way. As a result of our Always On online strategy, our social media constituency grew even more than expected.

Stakeholder interaction (number of retweets, shares and clicks) was high. We also started to share content with Instagram. The number of YouTube views decreased slightly as film was not a priority in 2016.

We closely monitored our social media accounts to make our approach more personal. We usually respond to both positive and negative reactions within a day. Topics we discussed with our stakeholders via social media included our managing director’s salary, the effectiveness of development cooperation, and our work and approach.

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A credible and daring brand

Social media 2015

2016 target

2016 actual

Actual growth

Twitter followers

1,700

1,900

2,055

+ 20.9%

Twitter retweets, replies, likes and clicks

950

1,200

1,570

+ 65.3%

Facebook fans

1,350

2,500

3,365

+ 149.3%

Facebook shares and comments

X

X

19,000

Not applicable

LinkedIn followers

800

900

1,210

+ 51.3%

In 2016 we invested in an online dashboard to measure social media activity more accurately, even individual posts, which makes it easier to see what works and what does not.

4.2.3 Email newsletters Our newsletters are an important tool for building relationships. We sent them to the following groups: • our international target groups (5 times / 2,179 subscriptions); • our corporate partners in the Netherlands (8 times / 969 subscriptions); • Dutch individual donors and other people interested in Simavi’s work (8 times / 8,020 subscriptions).

The primary purpose of our newsletters is to encourage the recipients to become more involved with Simavi by sharing relevant content. In 2016, that content included updates on Simavi’s projects, reports on conferences we attended, and several three-question interviews with relevant stakeholders. We sent a special newsletter to communicate our 2015 results and expenditure to all our stakeholder groups, using a specially designed dynamic infographic (see http://simavi.org/ results2015). We will use the anonymous data our newsletter software gathers on what people read to match our content more closely to our stakeholder’s preferences.

4.2.4 Mailings by regular post We sent 12 mailings to our individual givers asking for funds to finance our programmes. Each mailing highlighted a different cause or country. One of these mailings included information about the impact and results of our work in 2015.

4.2.5 Events We organised several events in the Netherlands to meet our supporters and stakeholders face to face.

Circle for Change For our Circle for Change major donor programme we held two important events and a small cycle event. In January we kicked off the Circle of Change with a wonderful event – our second Day for Change – in the venue where our 90 years Simavi photo exhibition was still running.

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45

The photographer Raymond Rutting was there to explain his work and the passion he has for photography in general and social stories like ours. At the event we were able to engage with a new target group, which kick-started the Circle for Change network. In September, some members organised a sponsored cycle, the first sponsored event to be organised by Circle for Change members, and we expect more peer-to-peer fundraising events will follow. In November, we held the third Day for Change. As we are raising funds among our major donors for a new combined SRHRWASH project in Nepal, we invited Ruut Veenhoven, professor of happiness at Erasmus University, and Mr Bibi Thapa, director of our Nepalese partner SEBAC, to talk about the situation in Nepal.

The atmosphere was good and the participants were highly engaged. However, it became clear that in future we should tailor the content of such events more closely to the information needs of the participants, which turned out to be much broader than we anticipated.

Thank You event In November 2016, we held a Thank You event to show our most generous private donors what we do with their donations and offer them the chance to give feedback and ask questions about our work. Fifty guests attended the event, which was presented by Dieuwertje Blok, Simavi’s ambassador, and partially sponsored by Van der Valk Hotels & Restaurants. Simavi’s managing director thanked all the donors for their contribution to our work. One of our programme managers gave a presentation on our work and Cecilia Senoo, director of our local partner organisation in Ghana, talked about the work she’s doing in the field. The event was a great success. It made our donors feel appreciated and encouraged greater involvement.

4.2.6 In the media In 2016, our managing director, Ariette Brouwer, was interviewed by Management Scope magazine about her business background and vision for Simavi’s future. Our WASH programme manager, Saskia Geling, was interviewed by Vakblad Professioneel Schoonmaken, a Dutch trade magazine for the cleaning industry. A photo report of our Healthy Business, Healthy Lives project was published in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool. The Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation (NOS) covered the launch of Girls Not Brides the Netherlands, the new National Partnership of Girls Not Brides in which Simavi is a partner.

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4.2.7 Campaigns In 2016 we ran three campaigns in the Netherlands. The first was an online general brand campaign from April to December. Its aim was to increase brand awareness of Simavi, promote our brand promise and underline its importance: ‘water, sanitation, hygiene and safe and wanted pregnancies are crucial to escaping poverty.’

The second was the #flestafette we organised for World Water Day on 22 March, in which we sent out 100 empty water bottles with the message ‘no-one can live without water’. The idea was that as people passed on the bottles they would raise awareness for our cause. Lots of Dutch celebrities, including Koen and Sander (Radio 538), Raymond Rutting (photographer) and Laura van Kaam (winner Voice Kids), supported us by uploading selfies, talking about #flestafette on their social channels and of course passing on their bottle to someone else. It was a fun and appealing way to get such a confrontational message across to our target audiences.

The third campaign was the I Love My Toilet campaign, launched on World Toilet Day, 19 November.

It was a sequel to our 2015 campaign, with #doormijnbril as a new concept. The goal was to increase awareness of both Simavi and the worldwide lack of toilets. #doormijnbril used virtual reality techniques to give the targeted audience a direct experience of the hygiene and toilet situation faced by our beneficiaries. As I Love My Toilet is a successful campaign, we intend to further develop this campaign in 2017.

4.2.8 Personal communication We personally thanked our individual donors by phone and handwritten letters. The individual givers who approached us mainly had questions about the programmes we shared with them.

We personally engaged with our institutional donors by phone, email, social media and in faceto-face conversations at conferences and networking events. The topics discussed included the progress and operation of our partnerships and alliances, our added value, our approach, government commitments, and evidence-informed policy and practice.

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4.2.9 Reports We submitted in-depth reports to those of our institutional donors and foundations who require them.

4.2.10 Field dialogue During programme appraisal, monitoring and evaluation we maintain an intensive dialogue with our local partners in which we exchange ideas and suggestions on how our cooperation can be improved and streamlined. Simavi believes this process is a crucial component of our work with local partners, as sound and effective programme design and implementation are based on mutual understanding. In our programme monitoring, we always build in an informal capacity-strengthening element in which we give input and feedback on reporting, methods and approaches, and results.

We had planned a partner satisfaction review in 2016, but this was postponed to 2017.

4.3 Complaints

At Simavi, we believe that critical feedback from engaged stakeholders helps us achieve our ambition.

We welcome input on what we can do better from donors, volunteers, partners, beneficiaries and anyone who is interested in the work we do.

People can submit a formal complaint by following the instructions on our Dutch and English websites.9 We strive to resolve formal complaints within two weeks. In 2016 we received one formal complaint, from the Central Bureau on Fundraising (CBF) in the Netherlands. They were contacted by one of our donors, who thought our mailings were too aggressive. We spoke to the donor, who assured us of his continuing support as a donor, and thanked him for his comments and suggestions. We informed the CBF of the outcome.

We also track suggestions and informal complaints. We strive to respond to every suggestion and informal complaint within one week, using the same medium through which we were contacted: telephone, paper post or email.

In 2016, we received five informal complaints from private donors. All the complaints were taken very seriously and treated with the utmost care. All those concerned were satisfied with the way we listened to them or resolved the problem.

One complaint was about the environmental impact (ink) and difficulty of recycling the donor mailing (removing metal ring binders). We are considering ways to address this. Another donor did not receive a thank you letter, but subsequent contacts suggest the problem was with the postal deliveries. Two complaints were about mistakenly debiting donations from the bank accounts of the wrong people. We apologised and returned the amounts as soon as possible. The last complaint was about spending money on our Thank You event, but the donor was satisfied when we explained that the event was partially sponsored by the Van der Valk hotel and restaurant chain.

Emails informing us of private donors who have died, emails asking us to remove someone from our communications list and personal opinions expressed on social media are not counted as informal complaints. See section 4.2.2 for more on how we use social media to engage our stakeholders.

9 www.simavi.nl and www.simavi.org

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A credible and daring brand

5. A professional organisation

49

Executive Summary PART I Report of the executive board

A credible and daring Strategy brand 49 photo: Jerry de Mars

Simavi is a professional international development organisation with around 55 employees at the head office (see table on page 49) from a wide range of disciplines, all working to ensure that disadvantaged people in low- and middle-income countries practice healthy behaviours based on their own free and informed decisions. We have two field offices, in Dodoma, Tanzania and Jakarta, Indonesia, and we have programme field offices (‘hubs’) in Uganda and Bangladesh.

5.1

In 2016, we continued to reap the benefits of our ongoing work to professionalise our organisation.

Organisational development

Human resource management Human resources remained a priority in 2016. In May 2016 we launched the Colourful Simavi personal and team development project. Drawing on the results of a questionnaire related to the personality test from Insights Benelux10, we organised a plenary day with the whole organisation, a half day of team coaching per department and countless bilateral speed dates. We are now more aware of our strengths and weaknesses as individuals, as a team and as an organisation.

A whistle-blower policy and crisis management procedure have been implemented as a part of our ongoing work to further professionalise our organisation. This enables us to effectively respond to wrongs and crises.

We expanded and professionalised our local presence in Tanzania, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Uganda by hiring dedicated and skilled employees and consultants.

Employee satisfaction and engagement Employee satisfaction also remained a priority in 2016. In May 2016 we held our annual employee satisfaction survey. Positive outcomes were that 96% of our employees enjoy coming to work, 98% experience a pleasant working environment, and the proportion who are proud to work for Simavi has grown from 75% in 2013 to 92% in 2014, 96% in 2015 and 98% in 2016. Nonetheless, challenges remain in opportunities for career development (31% are not satisfied, which is an improvement over 2015: 44.4%), internal communication (35% are not satisfied, which is an improvement over 2015: 46%) and work pressure (28% experience stress at work (26% in 2015) and 43% say they do not have enough time to satisfactorily complete activities (65% in 2015)).

Each of our departments discussed the survey results and identified the steps to be taken. We have addressed the issue of workload management across the whole organisation and in 2017 each department will explore one of four specific themes in more detail: trust, management of expectations, role clarity or feedback.

Employee representation Simavi’s employee representative body (ERB) consists of three elected employees who discuss issues that are important to Simavi and its employees. They also advise the management team on employees’ behalf. The ERB’s tasks are set out in its rules and regulations.

The ERB met five times in 2016. Among other things, the ERB was involved in matters concerning the relocation to Amsterdam on 1 January 2017 (including choice of location and commuting allowance), the development of our whistle-blower policy, the update of our travel policy, and the number of employees at Simavi and how that affects employee representation.

10 See more information at https://insightsbenelux.com/en/insights-discovery/

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A professional organisation

5.2

Simavi’s organisational structure did not change in 2016.

Organigram Managing Director Finance & Operations

Executive Secretary

Finance

WASH Alliance

Assistant Programme

5.3 Executive board and management team

SRHR

ICT

Partnership Development

Programmes

PME

WASH

HR

Local Representation

Quality

Office/Facility management

Communication & Fundraising

Assistant C&F

Public Affairs

Institutional Fundraising

Business Development

Fundraising

Marketing & Communication

Simavi is managed by a one-person executive board consisting of the managing director. The managing director is ultimately responsible for Simavi’s operation, the decisions made and the results achieved. The managing director delegates day-to-day implementation to Simavi’s department heads.

The managing director and the department heads make up Simavi’s management team. The management team develops Simavi’s policy. The managing director signs off on that policy and supervises its implementation.

The managing director is evaluated by the supervisory board (see Part II), and the members of the management team are evaluated by the managing director.

The management team consists of the following members: • • • • •

Ariette Brouwer is Simavi’s managing director.

Pauline Eenhoorn leads the communication and fundraising department.

Ewout van Galen leads the programmes department.

Albert Klomp leads the finance and operations department.

Nanneke Nix leads the partnership development department. (Nanneke left the organisation early 2017.)

Activities in 2016 The management team met 16 times in 2016. Fixed items on the agenda are progress on our annual plan, human resources, our larger programmes, updates on alliances and institutional fundraising. Other topics in 2016 included risk management, our employee satisfaction survey, our annual report and accounts, and our strategic partnerships with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other institutional donors. Considerable attention was devoted to reviewing and revising our strategy, in particular our vison, mission and Theory of Change.

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51

Managing director’s compensation Our supervisory board has set the managing director’s compensation package using Goede Doelen Nederland’s guidelines for management salaries at charitable organisations (Adviesregeling Beloning Directeuren van Goede Doelen). Ariette Brouwer received €99,910 in 2016. This includes Ariette’s gross salary and holiday allowance.11 Please see the notes on staff costs in section 17 of the annual accounts for more details.

