DONOR STRATEGY FOR ELECTORAL ASSISTANCE

BY Hadija Miiro

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Donors are special friends who need to be treated as such through personal relations, effective engagement and provision of unique insider information. This is an emerging conclusion from a review of the donor mobilization and coordination mechanisms in many developing democracies and the increased demands from funding governments for moving away from taking “a back end position” to staying connected to the recipients and implementing agencies all throughout the development process.

With the current credit crunch and increasing demand for donor funds, mobilizing sufficient funding to support electoral activities in post conflict countries presents special challenges which are unique to address, given the fact that the processes involve a multitude of stakeholders and most decisions are loaded with political connotations. Typically, there is no one-model for resource mobilization and donor coordination for electoral assistance in post conflict countries. Reasons include the fact that most such countries have emergency democracies, and electoral behavior is difficult to predict. As a result, decisions on electoral legal frameworks, processes and procedures are made late, and the cost of electoral processes is not always obvious, making it even more difficult to mobilize sufficient and timely resources. This strategy seeks to supplement existing mechanisms for donor mobilization and coordination by adopting a multi techniqueä-, more personalized- and participatory approach that engages the suppliers, beneficiaries and implementing partners in mobilization of resources for electoral processes.
 
The strategy is based on careful review of funding needs, an analysis of the donor community as a whole, so that its behaviors can be forecast, identification of  donor interests and requirements, presentation of a compelling and responsible business case, understanding the obstacles to effective resource mobilization in a given environment, engaging staff in building relations with donors, and implementing effective information sharing and coordination mechanisms that merit an investment of time and resources to support electoral processes in the short, medium and long term.

 
OBJECTIVES:

1. To increase electoral assistance through effective  resource mobilization and effective donor coordination
2. To provide accurate and timely insider information that donors need and is relevant to their role
3. To make donors feel more valued 
4. To reach out to each donor individually including those who may not have contributed to the process but who have the capacity to fill the funding gaps
5. Develop a more common and in-depth understanding of the country dynamics, its challenges, required interventions
6. To help build transparency as a key to good governance and the peace building process

PROBLEM BEING ADDRESSED:
 

Donors do not only contribute resources but play an oversight role in the development process. Achievement of the strategic objectives of each donor in support to a development or political process depends to a large part on the actions of other donors. Nonetheless virtually all donor agencies are under increased pressure to show results from their governments or sponsors by ensuring that resources from their governments are used well. The demand on every single unit of support is extremely high and almost every action taken by donors is heavily weighed down in light of its political implications for the donor and the beneficiary country. Inevitably choices need to be made between regions, countries and activities. Quite often resource mobilization for electoral assistance is even more difficult due to the unpredictability of the outcome and limited consideration of the link between political/electoral processes and the development process.

At the same time there is often unsatisfactory coordination among donors, implementing partners and beneficiaries. Donor coordination is mainly through donor representation on the oversight and Steering Committees. Periodic and sometimes Ad-hoc briefings to the Donor Coordination Working Group are provided. These high level policy meetings established for specific purposes do not sufficiently provide timely, continuous and up to date information on the key requirements and quite often do not act as catalysts for further or increased funding.   As a result, there is degeneration of exchange of information, frustrations and loss of interest in providing support to a given process.

Another limiting practice to effective resource mobilization and donor coordination is the adoption of a supplier driven approach, where implementing partners assume that they know what donors want to know, what they want to fund or what aspects of the process donors are unhappy about. The tendency is to selectively determine the level of donor engagement, what information they provide and what activities they should fund without prior consultations and engagement with the suppliers of the funds. This is even more so when fund raising for electoral process are characterized by political tradeoffs.

On the other hand, donors and implementing agencies cannot afford to waste time on non essential coordination activities. A review of the current coordination mechanisms is essential for each organization or country to ensure that the mechanism remains relevant and productive and that the electoral process is not only looked at as a political process but as a processes that hinges significantly on the development of other sectors.

This proposed strategic approach is to provide better “customer service” to donors through provision of clear funding needs, timely and relevant information, personalized recognition, improved coordination, and engagement without burdening either party with routine and sometime less useful information. In doing so, the strategy ensures that all donors are valued regardless of the dollar tags on their contributions.

PROPOSED STRATEGY:

Identification of Funding Needs:

This usually involves a needs based assessment in your focus area(s). It is more difficult to break into completely new grounds and most donors would prefer to fund an organization whose reputation is known in a particular field. Organizations / countries tend to have a multitude of needs. Funds may be required to support a particular programme or project, or aspects of a process. For an electoral process, funds may be required to support electoral reforms, constituency demarcation, voter registration, civic/voter education, voter tabulation and counting, election security, domestic observers and the media. In limited instances, donors may agree to fund capital developments for an Elections Management Body: construction of offices, a resource or media center, procurement of furniture or IT equipment. In the majority of cases, funds are required for the entire electoral/referendum process especially where the country has just emerged from a violent conflict. In all circumstances it is important to determine your priorities.

