DFID’s support for civil society organisations through programme partnership arrangements

A vibrant civil society sector is an essential part of the UK aid landscape. Our report looks at DFID’s programme partnership arrangements, which will provide a total of £120 million a year to 41 civil society organisations in 2011-14.

Score: Green/Amber
  1. Status: Completed
  2. Published: 17 May 2013
  3. Type: Other
  4. Subject: Civil society
  5. Assessment: Green/Amber
  6. Lead commissioner: Diana Good

Read the report

Review

We concluded programme partnership arrangements (PPA) are helping to drive innovation in the recipient organisations but the Department for International Development (DFID) would achieve more with its PPAs if it were to refocus on the added value they can provide as a strategic instrument. We awarded a green-amber score and made four recommendations.

Findings

DFID makes grants to a value of between £151,000 and £11 million per year to 41 civil society organisations (CSOs) that share its objectives and that it believes are strong delivery partners. Our review considered six PPA agreements of varying size and type.

ICAI recognises that a vibrant civil society sector is an essential part of the UK aid landscape. While it is too early to conclude on the overall impact of the current funding round, we find that PPAs are helping to drive innovation in the recipient organisations. In particular, they are improving the quality of performance management and accountability for results.

We think it is likely that these changes will lead to improved results for intended beneficiaries, not just from PPA funding but across the CSOs’ full range of activities.

Recommendations

  1. If DFID decides to continue with PPAs, or a similar grant-making instrument, it should use the intervening period to develop a more strategic, transparent and fair process for selecting CSOs and allocating funding. DFID should consider, both for this round and for any future rounds, extending the PPAs to more than three years to allow the strategic and innovative aspects of this unrestricted funding to develop.
  2. DFID should assign a technical counterpart to each PPA to ensure that both it and CSOs obtain full value from the partnership.
  3. DFID should re-design the monitoring and evaluation system for PPAs so that it is less cumbersome and better suited to the long-term strategic nature of this funding.
  4. DFID should strengthen the role of the Learning Groups, in order to ensure that lessons learned are shared more widely within DFID and with civil society partners.

 

Read the news story

Timeline

Review publication

Published 17 May 2013

Government response

Published 7 June 2013

ICAI follow-up

Published 12 June 2014