In accordance with the standards set by Goede Doelen Nederland, Simavi does not pay bonuses to its managing director or any other employees.

5.4 Employees

Human resources overview (year end) 2016

2015

2014

2013

55

59

50

46

Expat in-country employees

1

1

1

1

Native in-country employees

5

3

0

0

10

2

0

0

0

0

4

4

Head office employees (in FTE)

50.0

53.1

45.9

40.9

Part-time head office employees (fewer than 36 hours per week)

55%

55%

54%

72%

33

32

33

32

Permanent/temporary contracts

24/31

25/34

23/27

25/21

Men/women

10/45

10/49

11/39

8/38

2/3

2/3

2/3

3/2

Average age

41

41

40

41

University degree

38

41

33

24

9

9

10

12

15

18

21

12

4

11

4

6

Sick leave

6.5%

3.2%

3.7%

4.0%

Employees leaving the organisation

20**

14*

16

7

New employees

18**

18*

20

8

Employees in Simavi’s head office

Native in-country consultants (long term) Native in-country staff employed through partner organisations

Average number of hours

Men/women in management team

University of applied sciences degree Office volunteers Interns

*Includes 4 employees on short-term contracts (≤3 months) who joined and left Simavi during 2015 **Includes 2 employees on short-term contracts (≤3 months) who joined and left Simavi during 2016

The total number of native in-country employees and native in-country consultants (long term) increased significantly. This was part of Simavi’s strategy to strengthen the local representation in four of the nine countries where we work.

The sick leave percentage increased in 2016. Almost all cases of longer term sick leave (≥2 weeks) were not work-related.

11 By law, employees in the Netherlands receive a holiday allowance equal to 8% of their gross salary, paid in May or June.

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5.5 Internal organisation

Quality management system The quality of Simavi’s operations is safeguarded by an ISO-certified quality management system.

This system monitors and evaluates our internal processes. It is anchored in six internal manuals which specify the applicable processes, procedures and policies. More detailed information is available in our Declaration of Accountability at www.simavi.org/declaration-of-accountability.

This document also describes Simavi’s policy cycle.

In 2016, we performed two internal audits of our processes and procedures to ensure quality.

The outcomes of these internal audits were discussed in the management review and followed up accordingly.

In October, Certiked conducted its annual external audit of our ISO 9001 certification. We successfully completed this surveillance audit. The present certificate is valid until 15 September 2018.

In December the CBF conducted its regular three-year review. After the closing interview held in March 2017, they concluded that we continue to comply with their standards and extended our official recognition for another three years.

Education and training We consider each employee’s educational needs and desires during his or her regular planning, evaluation and performance cycle. The combined results from all employees are used to create an organisational training plan.

Code of conduct New employees are familiarised with Simavi’s staff code of conduct when they start work. We have based our code on the one published by Goede Doelen Nederland. No violations of the code were reported in 2016.

Volunteer policy People who work at least four days per month on Simavi’s behalf are offered a volunteer contract.

This contract sets out their rights and obligations. We make verbal agreements with all our other volunteers.

All our departments make grateful use of volunteers and interns who support our employees. We value them highly; they help us to achieve our ambitions and are an integral part of the Simavi team. Like all Simavi staff, they are involved in celebrations and receive a small gift on their birthdays.

Corporate social responsibility In selecting and monitoring our local partners, we make sure they share our views on what makes a world that works for everyone, including gender equality, LGBTI rights, diversity and inclusion, HIV and AIDS, cooperation among civil society organisations, financial management and sustainability.

In accordance with our Theory of Change (described in section 1.4), sustainability is a core component of our programmes in developing countries. At our home office in the Netherlands, we are equally aware of our responsibilities with regard to the environment. We offset the CO2 emissions from our road and air travel through a compensation contract with Climate Neutral Group.

Our lunches largely consist of organic and fair trade products. We use biodegradable cleaning products, we separate out recyclables, we purchase green electricity and we use FSC-certified paper for printing and copying as well as for our correspondence and newsletters.

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5.6 Risk management

As an organisation that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship and that depends on subsidies, gifts and partnerships, Simavi encounters risks. We are committed to managing those risks as an integral part of our operations, focusing on strategies that shield Simavi’s mission and objectives from harm. We therefore integrate risk analysis and risk management into our strategy across all three levels: organisation, programme and country.

In 2016 we updated our risk management framework and guidelines. This framework helps us to systematically scrutinise risks in order to optimise our decision-making and safeguard our operations. The primary risks we face are a permanent topic on the agendas of management team and supervisory board meetings. Simavi distinguishes four generic risk types: programmatic, organisational, financial and reputational.

Programmatic risks Simavi’s programmes are its core activity. They entail several aspects of risk that might jeopardise their implementation or outcomes, such as interventions that are not executed according to plan or that do not adhere to our quality standards, fraudulent local partners, substandard partner performance, and security, safety or health incidents. Simavi’s programmatic risk tolerance is moderate: in doing our work, we cannot avoid taking risks. This is acceptable, provided we are aware of these risks and are able to manage them without jeopardising our continuity and goal.

We have put several preventive controls in place to reduce the likelihood of a risk occurring and to mitigate the consequences if it does. Clear internal policies on fraud, compliance and sanctions, the systematic scrutiny of existing and new partners, and a safety and security policy are examples of these controls. Furthermore, we continue to invest in strengthening the capacity of our partners to help them improve their performance and governance.

Organisational risks Simavi is highly dependent on its employees and systems to achieve its goals and objectives.

Inherent organisational risks include data security and the availability of qualified staff and wellfunctioning information systems. Simavi’s organisational risk tolerance is low. We are committed to responsible human resources management and have enacted policies to safeguard our employees’ health and safety. Our ISO-certified quality management system is an important means of ensuring the controlled and reliable execution of Simavi’s operations and mitigating the associated risks.

Financial risks Fluctuations in income are Simavi’s main financial risk. Our financial risk tolerance is low: drastic changes could significantly affect not only individual project continuity but the organisation as a whole.

Simavi continues to diversify its fundraising strategies in order to spread its income sources and thus its financial risk. We invest significant effort in maintaining good relationships with the private sector, institutional partners and international governments. At the same time, we have taken great care to retain and expand our individual donor base, and we have developed new fundraising methods for new markets such as international and online donors. This ensures that non-earmarked funds (which can be spent on any project) remain available. The flexibility this confers is vital, since many donors require that Simavi match the funds they donate to double the amount available for the associated project.

Despite our fundraising activities, ensuring we have a range of funding sources remains a concern.

The immediate risk to the ongoing programmes and our own organisation is mitigated by our continuity reserve. However, we need to maintain our focus on securing funds for the mid to long term.

Simavi’s international operations entail some currency risks. To mitigate these risks Simavi strives to contract and commit only in euros. Some contracts, however, are denominated in US dollars. The 54

A professional organisation

resulting risk is hedged by keeping liquidity in US dollars that matches the US dollar obligations we have under these contracts.

Simavi mitigates the financial risks arising from fire, burglary, accidents, long-term illness and liabilities through insurance.

Reputational risks For a CSO like Simavi, a good reputation is essential – but it is also fragile. Any incident arising from the aforementioned risks may pose a concrete threat to Simavi’s reputation and thus affect its ability to achieve its goals and objectives, and even its continuity.

But other factors can also damage Simavi’s reputation: bad, incomplete, incorrect or uncontrolled communication (online and offline); lack of transparency; embroilment in controversial issues or debates; bad press; ethics and integrity issues; incidents in the fundraising or civil society sector; and environmental incidents. Our reputational risk tolerance is low: these risks may affect people’s trust in Simavi and eventually reduce the donations and funding we need to achieve our goals.

To mitigate reputational risk, Simavi endeavours to establish a clear brand identity and to communicate openly and with a positive tone. We seek not to be provocative, but to focus on establishing cooperation and thought leadership. On a daily basis, we monitor social media discussions that may affect Simavi to detect any negative conversations early so we can act on them effectively.

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6. Financial review

56

Executive Summary

photo: Raymond Rutting

This chapter details Simavi’s financial position, income and expenditure for the financial year 2016.

6.1 Accountability

Simavi’s financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the Dutch Accounting Standard for Fundraising Institutions (RJ 650, amended 2016). All expenditure is committed to Simavi’s goal of realising a healthy life for all, and to the generation of income.

Simavi’s annual accounts have been audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V. PwC expressed an unqualified audit opinion on Simavi’s annual accounts for the financial year 2016, which form an integral part of Simavi’s Annual Report 2016. PwC performs no non-auditing tasks for Simavi. Audit reports are discussed by the supervisory board’s audit committee in a meeting attended by the auditor, Simavi’s managing director and Simavi’s director of finance and operations. The supervisory board has approved Simavi’s financial statements for 2016.

Financial position, reserves and funds Simavi’s financial position is sufficient to ensure continuity. Though sufficient funding is contracted for all our budgeted programmes, these donor commitments are not irrevocable. For this reason, Simavi maintains a continuity reserve. Based on our risk profile assessment (see section 5.6), we estimate the need to cover six to nine months of operational expenditure. This will enable us to either regain sufficient funding or properly shut down or restructure our active programmes. Our continuity reserve meets this criterion, amounting to €2,241K on 31 December 2016. For projects that are still conditional on future third-party financing, Simavi maintains a separate reserve that covers that part of the total financing required from Simavi´s own funds.

Our reserve policy is described in the explanatory notes to our annual accounts in Part III. Simavi’s financial position is sound. At year end our solvability ratio (reserves and funds / total liabilities) was 34% (2015: 51%) and our liquidity (current ratio: short-term assets / short-term liabilities) was 1.5 (2015: 2.0).

Investments and liquidity Simavi maintains a very strict treasury policy. Excess funds may only be placed in interest-bearing savings and deposit accounts with Dutch banks. The funds are spread over several banks to further minimise our exposure to investment risk.

On 31 December 2016 our total cash balance was €8,945K. This balance includes our continuity reserve, our earmarked funds and reserves, and the amounts we have received in advance to be spent on projects in the coming years.

Appropriation of result Simavi’s result for the 2016 financial year was €96K negative (2015: €30K negative). Our budgeted result was a negative amount of €310K. This anticipated negative result was financed out of earmarked reserves formed in previous years. These earmarked reserves are an instrument to mitigate timing differences between income and expenditure recognition. Because we outperformed our budgeted result, Simavi was able to reserve an amount of €439K for the financing of new projects. For more information please refer to the explanatory notes to the annual accounts in Part III.

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6.2 Income and expenditure

Income In 2016 Simavi generated €16.9 million in income. Income from private individuals accounted for €1.5 million, approximately €0.3 million more than budgeted. Revenue from lotteries, companies and non-profit organisations accounted for €2.4 million, €0.5 million under budget. Government subsidies accounted for €13.0 million, €1.1 million less than budgeted.

The government subsidies include grants from Dutch embassies and tenders awarded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other governments (including the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation). Of the total amount of €13.0 million, €4.3 million was received by Simavi as the lead agent for the Dutch WASH Alliance, the WASH Alliance International and the Going for Gold Alliance; this amount was directly paid out to the alliance partners.

For further details on Simavi’s income, please refer to Chapter 3.

Expenditure (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

Total spent on objectives

15,416

16,763

18,884

Total costs of generating funds

833

1,026

801

Total management & administration costs

751

735

793

17,000

18,524

20,478

Total expenditure

Expenditure on objectives Our actual expenditure on Simavi’s objectives in 2016 was €15.4 million (2015: €18.9 million), €1.4 million lower than budgeted. This was due to the slower than anticipated start-up of the new programmes and will be made up in the coming years.

Expenditure on objectives (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

Total income

16,884

18,194

20,402

Total expenditure

17,000

18,524

20,478

Total spent on objectives

15,416

16,763

18,884

% total spent on objectives / total income

91.3%

92.1%

92.6%

In 2016, the ratio of Simavi’s total expenditure on its objectives to its total income was 91.3% (2015: 92.6%). This decrease reflects the time difference between receiving the funds from our own fundraising and the actual expenditure of these funds. We strive to spend on average 92% of our income on our objectives.

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Financiel review

6.3 Financial key performance indicators

Simavi uses two key performance indicators to report its expenditure: 1. The costs of direct fundraising, expressed as a percentage of income gained from direct fundraising (CBF standard) 2. Management and administration costs, expressed as a percentage of total expenditure

(x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

Total expenditure

17,000

18,524

20,478

2,581

2,854

2,675

Costs of direct fundraising

468

592

497

Total management & administration costs

751

735

793

% costs direct fundraising / total income from direct fundraising (CBF%)

18.1%

20.7%

18.6%

4.4%

4.0%

3.9%

Total income from direct fundraising

% total management & administration costs / total expenditure

Our fundraising cost was 18.1% of our total expenditure (2015: 18.6%). This is well below the 25% standard set by CBF, to which we also hold ourselves accountable. Our management and administration costs were 4.4% of our total expenditure (2015: 3.9%). This slight increase reflects the lower overall expenditure realised in 2016.

