Organizational performance review of FORUT campaign for development and solidarity

Executive summary

This report presents the finding of the organizational performance review of FORUT, a Norwegian NGO. The review was commissioned by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).
FORUT, Campaign for Development and Solidarity, is a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) founded by the Norwegian peace and temperance organizations International Organization of Good Templars (IOGT), Juvente and IOGT-Junior. FORUT supports relief and development activities in Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, India, Nepal and Malawi (only ADD). The organization's alcohol, drug and development program is a cross-cutting theme in FORUT's work. FORUT works through local civil society partners and is also a self implementing agency.

The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) is FORUT's most important financial contributor. FORUT has a five-year framework agreement with Norad. The current agreement period end is from 2004 to end 2008. In 2007, Norad's total support to FORUT was NOK 26 million. The organizational performance reviews focus on the organizations' partner approach and -work, in particular how the organization builds its partners' capacities and the results of these efforts. The review was carried out from March 1 to July 1, 2008 and included a country visit to FORUT's office and community rehabilitation program in Sierra Leone.

Main findings and recommendations

The findings of this review demonstrate that FORUT is an organization that provides effective aid, including that:

• FORUT uses its funds from Norad and other sources cost-effectively, as discussed in chapter 4.6.
• FORUT's thematic areas (health, education, ADD, skills development, micro-finance, skills training etc.), are relevant for the end users that are often poor and vulnerable children, youth and women.
• FORUT's priority support areas are also in accordance with the respective countries' development priorities and PRSPs as well as Norwegian development priorities, as found in chapter 4.5.
• FORUT is a small development organization. However, its partner strategy of supporting and working through strong professional local partners is an effective tool for having a greater development impact than being a self-implementing agency. The partners' substantial achievements (as discussed in chapter 5), including that of the ADD program demonstrate
  FORUT's ability to achieve its development goals.

In Norway, FORUT has a very small, but stable, flexible and effective organization. FORUT's very few project staff are professional, dedicated and hard working. However, their capacities are currently stretched to the limit. FORUT Norway's very limited number of project staff makes the organization vulnerable to future changes, such as changes in program support and staff. Moreover, the findings from the country visit to Sierra Leone demonstrate that FORUT Norway needs to provide more quality assurance and technical backstopping to some of its projects. FORUT's workload will also increase when it plans to have an increased child rights and partner focus in the future. Currently, FORUT Norway's organizational capacities seem inadequate to meet these challenges. To date, FORUT has been very modest in requesting funds for its project administration in Norway, including funds for quality assurance and technical backstopping.

1. With the aim of making FORUT's good work even better, FORUT should look for possibilities to increase the number of staff to an acceptable level, in particular that of its project department, including the ADD program. This would allow FORUT Norway to follow-up its program more closely and to provide quality assurance and technical and administrative backstopping when necessary to projects and partners abroad. It is believed that so far, FORUT has not taken advantage of the (unintended) flexibility in Norad's classifications of administration, project follow-up (technical backstopping) and direct project costs.

Other findings and recommendations

FORUT is a learning organization
As discussed in chapters 4 and 5, FORUT is a learning organization. The organization provides important support to build its own staff's and partners' capacities, through individual training activities, FORUT's annual partner meetings and ADD conferences, learning exchange between partners and FORUT, and the recent partner self-assessments of training needs. Moreover, FORUT often uses evaluations and reviews actively and as learning tools for itself and its partners. Learning is at the heart of FORUT's ADD program which focus is to strengthen partners' ADD knowledge and
to build partners' capacities in alcohol and drug prevention activities at local, national levels and international levels. FORUT and its ADD partners use applied research extensively to obtain base line data and to have surveys of drug and alcohol use in partner countries and among target groups.

Imbalance between FORUT's organizational capacities and the number of thematic areas
As discussed in chapter 4.5, there is an imbalance between FORUT's organizational capacities and its workload. Currently FORUT supports many thematic areas; some of them are labor intensive with often multi-sector and multi-level approaches. FORUT's support to such themes requires that the
implementing partners or the implementing FORUT offices have the required technical expertise. The country visit to FORUT Sierra Leone illustrates FORUT Norway's need to provide more quality assurance and technical backstopping, including administrative aspects, and that currently FORUT
does not have enough staff to provide this in an adequate manner.

