Praxis Note 62. It takes two to tango: reversed organisational assessments between Northern and Southern civil society organisations

Do Southern civil society organisations (CSOs) have a role to play in assessing the performance of their Northern partners? What can we learn from attempts to include Southern partners in assessing our organisations?

This question of ‘reversing’ the assessment came up during a learning programme on organisational assessment (OA) involving Dutch CSOs and their Southern partners. When taking principles like ownership and mutual accountability seriously, all implementing organisations should be involved in dialogue about organisational standards and performance. However, in current practice the aid-chain (donor–Northern NGO–Southern NGO–CBO–target group) provides little space for this dialogue. By ‘reversing’ the chain we try to promote a systems orientation in the landscape of organisations involved in development cooperation.

To gain more insight into this topic, two Northern CSOs invited their partners to join the assessment of their organisations. This note details the background, experiences and lessons learnt from these assessments.