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7. Our outlook for 2017

60

Executive Summary

photo: Raymond Rutting

We are proud of what we have achieved so far, but there is still much more to do. Our team is ready and eager to continue our work to realise a healthy life for all for disadvantaged people in low- and middle-income countries. We look forward to future successes.

We believe in our approach and the added value our revised Theory of Change will deliver. It reflects our vision of a healthy life for all and underpins the programmes and partnerships we launched in 2016. Furthermore, the new Sustainable Development Goals provide momentum to scale up our efforts. And by focusing our efforts on setting up core interventions in evidence-informed programmes, we believe we can make a real difference and realise our ambitions.

To help us realise our ambitions more effectively, we have refocused the four cornerstones of our strategy. We explain what they mean below.

7.1 Realising maximum impact through our programmes

Simavi’s Theory of Change (section 1.4) was formulated to ensure that we can make a lasting impact.

We have incorporated this approach into all our programmes and have developed key indicators for each step. In 2017 we will focus on the following areas.

First of all, we started nine innovative new SRHR and WASH programmes in the first half of 2016 – Going for Gold; Marriage: No Child’s Play; Get Up Speak Out; Ritu; Watershed – Empowering Citizens; WASH & Learn; Unite for Body Rights Bangladesh; Trachoma SAFE Communities; SEHATI (see section 2.1). We will continue to implement these programmes in 2017.

Second, we will further pursue our decentralisation strategy. Our office in Tanzania is fully equipped and functional, our office in Indonesia is almost formally registered with the government, and we have equipped our representations in Bangladesh and Uganda to implement our Ritu and WASH & Learn programmes respectively. This continuing decentralisation process heightens our understanding of the local context, assists us in effective lobby & advocacy efforts, and helps us to capitalise on our in-country fundraising and monitoring & evaluation efforts.

Third, in 2016 we planned to finalise and implement our new monitoring & evaluation strategy (including adjusting our IT system to accommodate the resulting changes), but unfortunately this was not possible because it took more time to revise our Theory of Change than anticipated. The new monitoring & evaluation strategy will be a priority in the first quarter of 2017. Part of our strategy is to use evidence-informed programming, in line with the outcomes of our evidence-informed project with Impact Centre Erasmus. Like our Theory of Change, our monitoring & evaluation tools and instruments will be aligned with these outcomes and recommendations. To get a clear picture of our organisation-wide achievements and lessons learned, in the first quarter of 2017 we will conduct a meta-evaluation of Simavi’s programmes and results.

Fourth, as in previous years, we will continue to engage in dialogue with potential donors to develop new programmes within our areas of expertise that contribute to our vision and aims in the countries where we work. We will broaden and deepen our partner capacity by continuously identifying new partners who understand our approach and have the capacities and networks to help us roll out our revised Theory of Change. At the same time, in the first quarter of 2017, we will make an inventory of all our tools and methodologies to show the added value we give when strengthening the organisational, thematic capacity and lobby & advocacy capacities of our local partners. To establish a track record with our new partners we will continue to initiate small start-up projects with them. We will also conduct a survey of our partners’ level of satisfaction with Simavi to serve as a basis against which we can evaluate and improve our partnerships.

Our outlook for 2017

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Last, as a member of Dutch and international consortia, Simavi will continue to participate in international and national platforms that use strategic lobby & advocacy to ensure sufficient resources are available for SRHR and WASH programmes that target the poor and vulnerable.

Our advocacy efforts will target, among other things, financing for SRHR and WASH, access to WASH services in schools and health facilities, menstrual hygiene management, youth SRHR and safe and legal abortion.

7.2 Diversified financing and innovative partnerships

We have secured funding for several programmes for the coming years. While the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs will remain an important donor, we are working to broaden our funding pool by strengthening our relationships with foreign development agencies, multilateral institutions and international foundations. Broadening our funding bases is an important way to mitigate our financial risks. In 2017 Simavi will continue to develop new partnerships with international CSOs and the private sector. Together, we will develop joint propositions that are appealing to international donors. We will also investigate alternative ways to generate income, for example by providing training in our expertise areas (known as ‘technical assistance’) to our local partners in our programme countries.

Our top priorities for partnership development for the coming year are: • Diversify our donor base: find new bilateral donors and international foundations who want to support our mission.

• Develop innovative partnerships with national and international organisations to create more strategic, appealing and relevant projects.

• Innovative financing: find suitable companies with which to develop public-private partnerships and develop new business models for Simavi.

To make our organisation better adapted to achieving these goals we will integrate our institutional fundraising, lobby & advocacy and programme development activities. This will allow us to respond quickly and effectively to the needs and requirements of partners and donors.

Regarding Simavi’s fundraising among private donors, corporate sponsors and foundations in the Netherlands, we will continue to use our existing strategies as described in Chapter 3 with an emphasis on acquiring unrestricted funding. Intensifying our personal approach with individual givers, corporate partners and foundations will remain an important part of our strategy. Our priorities: • Increase revenues from events and develop a strategy for after 2017.

• Invest in a substantial growth scenario for private donors, including middle and major donors and legacies.

• Expand and intensify engagement with our network of corporate and foundation partners.

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Our outlook for 2017

7.3 Simavi as a credible and daring brand

Our revised Theory of Change, especially our aim of putting evidence-informed programming at the heart of our interventions, makes communications and a credible brand crucial to our success.

Having completed the review of our organisational strategy, we will refine Simavi’s profile and positioning. We will also improve internal communications and our communicative power. As part of this process, we will continue to improve our brand awareness, increase visibility and engage with future donors and partnerships by: • • • • •

7.4 Professional and colourful Simavi people

Maintaining a continuous online presence through our Always On strategy Launching one impactful campaign focusing on our integrated approach Building thought leadership on specific topics Proving our claims Offering trustworthy and user friendly platforms

A well-functioning, efficient and effective organisation is essential if Simavi is to achieve its goals. In 2017 we will further strive to improve our efficiency and flexibility. The rapidly changing environment in which we operate dictates the need for flexibility, and we will introduce elements of ‘agile working’ to achieve this. By clearly defining everyone’s roles and responsibilities we can ensure effective operations and compliance with internal and external demands and regulations.

We will further develop our IT and management information systems to adequately support the organisation and fulfil reporting requirements. We will also make sure our quality management system continues to meet the ISO and Partos standards and the requirements of the CBF recognition.

The outcome of the risk analysis we will be performing throughout the year will guide the continual process of improving our policies, procedures and systems.

Our people are key to Simavi’s success. Simavi employees are experienced and committed professionals, eager to learn and to grow, creative and constantly working on their personal development and the development of Simavi as a whole. Together we have built a powerful organisation that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship.

We strive to maintain a culture in which we focus not only on performance, but also on the health and well-being of our organisation and our co-workers. Safe and sound working conditions play an important part in this. As our offices were no longer adequate to meet our needs, we decided to find new accommodation. We moved into our new office in Amsterdam at the beginning of January 2017.

Our outlook for 2017

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7.5 Financial outlook

In 2016 we secured funding for nine new programmes and a one-year extension to the WAI. Most of these will continue to run in 2017 and beyond, to 2019 and 2020. In 2017 we expect to obtain funding for the new Netherlands WASH SDG consortium programme for the coming years.

In 2017 we anticipate spending €19.5 million on our objectives, which is 92% of our total income, in line with our policy. The cost of direct fundraising is budgeted at 24% of income from direct fundraising. This percentage is somewhat higher than in previous years, reflecting the additional investments we are making to boost income from private individuals.

Our reserves and funding are sufficient to ensure continuation of the existing programmes in 2017.

For the years 2018–2020 we aim for a growth in volume to €22–25 million per year. To achieve this we need growth in our existing sources of income as well as new sources of funding. In 2017 we will lay the foundation for this growth, targeting both institutional and private donors. We have made a growth plan, which we launched at the beginning of 2017.

Budgeted Income for the year 2017 INCOME (x 1,000 Euro)

Budget 2017

INCOME Income from private individuals* Income from companies Income from lottery organisations

1,271 15 925

Income from government subsidies

9,006

Income Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for alliance partners

7,838

Income from other non-profit organisations

1,960

TOTAL INCOME RAISED

21,015

Budgeted Expenditure for the year 2017 EXPENDITURE (x 1,000 Euro)

Budget 2017

SPENT ON OBJECTIVES Awareness raising

893

Programmes - Simavi projects - Paid to Alliance partners Advocacy TOTAL SPENT ON OBJECTIVES

10,588 7,838 200 19,519

Costs of generating funds

945

Management & administration costs

763

TOTAL EXPENSES

21,227

Balance of financial income and expanses Financial income RESULT

10 -202

*The budgetted income from individuals is excluding Income from legacies and bequests. The latter is not budgetted for, due to the uncentainty of this type of income.

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Our outlook for 2017

Annex

65

Executive Summary PART I Report of the executive board

A credibleExecutive and daring Summary Strategy brandPeter Smith 65 photo:

Programme Output Results As most of our current programmes started in 2016 and will run for three to five years, it is too early to estimate or demonstrate what long-term impact they will have. What we show in this Appendix is an overview of the activities we are conducting within our programmes that are already implementing. This overview gives an idea of the concrete steps we are taking today to achieve impact tomorrow.

We believe our impact cannot be measured simply in terms of the number of people reached, but that it is also about the magnitude of the changes made in the lives of these individuals. Changing behaviours and deeply impacting people’s lives takes time.

In the past, our monitoring & evaluation concentrated on direct results, such as the number of people trained in SRHR, or the increase in knowledge and increased access to services. Although even these results are not always easy to measure, Simavi wants to go further still and demonstrate what our results actually contribute to the final goal of A healthy life for all. In 2016, we laid the groundwork needed to learn more about the impact of our new programmes and we are now in the process of adopting evidence-informed programming and impact measurement methods.

The tables below contain a set of key indicators we measured in 2016. This provides an overview of the activities we are conducting within our programmes that are already in their implementation or evaluation phase.

Improved WASH Services in Dhaka (Evaluation phase) 2016 only

Full programme

Indicator name

Indicator unit

Targetvalue

Realisation

Realisation

Targetvalue

# persons trained to build awareness*

person

2,538

4,307

7,006

# people who participated in awareness raising

person

2,645

14,255

15,905

# members of community group trained

person

45

125

125

# public places with improved WASH facilities

public place

17

172

128

*In 2015, the targeted trainings were given, but unfortunately, a consortium member delayed the watersupply component. When beneficiaries actually got access to water, we had to give refresher trainings to ensure proper use of water. To make the programme a success, we ended up giving more trainings than expected.

Football for Water (Evaluation phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

# people with healthier behaviour

person

# persons trained to build awareness

person

# people who participated in awareness raising*

person

# members of community group trained*

person

Targetvalue

Realisation

Full programme Realisation

4,434 25

14

# people who learned about social accountability* person

Targetvalue

9,357

50

4,758

5,221

6,410

34,348

17,985

153

15,194

9,687

35

127

83

1

9

10

# membership in partners country

network membership

# public places with improved WASH facilities

public place

1

85

86

219

# sanitation seats in public places

latrines seat

8

190

506

458

# approaches to promote latrines

intervention

1

28

24

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Annex

*Expectations regarding this programme have been achieved. However, the F4W programme has been running from before 2014. At this time, setting targets and aligning Simavi’s and F4W’s monitoring systems was still quite a challenge: •

Programmes created before 2016 had to report on common Simavi indicators, which were not set for programmes such as F4W. This led to inconsistencies when setting targets and to capturing only part of the programme realisations. (e.g.: # members of community group trained counts members of community group trained – F4W is a school programme, therefore, pupils trained were not counted as community members)

•

At the time the F4W programme was designed, targets were not rigorously verified and adapted yearly. The inconsistencies in targets and appearing low results were then accumulated from 2014.