2. FORUT should try to strike a better balance between its involvement in thematic areas and its organizational capacities. This could be done by:

• a) reducing its number of thematic areas, and/or
• b) increasing its work through strong and professional partners in all countries.
• c) increasing the number of project staff at FORUT Norway's office.
• d) investigating funding possibilities to intensify professional learning experiences between FORUT partners and projects. This should include partner exchange visits and partner visits to e.g. Sierra Leone, where FORUT does not have a partners and where FORUT Sierra Leone has limited experiences in rights based approaches and advocacy work.

FORUT's partner strategy is not adopted in all partner countries
Chapters 4.2 and 4.5 found that FORUT's partner strategy is effective but not adopted in all its partner countries: In India and Nepal, FORUT only works through its strong professional partners. FORUT Sri Lanka has adopted different approaches. They comprise self implementation, project execution through development NGOs, and long term support to its ADD partner ADIC and to semiprofessional organizations - which have yet to become FORUT partners - and support to specialized institutions and voluntary rights based associations that are often semi-professional organizations. In West Africa, FORUT recently phased out its support to its old IOGT partners. FORUT Sierra Leone implements its community rehabilitation program directly. In FORUT's new ADD country Malawi, FORUT works in collaboration with Norwegian Church Aid and some of its partners. FORUT's ADD program has also built up and supports various international partners, including networks of NGOs and people working in e.g. public health agencies that share information on alcohol issues and advocate evidence-based alcohol policies.

3. In the future, FORUT should try to have even more partner focus and work more through local partners in all countries, including Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone, FORUT should start identifying potential local partners and see how they can be strengthened and involved in FORUT's work.

The future scope and geographical focus of FORUT's ADD work
FORUT with its ADD program is perceived as being one of the leading professional anti-alcohol and anti-drug NGOs worldwide. Besides FORUT's important ADD-related work at the international level, FORUT's ADD program is also carrying out important work at national and local levels through FORUT partners in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Malawi. The ADD work in Sierra Leone is minimal and limited to some ADD awareness activities in the communities where FORUT Sierra Leone operates. FORUT's recent work in Malawi in strengthening relevant local NGOs and integrating ADD into their work appears to have been successful. The success was partly due to FORUT's focus on establishing contacts and links with other organizations and existing structures. In Malawi, FORUT has a Norwegian collaborating partner NCA, and works through NCA's NGO network in the country.

Currently the ADD program has only two staff. Given the important workload their capacities are overstretched. Consequently, it seems difficult for the ADD program's existing capacities to replicate its Malawi approach to other countries and to try to integrate ADD into the develpment program of other Norwegian NGOs and other relevant actors.

4. In order to expand FORUT's ADD work to other relevant countries, such as Norad's main partner countries in Africa, and to involve more relevant Norwegian NGOs and other actors in ADD related work, FORUT and Norad should look for funding possibilities to increase the number of staff of FORUT's ADD program.

FORUT's financial management
The findings related to financial management in chapter 3.6, found that FORUT's partners seemed to have an adequate financial management, including adequate reporting on budgetary issues to FORUT. On the other hand, FORUT Sri Lanka recently had an embezzlement case in one of its district offices. The embezzlement was reviewed by PWC, and FORUT took proper action. The review team's recent visit to FORUT Sierra Leone revealed that the office has unsatisfactory practices with regard to vehicle and fuel use, procurement procedures and weak financial reporting and accounting. FORUT Norway has started to follow up on these weaknesses.

5. a) FORUT Norway should undertake a financial investigation/review of FORUT Sierra Leone to investigate whether resources are used according to intentions.

b) FORUT Sierra Leone's financial management system should be updated and improvedto ensure a proper use and control of vehicles and fuel consumption and to ensure that proper procurement procedures are being adopted and respected.

c) FORUT globally should update its reporting routines and coordinate the reporting of financial and project progress

d) FORUT should reassess their auditors in Norway and in Sierra Leone

Monitoring and evaluation
As discussed in chapter 4.4, FORUT has an active and positive attitude towards evaluations and reviews and tries to use them as learning tools for itself and its partners. Moreover, target groups at community level often participate in project execution, monitoring and evaluation. Both FORUT and partners report extensively. The reporting is often very detailed, but focuses on activities and outputs and less on outcome and impact. There are very few projects that use gender disaggregated data and indicators.

6. FORUT should improve its and several partners' documentation of results, including the development of good monitoring indicators. FORUT should also ensure the use of gender disaggregated indicators in all its projects and in partner implemented work.

FORUT in Sierra Leone
Annex 7 presents the findings from the country visit to Sierra Leone, including overall strengths and challenges, strengths and challenges related to the administration of FORUT Sierra Leone and of its community rehabilitation project, and last but not least the future challenges for FORUT in Sierra Leone.