WASH Alliance International (Evaluation phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

Targetvalue

Realisation

# people that are reached with awareness campaigns on hygiene and sanitation*1

person

1,539,398

1,363,139

# people that have access to improved drinking water sources

person

38,603

40,669

# lobby meetings for increased WASH financing attended by country programme partners

meeting

194

234

# people (small producers, businesses or service providers) trained and/or supported on WASH service delivery

person

1,583

1,185

# people that are reached through the media on hygiene and sanitation*2

person

15,472,564

11,767,344

# people that have access to improved sanitation facilities in public places like schools, health centres and markets*3

person

27,004

45,839

# people from country programme partners or other WASH stakeholders trained on budget tracking methodologies*4

person

286

187

# WASH related community groups where the representation of women and/or marginalised groups has been improved

groups

507

480

# people trained in FIETS and acceleration on WASH training/Workshop to M-WASH-CC/WMWASH-CC and political parties

person

5

5

# schools where trainings in menstrual hygiene management where conducted

school

8

8

Full programme Realisation

Targetvalue

*1 The difference between targets and results is due to an over-estimated target for partner New Energy in Ghana. *2 The gap between targets and results is explained by the fact that in Kenya, we originally planned to use Citizen Radio, which had a reach of 25 millions (we then set a target of 10 millions based on this fact).

However we ended up not working with Citizen Radio due to escalation of costs, we then chose to use several radio vernacular stations, with a much lower reach than expected. *3 In Bangladesh, partner Uttaran achieved very high results compared to targets, which explains the difference between targets and results. Uttaran installed 8 public step toilets at markets and crowded places. Huge numbers of users are using these toilets. Especially, women have access to these toilets. We did not expect these public toilets to serve that many people. We will evaluate this with Uttaran. *4 WASH Alliance programme was only a 1 year programme. In Kenya and Ghana we were too ambtious in setting targets for a programme of this duration.

Annex

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Making Periods Normal (Implementation phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

# people reached through mass media

Targetvalue

Full programme

Realisation

Realisation

Targetvalue

person

197,650

235,750

266,359

# persons trained to build awareness

person

7,229

8,540

9,698

# people who participated in awareness raising

person

215,353

430,000

277,113

# progr with private sector collaboration

programme

1

1

# programmes in Simavi portfolio

programme

1

1

# approaches to promote SRHR service improvement

intervention

2

2

The programme still has 1 year to go, targets shown here are set for the full programme. They will be met by the end of the programme implementation.

MKAJI (Implementation phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

Targetvalue

Realisation

# staff members from health facilities that have been trained on hygiene measures and protocols for equipment, personal hygiene and hygiene in the building and premises

person

84

51

# staff members from health facilities that have been trained on water governance

person

280

137

# staff members from health facilities that have been trained on WASH Financing and Business models

person

84

43

# staff members from health facilities that have been trained on Operations & Maintenance of WASH facilities

person

84

27

# health facilities provided with an adequate, sustainable and safe water supply facility

health facility

28

23

Full programme Realisation

Targetvalue

Operations were scaled down by the donor in 2015 and until April 2016, which explains the low results compared to targets. Full scale implementation resumed during the course of 2016 and is now on-going.

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Annex

SEHATI (Implementation phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

# sanitation entrepreneurs trained and supported to produce and sell appropriate and affordable products and services*1

person

# villages trained to plan, implement, monitor, and sustain CLTS*2

community

# women trained to organise district-wide monitoring of CLTS*3 # district authorities trained in CLTS approaches and methodologies*4

Targetvalue

Realisation

90

84

141

131

woman

47

28

person

89

82

Full programme

Realisation

Targetvalue

*1 Partners are currently still in the process of identifying the right entrepreneurs to train and support. They will catch up on targets in 2017. *2 In the first phase of the project, the focus was on training district staff. Partners will catch up on targets regarding village trainings in 2017. *3 On this indicator, results are, at the moment, behind targets for two reasons: 1 most of government staff is men. It was very difficult to find women for the training. 2 we shifted the focus on gender inclusion to 2017. In this year we will fully aplly and integrate our gender strategy. *4 Partners encountered difficulties training the right persons due to the high turnover in government staff.

The tables below provide an overview of (preliminary) activities we conducted in 2016 within our programmes that are in their inception phase. We will start fully implementing these programmes in 2017.

Marriage: No child’s play (Inception phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

Targetvalue

Realisation

# adolescent discussion groups formed

organisation

601

247

# committees strengthened and/or established to function as child protection systems

organisation

44

66

# health service providers trained to deliver youth friendly services

person

405

15

# community conversations held on risks of child marriage

meeting

311

172

# participants in trainings for youth peer leaders/ educators on CSE/SRHR/Life skills

person

643

88

# participants in trainings for adult trainers (teachers, health workers, mentors…) in CSE/SRHR/Life skills

person

115

0

# advocacy meetings with key government departments on child marriage

meeting

23

8

# awareness raising sessions within communities

meeting

# (social) media activities to raise awareness (radio & TV shows, bill boards, posters, newspaper articles, newsletters, sms, facebook post)

intervention

Full programme Realisation

Targetvalue

0

6

16

Alliance building and a rigorous baseline setup took more time than expected: implementation was delayed with 6 months.

Therefore, results are, at the moment, behind the set targets, but implementation will catch up during the course of 2017.

Annex

69

Simavi Trachoma Initiative (Inception phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

Targetvalue

Realisation

# teachers trained to include WASH and trachoma sensitization in their school curriculum

person

16

16

# hand washing facilities built or rehabilitated at schools

water point

8

8

# schools where School Led Total Sanitation (SLTS) is triggered

school

2

0

# school health clubs that have been established or activated to provide hygiene promotion organisation and education (with a focus on facial and environmental cleanliness to prevent trachoma)

10

8

# schools where WASH sensitization campaigns are organised (with a focus on facial and environmental cleanliness to prevent trachoma)

school

10

8

# latrines built or rehabilitated at schools

latrines seat

# communities where WASH sensitization campaigns are organised (with a focus on facial and environmental cleanliness to prevent trachoma)

community

Full programme Realisation

Targetvalue

0

8

8

The implementation phase of this programme will fully start in 2017. We conducted some activities in 2016, but spent most of the time in inception phase and preparing baselines.

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Annex

Wash & Learn (Inception phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

Targetvalue

Realisation

# community members provided with access to economic scheme (generating income to improve ability to pay for WASH services)

person

# water points constructed/rehabilitated in communities

water point

7

0

# water points constructed/rehabilitated in schools

water point

8

0

# latrines seats build/rehabilitated in schools

latrines seat

52

0

# villages triggered (CLTS)

community

16

16

# community management committees established/strengthened

organisation

7

5

# school management committees established/ strengthened

organisation

8

7

# school health clubs established/strengthened

organisation

8

4

Full programme Realisation

Targetvalue

0

The implementation phase of this programme will fully start in 2017, therefore target setting was not realistic. In 2016, only preliminary activities took place (such as triggering villages for CLTS and establishing clubs and committees).

GUSO (Inception phase) 2016 only Indicator name

Indicator unit

Targetvalue

Realisation

# service providers who have been trained in Youth Friendly Services (YFS)

person

189

412

# SRH services provided to young people

consultation

124,625

250,022

# SRH services provided to young people

condom

# people reached by campaigns and (social) media

person

53,350

117,518

# people structurally involved in the implementation of the programme at community level (for example youth groups, CBOs, peer educators)

person

289

1,109

# young people reached with (comprehensive) SRHR information and education

person

54,600

101,772

Full programme Realisation

Targetvalue

180,603

This programme was still in inception phase in 2016. Activities started, but targets were not fully defined by year and by country yet. Targets shown here are propositions made at local alliance level, and are quite conservative. More rigorous targets will be set for year 2017.

Annex

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PART II Report of the Supervisory Board

72

Executive Summary

photo: Jerry de Mars

The accountability and responsibilities of the supervisory board of Simavi are described in the organisation’s Declaration of Accountability (see http://simavi.org/declaration-of-accountability/).

About the supervisory board All the members of Simavi’s supervisory board and Simavi’s management team have endorsed and approved the Declaration of Accountability. Throughout 2016 the supervisory board and management operated fully according to the declaration’s rules and intent.

The supervisory board is the managing director’s employer and supervisor and acts as her advisor. The board itself has no managerial or operational tasks.

The supervisory board members are recruited based on specific, pre-agreed profiles to ensure the board’s composition encompasses diverse areas of expertise. Vacancies are announced through public advertising.

The supervisory board appoints new board members. The managing director acts as an advisor in the assessment and selection procedure.

Composition As of 31 December 2016, Simavi’s supervisory board was composed as follows:

Supervisory board members

Maria Martens, chair, remuneration committee

Esther Scheers, vice-chair, strategy committee

Area of expertise

Politics, management

Public health, reproductive health, tropical medicine

Current position

Other ancillary positions

Member of the Dutch Senate

Member of the supervisory board of ’s-Heerenloo; member of the Board of Janivo; member of the Board of SASS

Gynaecologist

Lecturer at University Medical Centre Groningen; member of the working party on International Safe Motherhood & International Health

Mirjam Bakker, audit committee

Governance, risk and compliance management

Group Risk & Compliance Director at SBM Offshore N.V.

Member of the supervisory board and Audit Committee of GGZ InGeest; member of the Board of Stichting Stimuleringskader Integere Organisatie (SSIO)

Laura de Graaf, audit committee

Finance

Financial manager at Stichting NDSM-werf

-

Michiel de Wilde, strategy committee

Strategy and organisation, international development, CSR

Director at Goldschmeding Foundation for People, Work and Economy

Member of the supervisory board of Stichting Innovatie Economie Onderwijs; part-time coach of young executives at Boer & Croon Management

Jeroen Wels, remuneration committee, strategy committee

Human resources management

Executive Vice-President Human Resources, Unilever

-

Report of the Supervisory Board

73

Rotation and election procedure Supervisory board members are appointed for a maximum of two four-year terms. The board’s rotation schedule is as follows: Supervisory board members Appointed as of

End of first term

End of second term

Maria Martens

2010 (July)

2014

2018

Laura de Graaf

2011 (July)

2015

2019

Esther Scheers

2012 (June)

2016

2020

Michiel de Wilde

2014 (November)

2018

2022

Jeroen Wels

2014 (November)

2018

2022

Mirjam Bakker

2016 (September)

2020

2024

Recent changes Frans Blanchard left the board at the end of his second term in 2016. We thank him for his eight years of committed support.

Mirjam Bakker succeeded Frans Blanchard at the end of 2016. Mirjam has business experience in the field of governance, risk management and integrity policy in major international companies that do a lot of business with African and Asian countries.

Compensation The remuneration policy for the supervisory board remains unchanged. Members of the supervisory board do not receive any form of compensation. Actual expenses incurred can be reimbursed.

Supervisory board meetings in 2016 The board convened five times in 2016. In addition to the regular board meetings, individual board members attended several meetings with a variety of stakeholders, accompanied by members of the management team. The standard agenda items for supervisory board meetings are as follows: • • • • • •

the annual plan and budget the annual report alliances with other NGOs for larger programmes external campaigns and activities formal audits, evaluations and risk assessments progress on professionalising the organisation, its capabilities and the strength of the management team (including the annual assessment of Simavi’s managing director) • risk management • progress on projects and project results In addition to the standard agenda items, the board also discussed the following items this year: • • • • • • • •

Simavi’s 2016–2020 strategy employee satisfaction Simavi’s Theory of Change, evidence-informed programming, impact monitoring and evaluation supervisory board self-evaluation succession planning of supervisory board members the Colourful Simavi personal and team development project12 appointment of new external auditor relocation of the office

12 This personal and team development project is related to the personality test from Insights Benelux. (see also Chapter 5.1) 74

Report of the Supervisory Board

2016 in review In 2016 Simavi continued its strategic review with the goal of making even better choices to ensure that its SRHR and WASH interventions are effective in achieving the envisioned health improvements. In the process Simavi revised its Theory of Change, mission and vision and refocused the four cornerstones of Simavi’s strategy. The supervisory board was closely involved in this review.

The development sector is making increasing use of evidence-informed programming and impact measurement. Accordingly, Simavi has defined a new vision on monitoring & evaluation that matches our revised Theory of Change. Programmes are developed using all the evidence available to ensure that interventions are effective and efficient. New programmes have been set up with a strong emphasis on rigorous scientific evidence, control groups, efficiency measurements and value for money.

As an organisation, Simavi is on a path of continuous improvement and further professionalisation. This concerns the personal development of employees, the organisation itself and the systems in use. In addition, the supervisory board was involved in the process of Simavi’s relocation to a new office in Amsterdam.

Evaluation of the managing director Each year the supervisory board – through its remuneration committee – reviews the managing director’s performance and discusses her personal development goals for the coming year. The board is very satisfied with Ariette Brouwer and expressed its continued confidence in her. The supervisory board reinforced its strong commitment to the ongoing strategy development process and discussions with strategic partners.

Audit committee The audit committee convened five times in 2016. Its meetings took place about two weeks before regular board meetings.

Simavi’s managing director and director of finance and operations also attended. Topics included the annual and internal financial reports, the auditor’s report and the annual budget and forecasts. The external auditor also participated in the discussions on the annual accounts and the auditor’s report.

Strategy committee In 2016 the board decided to establish a strategy committee. This committee acts as an advisory committee for the board and the managing director. The committee convened two times in 2016, together with the management team. The main topic was the review and revision of the Theory of Change. The board has approved the revision and is confident that it will properly focus the activities of Simavi on making a sustainable impact.

Evaluation of the supervisory board In accordance with Simavi’s governance code, the supervisory board evaluated its own performance in December 2016.

We concluded that the diverse composition of the supervisory board, the complementary role of each member and the critical yet collaborative operating style are strengths to be nurtured. Based on the successful improvements already made and in view of the rapid changes taking place in the world, we will continue to conduct the strategic dialogue with Simavi’s management team, focusing on how Simavi’s impact is measured and can be improved. Continued attention is required to maintain the proper balance between commitment and distance to ensure that both the board and the managing director can optimally fulfil their respective roles.

Recognition The supervisory board deeply thanks Simavi’s volunteers, employees and management team for the commitment and passion they have shown and the energy they have put into their work throughout the year. The supervisory board also thanks Simavi’s Dutch and international stakeholders and partners in the field for their cooperation and their impactful work on the ground.

Looking forward to 2017 and beyond, the supervisory board is confident that the Simavi team will make strong progress towards achieving a healthy life for all.

Report of the Supervisory Board

75

PART III Annual Accounts

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Report of the Supervisory Board

photo: Geert Snoeijer

Balance Sheet as per December 31, 2016 (after appropriation of result) ASSETS (x 1,000 Euro)

31-12-2016

31-12-2015

Intangible fixed assets

39

40

Tangible fixed asstes

98

48

137

88

43

38

18

26

FIXED ASSETS

Note 1

CURRENT ASSETS Receivables and accrued income Bequests to be received

2 2.1

Interest to be received Grants to be received

11

295

1,147

Other receivables and prepaid expenses

2.2

1,277

225

1,633

1,436

8,945

5,704

10,715

7,228

CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS

3

TOTAL ASSETS

LIABILITIES (x 1,000 Euro) RESERVES AND FUNDS

Note

31-12-2016

31-12-2015

4

Continuity reserve

4.1

2,241

2,241

Reserve for financing assets

4.2

137

88

Earmarked reserves

4.3

1,071

862

Earmarked funds

4.4

141

495

3,590

3,686

5

-

43

5

96

311

85

77

LONG-TERM LIABILITIES Project/programme commitments

SHORT-TERM LIABILITIES Project/programme commitments Taxes and social insurance premiums Other liabilities and accruals

6

835

856

Deferred income

7

6,109

2,255

7,125

3,499

10,715

7,228

TOTAL LIABILITIES

Annual accounts

77

Statement of Income and Expenditure for the year 2016 INCOME & EXPENDITURE (x 1,000 Euro)

Note

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

9

1,515

1,204

1,703

239

225

235

INCOME Income from private individuals Income from companies Income from lottery organisations

10

1,012

940

1,595

Income from government subsidies

11

8,719

10,742

10,278

Income Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for alliance partners

11

4,269

3,353

5,681

Income from other non-profit organisations

12

1,130

1,730

910

16,884

18,194

20,402

-

-

-

16,884

18,194

20,402

957

905

1,254

10,019

12,321

11,602

4,269

3,353

5,681

171

184

347

15,416

16,763

18,884

Total income raised

Other Income TOTAL INCOME

EXPENSES SPENT ON OBJECTIVES

13

Awareness raising Programmes Simavi projects Paid to Alliance partners Advocacy Total spent on objectives

Cost of generating funds

14

833

1,026

801

Management & administration costs

15

751

735

793

TOTAL EXPENSES

16

17,000

18,524

20,478

20

20

46

-96

-310

-30

Balance of financial income and expenses Financial income

RESULT

78

Annual accounts

Statement of Income and Expenditure for the year 2016 - continued APPROPRIATION OF RESULT (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Actual 2015

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve for Capacity building

-89

-96

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve for Projects (third party financing)

-33

-181

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve for Projects (own financning)

-39

-

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve Football for Water

-15

-292

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve Fundraising legacies

-24

120

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve Strategic development

-30

-23

-

-100

-272

-33

Withdrawal from earmarked fund Children eye care Africa

-51

-

Withdrawal from earmarked fund Children eye care Irian Jaya

-35

-

Addition to Continuity reserve

-

29

Addition to earmarked funds for Interest

4

29

Addition to earmarked reserve Strategic development

-

50

49

16

Addition to earmarked reserve for Projects

439

451

TOTAL

-96

-30

Withdrawal from earmarked reserve Simavi 90 years Withdrawal from earmarked funds for Interest

Addition to reserve for Financing assets

Annual accounts

79

Cash Flow Statement for the year 2016 (x 1,000 Euro)

Note

2016

2015

-96

-30

44

22

-20

-46

-72

-54

2

-205

-668

5, 6, 7

3.626

-3.010

5

-43

-157

28

69

3,334

-3,820

-93

-38

Change in cash and cash equivalents

3,241

-3,858

Balance of cash and cash equivalents on 1 January

5,704

9,562

8,945

5,704

3,241

-3,858

RESULT Adjustment for depreciation

1

Adjustment for interest income

Changes in operating capital Change in receivables Change in short-term liabilities Change in long-term liabilities project/programme commitments Interest received Cash flow from operational activities

Cash flow from investment activities Investments in fixed assets

Balance of cash and cash equivalents on 31 December Change in cash and cash equivalents

80

Annual accounts

1

3

Accounting polices General The annual accounts have been prepared in accordance with the Dutch Accounting Standard for Fundraising Institutions (RJ 650, amended 2016) and are subject to the “Wet Normering bezoldiging Topfunctionarissen publieke en semi publieke sector” (WNT). The annual accounts aim to provide a fair presentation of the financial position of Stichting Simavi, registered in Haarlem (reg.no. 40594571), having office at Naritaweg 153, 1043 BS Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Simavi), as of December 31, 2016, and of its income and expenditure for the year 2016. The financial year coincides with the calendar year. The annual accounts are drawn up on the basis of continuity.

With reference to Section 407(1a);13, Title 9, Book 2 of the Netherlands Civil Code, the financial data of Stichting NFICH and Stichting Zien have not been consolidated. The current accounts between Simavi and these foundations are reported under Other liabilities and accruals (see note 6).

Amendment of the Accounting Standard RJ 650 The presentation of the Statement of income and expenditure has been changed in accordance with amendments of the RJ 650 (RJ-publication 2016-13: Guideline 650 Fund raising organisations).

Legacies with usufruct are no longer included under off-balance sheet rights but included under Bequests to be received.

One legacy with usufruct was revalued. Its value at year end was €29K (2015: €29K, previously valued at nil).

The changes impacted the amounts of the reserves and funds at year end 2015. The continuity reserve increased by €29K to €2,241K, also the 2015 income and the balance of income and expenditure increased by €29K. In addition the amendment affected the presentation of the income. The new format follows the nature of the donors.

Functional and reporting currency The annual accounts are denominated in euros, Simavi’s functional and reporting currency. Transactions denominated in foreign currencies conducted during the reporting period are recognised in the annual accounts at the rate of exchange on the transaction date. Monetary assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies are translated into the functional currency at the rate of exchange at the reporting date. Any resulting exchange differences are recognised in the statement of income and expenditure.

Use of estimates In applying the accounting policies and standards for preparing annual accounts, the management of Simavi is required to make estimates and judgments that might significantly influence the amounts disclosed in the annual accounts. If necessary for the purposes of providing the insight required under Section 362(1), Book 2 of the Netherlands Civil Code, the nature of these estimates and judgments, including the related assumptions, has been disclosed in the notes to the relevant items.

Simavi did not change its policies for accounting estimates compared to the previous year.

Basis of measurement Unless indicated otherwise, the annual accounts have been prepared using the historical cost basis.

Impairments Simavi assesses at each reporting date whether there is any evidence of assets being subject to impairment. If any such evidence exists, the recoverable amount of the relevant asset is determined. An asset is subject to impairment if its carrying amount is higher than its recoverable amount; the recoverable amount is the higher of net realisable value and value in use. If it is established that a previously recognised impairment loss no longer applies or has declined, the increased carrying amount of the asset in question is not set higher than the carrying amount that would have been determined had no impairment loss been recognised. An impairment loss is directly expensed in the statement of income and expenditure.

Fixed assets Fixed assets are carried at cost less straight-line depreciation over their estimated useful lives. The percentages used are: Equipment: 10%; Office machines: 20%; Computers and software: 20 - 33%.

Simavi is located at a newly rented property since January 2017.

Operational Leasing The lease of the office premises is recognised as operational lease. Lease payments are recorded on a straight-line basis in the income statement for the duration of the contract.

Annual accounts

81

Financial instruments Financial instruments include receivables, cash and cash equivalents, project/programme commitments, accounts payable, and other payables. Financial instruments are initially recognised at fair value. Any directly attributable transaction costs are part of this initial valuation. Financial instruments are subsequently valued in the manner described below.

Receivables and accrued income Receivables and accrued income are initially stated at fair value, and are subsequently valued at amortised cost. An allowance is made for obsolescence where necessary.

Bequests to be received and Legacies with usufruct are valued at the time they can reliably be determined based on the notarial deed of distribution.

Reserves In order to secure the continuity of the foundation in case of unexpected events, part of Simavi’s capital has been transferred to a separate continuity reserve. The size is in accordance with CBF regulations and is aimed to meet legal and moral obligations in case of a significant fall in income.

Simavi holds a reserve for financing fixed assets to guarantee replacement of these assets in the future.

Earmarked reserves are held for different purposes as determined by management. Management of Simavi can change the specific earmark of reserves, when deemed appropriate.

Earmarked funds The earmarked funds represent all received earmarked income that the donor intended for a specific purpose, for which the underlying objective and related expenditure have not yet been realised. Furthermore, earmarked funds are held for accumulated interest income earned on the advance payments of grants in respect of the applicable programmes. The earmarked funds are expected to be used within 3 years or in case of interest from grants during the remaining project period of the grant. The restriction following the earmark can only be released by specific third party approval.

Financing contracts with government and other major donors Simavi signed financing contracts for carrying out specific projects. Simavi recognizes the incoming resources from these financing contracts and grant decisions at the time resources are actually expended. The difference between the income recognized and the actual amounts received in the form of contributions from donors is recorded in the balance sheet. This results in receivables if more resources have been expended than received or in deferred grants if incoming amounts are greater than those expended.

Pension scheme Simavi’s pension scheme is managed by life insurance company Delta Lloyd. The scheme is based on an average salary system.

For employees who joined before December 1, 2005 the scheme is based on a final salary system. All premiums pertaining to the reporting year are included under staff costs. Any premiums due at year end are included on the balance sheet under other liabilities, any premiums paid in advance or in access of the premiums due are included as prepaid expenses, in case these can be offset against future premiums due. There are no additional obligations arising from the management agreement with the pension insurer, the pension agreement with employees or other commitments to employees.

Project/programme commitments The grants unconditionally committed as of the balance sheet date, which have not been already paid, are divided into short-term liabilities and long-term liabilities. The amounts that are expected to be settled after more than one year after the balance sheet date, are accounted for as long-term liabilities. The expected duration of the projects/programmes is a maximum of five years.

Conversion of foreign currency Monetary assets and liabilities in foreign currency are converted into euros at the closing rate at year’s end. Exchange differences are accounted for in the statement of income and expenditure, where their method of presentation depends on the nature of the underlying asset or liability.

82

Annual accounts

Determination of results Income from private individuals, companies, lottery organisations and other non-profit organisations Income from private individuals, companies, lottery organisations and other non-profit organisations is recognised in the year to which it pertains, unless income is subject to conditions still to be met.

Legacies and bequests are valued and accounted for as income in the year in which their amount can be reliably determined.

Provisional payments are accounted for as income in the financial year in which they are received, in cases when a reliable estimate or valuation was not possible at an earlier time.

Income from government subsidies Income from government grants that have been allocated by the donor depending on actual project costs will be accounted for in the statement of income and expenditure in the year that the eligible expenditure is recognised, it is probable that the amounts will be received and Simavi complied with all attached conditions. In this context, the (eligible) expenditure in respect of alliance partners in alliances where Simavi is the lead agency is equal to the amounts paid to these partners.

Differences between the (final) settlement of the grants and accumulated income are accounted for in the statement of income and expenditure in the year in which these differences can be reliably estimated.

Expenditure Amounts spent on Simavi projects and programmes are accounted for as expenses in the financial year in which the contribution has been unconditionally committed. The expenses recognised in the statement of income and expenditure include the related direct and indirect organisational costs.

Fundraising, awareness raising and management & administration costs are charged to the statement of income and expenditure in the year to which they pertain and as soon as they become apparent.

Salaries, wages and social security contributions are recognised in the statement of income and expenditure based on the pay and benefits package to the extent that they are payable to employees.

Expenditure allocation Expenditure allocation is described in note 16 of the notes to the statement of income and expenditure.

Financial income Financial income is recognised in the statement of income and expenditure time proportionally.

Annual accounts

83

Notes to the balance sheet 1.

Fixed assets

Fixed assets are used for operations only. Intangible fixed assets consist of externally acquired software. Tangible fixed assets comprise office machines, equipment and computers. The movements during the year can be specified as follows: (x 1,000 Euro)

Intangible Fixed assets

Tangible Fixed assets

Total Fixed assets

Aquisition value

46

87

133

Cummulative depreciation

-6

-39

-45

Book value

40

48

88

Investments

10

83

93

Depreciation

-11

-33

-44

Divestments

-

-29

-29

Depreciation on divestments

-

29

29

-1

50

49

56

141

197

Cummulative depreciation

-17

-43

-60

Book value

39

98

137

20 - 33%

10 - 33%

Value as at January 1, 2016

Movements

Balance

Value as at December 31, 2016 Acquisition value

Depreciation percentages

The majority of the 2016 investments is related to the recent move to our new office location in Amsterdam.

2.

Receivables and accrued income

2.1 Bequests to be received From a legacy Simavi obtained 15 certificates of shares (16.9% of the total shares) in Marnel Zaandam Beheer B.V, registered in Amsterdam. These certificates do not bear any voting rights. Simavi received a dividend of €1K (2015: €6k) which was accounted for as income from Legacies and bequests. Considering the uncertainty of future income from these certificates, the valuation is set at nil (2015: nil). Any future income from these certificates will be accounted for as soon as this income can be reliably determined.

At year end Simavi had four legacies (five in 2015) encumbered with usufruct. One legacy with usufruct was settled in 2016.

Due to the uncertainty on the size and timing of future payments these legacies are valued conservatively at €29K (2015: €29K, amended).

84

Annual accounts

2.2 Other receivables and prepaid expenses (x 1,000 Euro)

31-12-2016

31-12-2015

Other receivables

896

147

Prepaid expenses

381

78

1,277

225

Total

All amounts are expected to be received or settled within one year after the balance sheet date.

The Other receivables include an amount of €764K of donations pledged but not yet received at year-end. An amount of €297K was paid in 2016 as a prepayment for the 2017 pension premiums.

3.

Cash and cash equivalents

The cash and cash equivalents are placed on interest-bearing current accounts or savings accounts. All amounts (total €8,945K) are placed at Dutch banking institutions and are available upon demand, except for €26K which is restricted as a collateral for a bank guarantee. There are no cash or cash equivalents placed on deposit for more than 1 month. The cash and cash equivalents are intended for objectives and operations only, so not for investment purposes.

The average yield on outstanding cash and cash equivalents was 0.3% in 2016 (0.7% in 2015).

4.

Reserves and funds

4.1 Continuity reserve (x 1,000 Euro)

Continuity reserve

31-12-2015

Withdrawal

Addition

31-12-2016

2,241

-

-

2,241

The continuity reserve is designed to create a sufficiently large buffer to enable Simavi to complete or terminate ongoing projects/programmes appropriately in case of a significant shortfall of key sources of funding. Furthermore, it includes funding necessary for actions to enable Simavi to rebuild such a shortfall or, in worst case, dissolve the organisation, while still meeting legal and moral obligations.

To do this we envisage to require an equivalent of six to nine months of total operational expenditure, thus ranging between €1.8 and 2.8 million. The continuity reserve, after appropriation of result, amounts to €2,241K at the end of 2016.This is just over seven months and falls well within the indicated range. As the risk perception is unchanged and the expected funding for the coming years seems stable, the continuity reserve is kept at the same level as last year.

The maximum size for the continuity reserve, according to the assets’ guidelines set by the association for fund-raising institutions (Goede Doelen Nederland), equals to one and a half times the annual operational costs of the organisation, based on the budget for the following year. This maximum amounts to €5.6 million as per 31 December 2016.

4.2 Reserve for financing assets (x 1,000 Euro)

Reserve for financing assets

31-12-2015

Withdrawal

Addition

31-12-2016

88

44

93

137

The reserve for financing assets matches the book value of the tangible fixed assets.

Annual accounts

85

4.3 Earmarked reserves The earmarked reserves held by Simavi, including the movements in these reserves during the year, are specified below: (x 1,000 Euro)

31-12-2015

Withdrawal

Addition

31-12-2016

Football for water

15

15

-

-

Capacity building

127

89

-

38

53

33

-

20

Projects (own financing)

451

39

439

851

Strategic development

96

30

-

66

Fundraising Legacies

120

24

-

96

Total earmarked reserves

862

230

439

1.071

Purpose

Projects (third party financing)

Football for Water In 2012, a fund was formed in the amount of €466K to cover expenditure for projects within the Football for Water programme in 2014 to 2016, for the part not financed by government grants. In 2016 the remaining, €15K (2015: €292K) of the reserve was used and withdrawn from the reserve through the appropriation of result.

Capacity Building This fund was created in 2013 with the main aim of broadening and deepening our partner portfolio, in order to facilitate anticipated growth and attract new donors.

Management believes that new donors can currently only be attracted when Simavi has more capacity to accommodate more funds. The reserve can be used to identify new partners through identification missions, to invest in capacity strengthening of existing partners and identify new partners, and to offer small ‘start-up capital’ for initiating small programmes with them. In 2016, €89K (2015: € 96K) was spent on the identification research and small programmes of partners.

Projects (third party financing) Amounts spent on Simavi projects are accounted for as expenses in the financial year in which the contribution is unconditionally committed. For projects that are still conditional upon realisation of future third party financing, Simavi formed a reserve that covers that part of total financing required out of Simavi’s own funds.

In 2016 €33K (2015: €181K) was used and withdrawn from the reserve through the appropriation of result. It is expected that the remainder (€20K) of the reserve will be utilised in 2017.

Projects (own financing) In 2016 we decided to set aside €350K for the so called Nepal Impact programme. This programme is a combined WASH and SRHR programme and will be running in the period 2017-2019. An amount of €439K from the 2016 result was added to this reserve. This reserve will be used in the coming years to match funds of institutional foundations to realise projects and to finance projects out of own funds for which no funding is jet available from other sources.

Strategic Development In 2014, a reserve was formed for Strategic Development to further develop Simavi into a strategic partner NGO for both national and international partners. The reserve will be spent on impact evaluation, our involvement in international platforms and establishing field offices to further promote our decentralization strategy. In 2016 an amount of €30K was spent on impact evaluation.

Legacies Fundraising campaign In order to ensure a continuous flow of legacies, a multi-year plan has been developed to actively acquire future legacies from existing and new donors and to obtain insight in the size of currently existing (but latent) legacies. The communication and acquisition plan is executed during 2016 up to 2020. The total cost is estimated at €120K. The first €24K was spent in 86

Annual accounts

2016. In 2017 this project will be continued as originally planned. During the project term the results will be monitored and if necessary the plan will be adapted.

4.4 Earmarked funds (x 1,000 Euro)

31-12-2015

Withdrawal

Addition

31-12-2016

2

-

-

2

60

35

-

25

146

51

-

95

- WASH

152

152

-

-

- SRHR

85

85

-

-

- ASK

35

35

-

-

- MKAJI

15

-

2

17

-

-

2

2

Total earmarked funds

495

358

4

141

- of which interest to be spent on objectives

287

272

4

19

Purpose Children eye care Nepal Children eye care Irian Jaya Children eye care Africa Interest to be spent on objective:

- Other subsidies

The assigned interest income on advance grant funding received, in the amount of €272K, has been withdrawn from the designated fund and was used in finalizing the WASH, SRHR and ASK programmes, that ran from 2011 to 2015. For the children eye care funds in Africa and Irian Jaya projects have been identified and approved. These projects were started in 2016, so far a total of €86K of these earmarked funds were spent, the remainder is expected to be spent in 2017.

5.

Project/programme commitments

Project and programme commitments consist of unconditional commitments with partner organisations in Africa and Asia.

The total amount of these commitments is €96K (2015: €354K). All commitments are payable within one year.

6.

Other liabilities and accruals

(x 1,000 Euro)

31-12-2016

31-12-2015

533

549

Current account Stichting NFICH and Stichting ZIEN

82

82

Accrued vacation hours

45

34

101

100

74

91

835

856

Accounts payable

Accrued holiday allowance Accrued audit fees Total

Annual accounts

87

7.

Deferred income

(x 1,000 Euro)

31-12-2016

31-12-2015

5.287

1,691

Making Periods Normal programme

258

370

Other projects

564

194

6,109

2,255

Government grants

Total

Due to the start-up of the new programmes the deferred income from government grants increased significantly to €5,287K (2015: €1,691K). Further information on deferred income from government grants is provided in note 11. The information on the deferred income from the Dutch Postcode Lottery (Making Periods Normal programme) is provided in note 10.

8.

Off balance sheet rights and obligations

Off-balance sheet rights Simavi has received multiyear grants for programmes to be executed in the coming years. The grants are subject to restrictions, so these may be withdrawn. As far as these grants are not yet unconditionally committed, they have not been included in the balance sheet and are considered as off balance rights.

The table below provides an overview of these rights of grants in excess of €1 million as at December 31, 2016. The grant for the MKAJI programme, received from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is denominated in USD. SUBSIDY (x 1,000 Euro)

WAI 1

Going for Gold 2

GUSO 3

MTB4

Watershed5

Ritu

SEHATI

MKAJI (x 1,000 USD)

Grant received from:

MoFA

MoFA

MoFA

MoFA

MoFA

EKN BD

EKN ID

SDC

Programme period

1-1-2016 till 30-3-2017

1-1-2016 till 31-12-2020

1-1-2016 till 31-12-2020

1-1-2016 till 31-12-2020

1-1-2016 till 31-12-2020

1-11-2015 till 30-4-2019

1-2-2016 till 31-8-2019

1-4-2015 till 30-3-2019

Lead of the alliance

Simavi

Simavi

Rutgers

Save the Children

IRC

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

Total grant amount for the alliance

6,000

7,996

34,590

29,275

16,352

-

-

-

Grant amount for Simavi

2,979

3,399

p.m.

6,550

4,268

3,454

3,000

$ 8,397

-

-

-

-

-

377

-

$ 2,500

Received in 2016

5,700

3,037

1,468

979

854

685

1,210

$ 2,100

Total amount received upto 2016

5,700

3,037

1,468

979

854

1,062

1,210

$ 4,600

Total amount still to be received

300

4,959

p.m.

5,571

3,414

2,392

1,790

$ 3,797

Total be received after determination of total grant amount

300

400

p.m.

328

213

173

150

$ 397

Total amount received upto 2015

88

Annual accounts

Five of these programmes are executed in an alliance setting: 1. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded a grant to WASH Alliance International in which Simavi acts as lead agency in the cooperation with Amref, RAIN, Waste and AKVO. 2. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded a grant to Going for Gold programme in which Simavi acts as lead agency in the cooperation with Solidaridad and Healthy Entrepreneurs.

3. Rutgers is the lead agent in consortium of Rutgers, IPPF, Dance4Life, Stop Aids Now, Choice and Simavi for the Get Up Speak Out for your rights programme. Simavi receives a total amount of €2,252K for running the programme in 2016 and 2017, the amount after 2017 is to be decided in 2017 within the alliance.

4. Save the Children is the lead agent in More than Brides consortium of Save the Children, Oxfam Novib, Population Council and Simavi. Within the programme of this consortium Marriage no child’s game the total amount of Simavi is €6,550K. 5. IRC is the lead agent in consortium of IRC, Wetlands, AKVO and Simavi. In the Watershed programme of this consortium, a total amount of €4,268K is allocate to Simavi.

The grants of Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs are conditional upon sufficient funds being made available in the budget by the government and parliament.

Off-balance sheet obligations Under the framework of the MTB (€812K), GUSO (€675K), Ritu (€561K), and Sehati (€1,480K) programmes, Simavi and its Southern partners entered into contractual (multi-year) project commitments to carry out projects in areas where Simavi operates. Where these contracts depend on conditions that are yet to be met, such as grant allocation by Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs or other parties they have not be accounted for in the balance of 31 December 2016. These obligations amounted to €3,692K at the end of 2016 (2015: €297K).The significant increase compared to 2015 can be explained by the fact that in 2015 a lot of programs ended, whereas several new programmes were started and were contracted for in 2016.

Additionally, for other programme contracts, where contracts depend on conditions yet to be met, off balance sheet commitments exist in the amount of €1,498K (2015: €332K). These include the newly started programmes WASH & Learn (€942K off balance obligations) and Trachoma (€216K), both (to be) financed out of own fundraising.

Simavi is in the process of settling a dispute on a disablement insurance. The aim is to settle this dispute by mediation. At this time the obligation, that may arise from the settlement, cannot be reliably estimated and has therefore not been included on the balance sheet.

Simavi is located at rented premises. The rent amounts to €74K per year. A bank guarantee for this lease has been issued in the amount of €26K. The contract runs for five years, until December 31, 2021, with a one year notice period. The total obligation amounts to €370K, of which €296K is due after one year. The amount payable after five years is nil.

Notes to the cash flow statement The cash flow statement is prepared using the indirect method. To determine the change in cash and cash equivalents during the reporting period, the result for that year is adjusted for items in the statement of income and expenditure and for balance sheet movements that did not result in actual cash flows.

The cash flow statement makes a distinction between cash flow from operational, investment and financing activities. In this context, changes in long-term debts from project/programme commitments and interest income are presented as cash flow from operational activities.

The cash position of Simavi has increased by an amount of €3,241K in 2016. This increase is mainly resulting from a positive cash flow from operational activities of €3,334K (2015: €3,820K negative). In 2016 the expenditure on projects was lower than in 2015 due to the start-up phase of the programmes. For these new programmes the first instalments were received in 2016, as a result the deferred income increased to €6,109K in 2016 (2015: €2,255). The amount of grants to be received decreased from €1,147K in 2015 to €295K this year.

Annual accounts

89

Notes on the statement of income and expenditure

9.

Income from private individuals

This income comprises donations and gifts as well as legacies and bequests. The donations and gifts from private individuals amounted to €1,024K which is higher than in 2015 (€954K), but slightly below budget. The income from legacies and bequests amounted to €491K (2015: €749K, amended). Income from legacies and bequests is not budgeted given the uncertainty of this type of income.

10.

Income from lottery organisations

(x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

The Dutch Postcode Lottery

900

900

900

Making Periods Normal project

112

40

695

1,012

940

1,595

Total

In 2016, Simavi received €900K as a contribution from the Dutch Postcode Lottery. In 2014 they awarded an additional project Making Periods Normal for a total amount of €2,064K. In 2016, an amount of €112K was committed or paid for this project; the remaining amount (€258K) is accounted for in the balance sheet as an advance contribution received from the Dutch Postcode Lottery as deferred income (see note 7).

11.

Government grants

The tables on the next page give an overview the grants received and income accounted for from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

A positive balance between the grants received and the actual expenditure eligible for grant funding is presented in the balance sheet as advance government grants under Deferred income (see note 7). In the event of a negative balance, these assets are presented in the balance sheet as Grants to be received. The Grants still to be received as at 31-12-2015 (€394K) do not add up to the balance sheet figure (€1,147K), as programmes finalised and closed within 2016 are not shown in this table.

Note that the accounted income and expenditure can differ from what was reported to the related donor, as a consequence of their specific reporting or accounting requirements.

In 2016 the programs UFBR, ASK and DWA were financially closed off and the final reports were sent to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The final reports on UFBR and DWA programmes have been approved by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The total income from government subsidies (excluding the advances received for alliance partners) in 2016 amounted to €8,719K (2015: €10,278K) which is €1,753K lower than budgeted. Several programmes (GUSO, MTB, Going for Gold, Watershed, WAI and Sehati) started in 2016. After the inception phase, the implementation of these programmes started from only the second half year of 2016, due to this timing the expenditure in 2016 was lower than anticipated in the budget.

90

Annual accounts

UFBR

ASK

HBHL

Ritu

GUSO

MTB

Going for Gold

Other

Total SRHR

Grants received for Simavi

-

-

113

685

1,468

979

1,662

-

4,907

Grants received for alliance partners

-

-

-

-

-

-

1,376

34

1,410

Total grants received

-

-

113

685

1,468

979

3,038

34

6,317

12

-

-

377

-

-

-

-

389

-

68

72

-

-

-

-

7

147

18

54

58

684

1,168

1,017

376

65

3,439

Minus: Advance paid to alliance partners

-

-

-

-

-

-

1,376

34

1,410

Advance grants received as at 31-12-2016

-

-

-

378

300

-

1,286

-

1,964

Grants still to be received as at 31-12-2016

6

122

17

-

-

38

-

71

254

F4W MKAJI Watershed

WAI

Sehati

Total WASH

Total SRHR

Total

SRHR programmes (x 1,000 Euro)

Add: 'Advance grants received as at 31-12-2015 Minus: ‘Grants still to be received as at 31-12-2015 Minus: 'Grant income accounted for in 2016 based on expenditures

WASH programmes (x 1,000 Euro)

Grants received for Simavi

DWA

-

232

1,920

854

2,841

1,210

7,057

4,907

11,964

396

-

-

-

2,859

-

3,255

1,410

4,665

-

-

54

-

-

-

54

-

54

Total grants received

396

232

1,974

854

5,700

1,210

10,366

6,317

16,683

Add: 'Advance grants received as at 31-12-2015

491

-

811

-

-

-

1,302

389

1,691

-

247

-

-

-

-

247

147

394

432

26

1,020

395

2,284

1,123

5,280

3,439

8,719

-

-

-

-

2,859

-

2,859

1,410

4,269

455

-

1,765

459

557

87

3,323

1,964

5,287

-

41

-

-

-

-

41

254

295

Grants received for alliance partners Exchange rate correction MKAJI (USD/ EURO)

Minus 'Grants still to be received as at 31-12-2015 Minus: 'Grant income accounted for in 2016 based on expenditures Minus: Advance paid to alliance partners Advance grants received as at 31-12-2016 Grants still to be received as at 31-12-2016

As the MKAJI programme liability at year end is denominated in US dollars, a correction for exchange rate differences (€54K) has been made to compensate for the appreciation of the US dollar against the Euro. This exchange rate difference was partly offset by the exchange gain on US dollar liquidities. The balance is reported under expenditure on Simavi project activities.

Interest allocated on advance grant funding received from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), in the amount of €4K (2015: €29K), has been added to the earmarked funds (see note 4.4) and will be spent according to the underlying objectives.

Annual accounts

91

12.

Income from other non-profit organisations

This income mainly relates to the donations received from foundations. Also the income from schools, relating to the Walking for Water campaign and the Koningsspelen (Kings games) is reported under this heading. The income is specified as follows. (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

Income from Foundations

619

900

432

Income from schools (Walking for Water, Koningsspelen)

247

550

360

Income of other fundraising organisations

264

280

118

1,130

1,730

910

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

957

905

1,254

10,019

12,321

11,602

4,269

3,353

5,681

171

184

347

15,416

16,763

18,884

Total

13.

Spent on objectives

(x 1,000 Euro)

Objective: Awareness raising Objective: Project activities Objective: Project activities through alliance partners Objective: Advocacy Total spent on objectives

The actual expenditure on objectives is â‚Ź1,347K lower than budgeted. The difference between budget and amounts actually spent is mainly caused by less expenditure on project activities than planned, this stems from the later than planned start-up of new multi-year programmes.

Spending percentage The ratio of the total expenditure on objectives as a percentage of the total income is presented in the following table. (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

Total spent on objectives

15,416

16,763

18,884

Total income

16,884

18,194

20,402

Spending percentage

91.3%

92.1%

92.6%

The percentage expenditure on objectives of total income in 2016 is 91.3%, as compared to 92.6% in 2015 and 92.1% as budgeted. The slightly lower percentage in 2016 is mainly due to timing differences between recognising the income of own fundraising and the actual expenditure thereof, as accounted for through the use of earmarked reserves.

Corrected for the effect of payments to the alliance partners, the percentage is 88.4% in 2016 (89.5% in 2015).

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14.

Costs of generating funds

The cost of generating funds relate to the various funding activities. The most important are the cost for fundraising of grants and the costs relating to the direct fundraising (CBF norm). The total income and the total cost of generating funds can be specified as follows: (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

2,581

2,854

2,675

Income from subsidies and other fundraising

14,303

15,340

17,727

Total Income raised

16,884

18,194

20,402

Costs of direct fundraising

468

592

497

Costs of subsidy acquisition and other fundraising

365

434

304

Total cost of generating funds

833

1,026

801

18.1%

20.7%

18.6%

4.9%

5.6%

3.9%

Income from direct fundraising

Direct fundraising cost percentage (CBF norm) Total fundraising cost percentage

The definition of the direct fundraising is based on the CBF standard, accordingly the fundraising cost percentage is calculated. The cost percentage of fundraising is 18.1% in 2016 (18.6% in 2015) and is well below the 2016 budget as a result of the lower cost of direct fundraising. The actual direct fundraising cost percentage is significantly lower than the maximum standard of 25% set by the CBF. The expenditure on direct fundraising is lower than budgeted and also slightly lower than the actual expenditure in 2015. Apart from the cost of our own organisation the direct fundraising costs mainly relate to cost of our newsletter and mailings, these are important for maintaining and expanding our donor base.

Overall the fundraising cost percentage increased to 4.9% (2015: 3.9%). The increase is due to the lower levels of income and expenditure compared to 2015 as explained above. The 2016 percentage is below the budgeted figure.

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15.

Management & administration costs

(x 1,000 Euro)

Management & administration costs Total expenditure Percentage management & administration costs

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

751

735

793

17,000

18,524

20,478

4.4%

4.0%

3.9%

The management & administration costs are some 5% lower than in 2015, but slightly over budget. The latter is caused by the costs related to the move of Simavi to the new office in Amsterdam. This move was not yet included in the 2016 budget.

As a percentage of the total expenditure the costs increased to 4.4%. Next to the above mentioned, this percentage increased by the decrease in income. The latter is a result of timing differences in multi-year programmes.

Independent auditors costs The 2016 accounts were audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V., which were newly appointed this year. The following fees have been charged: (x 1,000 Euro)

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

Audit of the Financial Statements

53

51

84

Audit contracts institutional donors

54

36

49

The amounts for the audit contracts institutional donors are allocated to the projects were applicable. In these cost an amount of â‚Ź12K is included for additional on-site audit verification of the MKAJI project over 2015, which was not foreseen in the budget.

Eight contracts of institutional donors required audited reports in 2016, three more than in 2015.

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16.

Total Expenditure allocation

Use

Objective

Cost of Fundraising

Management & Administration

Total 2016

Budget 2016

Total 2015

Awareness raising

Programmes

Advocacy

-

12,317

-

-

-

12,317

13,868

15,587

Publicity and communication and outsourced work

509

280

28

377

-

1,194

1,358

1,568

Staff costs

392

1,481

125

400

564

2,962

2,799

2,854

Accommodation costs

23

85

7

23

32

170

171

147

Office and general expenses

27

103

9

27

147

313

298

301

6

22

2

6

8

44

30

21

957

14,288

171

833

751

17,000

18,524

20,478

EXPENDITURE (x 1,000 Euro) Grants and contributions

Depreciation Total

All direct and indirect costs are allocated to 1) the three objectives of Simavi, which are Awareness raising, Programmes and Advocacy; 2) to the costs of fundraising; and 3) to management & administration costs.

Apart from direct costs spent on Simavi projects/programmes, all other out of pocket costs that can be directly allocated to the objectives and fund generation are specified under Publicity and communication and outsourced work.

All indirect costs, such as staff, accommodation, office and general expenses and depreciation are allocated based on the number of hours employees spent on the aforementioned components. A calculation of the hours spent is made for every employee. This calculation is based on the employee’s job description, is reviewed by Simavi’s management team and is approved by the Managing Director.

Management & Administration costs include all administrative and secretarial hours, as well as all hours classified by the organisation as overhead, such as meetings with the Supervisory Board and other meetings intended to provide guidance and direction to the organisation.

The costs for the annual report (€10K) are included under Management & administration (Office and general expenses).

The costs for the website (€17K) are shown on the line Publicity and communication and outsourced work, under the objective Awareness raising.

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17.

Staff costs Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

2,124

2,126

2,175

Social insurance premiums, insurances

435

386

403

Costs of pension facilities

165

133

98

Other staff costs

238

154

178

2,962

2,799

2,854

(x 1,000 Euro)

Salaries in the Netherlands

Total

For information about the allocation of staff costs to the different categories of expenditure presented in the statement of income and expenditure please refer to note 16.

The staff costs are higher compared to 2015. This arises from higher social insurance and pension premiums and the costs related to temporary staff. Part of the important difference of the pension premiums compared to 2015 is caused by a correction of the latter due to an incorrectly high estimate in 2014.

The development of the number of staffing is as follows:

AVERAGE NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

52.9

49.9

53.3

In Indonesia through partner organisations

0.0

0.0

2.3

In Tanzania local office

5.5

6.0

3.4

Actual 2016

Budget 2016

Actual 2015

47.6

46.8

48.4

In Indonesia through partner organisations

0.0

0.0

2.3

In Tanzania local office

5.5

6.0

3.1

In Dutch office

IN AVERAGE NUMBER OF FTE'S: In Dutch office

The average number of employees in FTE is higher than budget. This is due to a number of additional temporary contracts for the replacement during illness and pregnancy leave.

Management model and remuneration Simavi has a Supervisory Board for monitoring, supervising and giving advice, and a one person Executive Board (the Managing Director) for the implementation of Simavi’s Strategy and its day-to-day management. Notes can be found in Chapter 5.3 of the annual report.

The salaries of the staff are based on a formalised salary structure. The functions are grouped into categories based on the job characteristics. The categories are linked to a salary grid. The categorisation and salary grid are based on a standardised calculation method performed by an independent agency (Human Capital Group). In 2016 we participated in a general survey on salary levels, commissioned by Goede Doelen Nederland. The results of this survey indicate that our salary levels correspond to the average levels in the sector and are in conformity with the market.

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Remuneration of the Supervisory Board The members of the Supervisory Board receive no remuneration for their activities. The members of the Supervisory board have also not received any loans, advance payments or guarantees.

Remuneration of the Managing Director The Supervisory Board determines the remuneration policy, the level of executive remuneration and other fixed remuneration components. The policy is reviewed periodically. Simavi follows the guidelines of Goede Doelen Nederland, laid down in the Advisory Guidelines for the Remuneration of Executives of Charities and the Wijffels Code (see www.goededoelennederland. nl) in determining the remuneration policy and setting remuneration levels.

The maximum individual executive remuneration according to the WNT for development cooperation organisations is €168,000 for 2016. The Managing Director, Ms Ariette Brouwer, received a gross salary, including holyday allowance, of €99,910 in 2016 (2015: €97,951). This is well within the remuneration guidelines of Goede Doelen Nederland, indicating a maximum gross salary of €114,247 (BSD-score: 415-440). The Managing Director did not receive any bonuses, loans, advance payments or guarantees. The 2016 employer’s contribution to the pension scheme of the Managing Director amounted to €10,428 (2015 €9,657). Allowances for expenses are only granted based on actual costs incurred, and contain no remuneration elements. Simavi does not provide lease cars. The Managing Director received an untaxable commuting allowance of €2,766 in 2016.

REMUNERATION EXECUTIVES (WNT) (x 1 Euro)

2016

2015

1/1 - 31/12

1/1 - 31/12

Employment in FTE

1.0

1.0

Former executive

no

no

Formal employment

yes

yes

168,000

163,000

99,910

97,951

-

-

10,428

9,657

110,338

107,608

Name: A.D. Brouwer, Managing Director

Term of employment

Individual WNT maximum

Total remuneration Remuneration Taxable expense reimbursements Remunerations payable in future Total remuneration

Also no other staff member received a remuneration exceeding the individual WNT maximum. No severance payments were made to employees that must be (or should have been) reported based on the WNT in 2016 and previous years.

Remuneration of Simavi’s Goodwill Ambassador Ms Dieuwertje Blok, Simavi’s Goodwill Ambassador, carried out her activities without receiving remuneration.

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18.

Multi-year income analysis

Below is an overview of the development of Simavi’s income over the past six years. (x 1,000 Euro)

Collections Individual Legacies and giving bequests

Corporate

Lottery Government organisations grants

Other non-profit organisations

Other

Total income

2011

632

535

470

141

2,085

10,969

715

53

15,600

2012

578

701

-303

304

1,261

12,531

785

-

15,857

2013

608

712

548

336

926

13,933

1,004

-

18,099

2014

442

792

104

218

1,943

15,999

1,373

60

20,931

2015

37

954

749

235

1,595

15,959

853

20

20,402

2016

-

1.024

491

239

1,012

12,988

1,130

-

16,884

The figures of previous years have been restated based on the amended RJ650 and are exclusive financial income.

In 2013, Simavi decided that 2014 would be the last year of the nationwide door-to-door collection, since the high costs of the collection did no longer weigh up to the benefits.

The fall in income from the collection was partly compensated by the increase in individual giving in 2015 and 2016. The individual giving shows a steady growth in the recent years. We aim to maintain this trend by further investments in active private fundraising activities.

The amount received from legacies and bequests is volatile and unpredictable. The negative number in the table for the year 2012 relates to an impairment of a receivable from bequests recognised in earlier years.

Third-party campaigns include the contributions of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, Aqua for All and other third parties. The regular contribution of the Dutch Postcode Lottery was €900K. In 2014 Simavi received a contribution for the Programme “Making Periods Normal” amounting to a total of €2,064K, €112K of which was recognized as income in 2016 (2015: €695K; 2014: €998K).

The amount of government grants has grown substantially in the past few years. The finalisation of the old and the start-up of the new programmes caused a dip in the 2016 income from grants. We expect that this income will return to the previous levels from 2017 onwards. The government grants are inclusive the amounts received for alliance partners.

The increase of income from other non-profit organisations as from 2013/2014 is related to the Walking for Water campaign and the increase of donations from foundations. In 2015 the income from foundations was importantly lower. This was mainly due to the effect of the timing of income recognition. Generation of income from foundations and the private sector remains an important focal point of our fundraising efforts.

Amsterdam, April 21, 2017

Executive board

Supervisory board

Ariette Brouwer

Maria Martens (Chairman) Esther Scheers (Vice-Chairman) Mirjam Bakker Laura de Graaf Jeroen Wels Michiel de Wilde

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Other information Appropriation of result According to article 16.5 of the articles of association of Simavi, the Supervisory Board approves the annual accounts drawn up by the Executive Board. The annual accounts include a proposal for the appropriation of the result for the year 2016. The appropriation of result takes the imposed restrictions on spending by third parties into account.

The result of the financial year 2016, is â‚Ź96K negative. The Executive Board proposes, with approval of the Supervisory Board, to appropriate the result for the year, in accordance with the overview provided in the Statement of Income and expenditure on page 78-79 and the explanation in note 4.

After balance sheet date information There have been no material post balance sheet events which would require adjustment to the financial statements of Simavi for the year 2016.

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99

Independent auditor’s report To: the managing director and supervisory board of Stichting Simavi

Report on the financial statements 2016 Our opinion In our opinion the accompanying financial statements give a true and fair view of the financial position of Stichting Simavi as at 31 December 2016, and of its result for the year then ended in accordance with the Guideline for annual reporting 650 ‘Charity organisations’ of the Dutch Accounting Standards Board (RJ-publication 2016-13) and the rules of and following the ‘Wet Normering Topinkomens’ (WNT).

What we have audited We have audited the accompanying financial statements 2016 of Stichting Simavi, Haarlem (‘the foundation’).

The financial statements comprise: • the balance sheet as at 31 December 2016; • the statement of income and expenditure for the year then ended; • the notes, comprising a summary of the accounting policies and other explanatory information.

The financial reporting framework that has been applied in the preparation of the financial statements is the Guideline for annual reporting 650 ‘Charity organisations’ of the Dutch Accounting Standards Board (RJ-publication 2016-13) and the rules of and following the WNT. The basis for our opinion We conducted our audit in accordance with Dutch law, including the Dutch Standards on Auditing and the Audit protocol WNT 2016. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the section ‘Our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements’ of our report.

Independence We are independent of Stichting Simavi in accordance with the ‘Verordening inzake de onafhankelijkheid van accountants bij assuranceopdrachten’ (ViO) and other relevant independence requirements in the Netherlands. Furthermore, we have complied with the ‘Verordening gedrags- en beroepsregels accountants’ (VGBA).

We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Report on the other information included in the annual report In addition to the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon, the annual report contains other information that consists of: • Simavi annual report 2016 (the directors’ report); Based on the procedures performed as set out below, we conclude that the other information: • is consistent with the financial statements and does not contain material misstatements; • contains all information that is required by the Guideline for annual reporting 650 ‘Charity organisations’ of the Dutch Accounting Standards Board.

We have read the other information. Based on our knowledge and understanding obtained in our audit of the financial statements or otherwise, we have considered whether the other

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information contains material misstatements.

By performing our procedures, we comply with the requirements of the Dutch Standard 720.

The scope of such procedures was substantially less than the scope of those performed in our audit of the financial statements.

The director is responsible for the preparation of the other information, including the directors’ report pursuant to the Guideline for annual reporting 650 ‘Charity organisations’ of the Dutch Accounting Standards Board (RJ-publication 2016-13).

Responsibilities for the financial statements and the audit Responsibilities of the director and the supervisory board for the financial statements The managing director is responsible for: • the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements in accordance with the Guideline for annual reporting 650 ‘Charity organisations’ of the Dutch Accounting Standards Board (RJ-publication 2016-13); and for • such internal control as the director determines is necessary to enable the preparation of the financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

As part of the preparation of the financial statements, the director is responsible for assessing the foundation’s ability to continue as a going concern. Based on the financial reporting framework mentioned, the director should prepare the financial statements using the goingconcern basis of accounting unless the director either intends to liquidate the foundation or to cease operations, or has no realistic alternative but to do so. The director should disclose events and circumstances that may cast significant doubt on the foundation’s ability to continue as a going concern in the financial statements.

The supervisory board is responsible for overseeing the foundation’s financial reporting process.

Our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements Our responsibility is to plan and perform an audit engagement in a manner that allows us to obtain sufficient and appropriate audit evidence to provide a basis for our opinion. Our audit opinion aims to provide reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free from material misstatement. Reasonable assurance is a high but not absolute level of assurance which makes it possible that we may not detect all misstatements. Misstatements may arise due to fraud or error. They are considered to be material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of the financial statements.

Materiality affects the nature, timing and extent of our audit procedures and the evaluation of the effect of identified misstatements on our opinion.

A more detailed description of our responsibilities is set out in the appendix to our report.

Utrecht, 30 May 2017 PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V. Original has been signed by drs.W.A. van Ginkel RA

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101

Appendix to our auditor’s report on the financial statements 2016 of Stichting Simavi In addition to what is included in our auditor’s report we have further set out in this appendix our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements and explained what an audit involves.

The auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements We have exercised professional judgement and have maintained professional scepticism throughout the audit in accordance with Dutch Standards on Auditing, the Regeling Controleprotocol WNT 2016, ethical requirements and independence requirements. Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error. Our audit consisted, among other things of the following: • Identifying and assessing the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to fraud or error, designing and performing audit procedures responsive to those risks, and obtaining audit evidence that is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion. The risk of not detecting a material misstatement resulting from fraud is higher than for one resulting from error, as fraud may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the intentional override of internal control.

• Obtaining an understanding of internal control relevant to the audit in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the foundation’s internal control.

• Evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates and related disclosures made by the director.

• Concluding on the appropriateness of the director’s use of the going concern basis of accounting, and based on the audit evidence obtained, concluding whether a material uncertainty exists related to events and/or conditions that may cast significant doubt on the foundation’s ability to continue as a going concern. If we conclude that a material uncertainty exists, we are required to draw attention in our auditor’s report to the related disclosures in the financial statements or, if such disclosures are inadequate, to modify our opinion. Our conclusions are based on the audit evidence obtained up to the date of our auditor’s report and are made in the context of our opinion on the financial statements as a whole. However, future events or conditions may cause the foundation to cease to continue as a going concern.

• Evaluating the overall presentation, structure and content of the financial statements, including the disclosures, and evaluating whether the financial statements represent the underlying transactions and events in a manner that achieves fair presentation.

We communicate with the supervisory board regarding, among other matters, the planned scope and timing of the audit and significant audit findings, including any significant deficiencies in internal control that we identify during our audit.

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Colophon

Edit and English revision: Derek Middleton Final edit: Merlijn de Klaver, Simavi Design: Rixt Reitsma, Rainbow Collection Illustrations: Rixt Reitsma, Rainbow Collection & Willem van de Ven, Studio WVDV Cover: Raymond Rutting Photography: Raymond Rutting, Jerry de Mars, Geert Snoeijder, Peter Smith, Huib van Wersch

T. +31 (0)88 313 1500 E. info@simavi.nl www.simavi.org