Identify Donor Interests and Requirements:

It is unlikely that a donor will meet all the organizational needs.  Most donors tend to fund particular activities or aspects of a process. A quick assessment of donor interests and requirements is hence necessary: Who are the major donors, what are their core areas for funding, what processes they have earmarked funds for, which donors have left overfunding for similar activities, what approaches were previously used successfully, what aspects of the current mechanisms are beneficial and which ones need to be reviewed. What frustrations are donors are having, what kind of information donors require, how often the information should be provided? More importantly, how do donors want to be treated?

Engage Staff in the Strategy Design :

Hold special meetings and one to one consultations with your staff to generate proposals and how each member or department can play a meaningful role depending on their portfolios. Both national and international staffs have surprisingly important informal contacts and can provide useful guidance on what government and the donors are saying. This process should result in a well designed, compelling and responsible project document matching organizational needs with funding sources.

Identify Activities and Design a Strategy for Donor Engagement:

The next step will be to identify and agree on activities that can be implemented and design a strategy for resource mobilization and donor coordination. The activities may include regular visits by staff or senior management,  one to one briefings, personal telephone conversations, using mail, weekly updates, using the media, using events (dinners, breakfast meetings) setting up a donor club, using special circumstances like visiting of father/mother figures, donor branding, scheduled meetings and customization of the organization website.

Establish a Donor Coordination Calendar:

The calendar should list down the agreed activities, set up optimum dates, identify lead persons and track each activity by date. The outcome of each activity is a basis for review of how well the strategy is working and devising corrective action.

PROPOSED ACTIVITIES:

• Provide Donor Benefits: The purpose is to make every donor feel valued by handling each donor with the same personal care regardless of the amount contributed. This could include acknowledging each contribution quickly within the shortest time possible preferably within 24 hours, request to each donor to grant your organization permission to publically air its contributions and naming its dollar amount, using their logos or emblems on procured materials, using personalized or hand written thank you notes by the Senior Manager, briefing them or inviting key persons to them to important events and sharing with them proposed activities before submission of official requests.
• Establish a Donor Club: The organization or a country office can establish a donor club in the capital or other regional offices, where, senior managers, ambassadors and donor representatives could meet regularly and share information.  This could also include a donor bar, special lunches, dinners or breakfast meetings. Individual members of the donor club like ambassadors may be contacted to arrange similar functions at convenient times and venues. People tend to attend such occasions more than regular scheduled meetings. On such occasions, the senior managers do not only get an opportunity to update the donors with relevant information; but to express gratitude and ask for more or supplementary funding.
• Donor Branding: In a few instances, donor branding has helped to increase donors’ planned and actual contributions especially for political processes where many donor would want to leave a land mark on their participation in the process. This is a situation where donors are branded as Gold, Silver or Bronze or with other distinctive titles based on the dollar value of their contributions. This may be mentioned lightly and occasionally, “I thank the Japanese Ambassador for putting the Japanese Government at a Gold Level through its contribution of USD 14 million to the Basket Fund” other donor will get the message. A careful analysis of the circumstances under which donor branding is used is necessary to ensure that donors who deserve gold and silver branding receive the benefit without alienating bronze or no medal holders.
• Do not Stop Asking for More and Ask for Specific Amounts: “If you do not ask, you do not get”.  Donors are like fruit trees, they do not walk to find birds. It’s the birds that find the trees. The way you ask, the type of support, the timing, the packaging of your request all determine whether you get and what you get. Governments and Electoral Management Bodies should prepare their budgets and funding requests well in advance of the event and embark on informal negotiations for funding as early as possible. Governments and EMBs also need be open, responsible and tactful when raising requests to ensure transparency. If you do not specify your request, you risk getting less than the required amount.
• Written Requests: Traditionally most requests are written in form of official email or letters. Informal consultations before the official request provide in-depth insights, on how much is available, what the requirements are, whom else you need to involve etc.
• Scheduled Meetings, Bulletins and Regular Updates and the Web: Regular meetings, bulletins, regular updates are traditional methods to donor coordination. These however are easier said than done. Most implementing partners stick to the mandatory reporting and tend to wait until a quarterly, bi- annual or annual report is submitted. In between they tend to neglect the power of continuous feedback. Donor need to be up to speed with current developments on issues where money from their governments is spent. Electoral processes are very volatile and once the process rolls, there are constant changes probably on a daily basis.  Scheduled meetings and regular updates through bullets and the organizational website should be used interactively to provide legitimate information.  These increase the opportunity to share information, understand what is going and put forward your business case. Information posted on the WWW should be constantly updated. Brief sections bulleting Key Issues, Action Points, Statistical and Pictorial Information increase readability. More still regular contact with donors is one way of making them feel valued. If you do not constantly engage with your donors, by the time your country or organizations submit a request; most decisions would have been made.  
• Email, Postal, Hard Copy Letters: A part from “Face Book” and “Twitter” which are not yet widely accepted forms of official communications; electronic mail is the fastest and most convenient form of official communications. A brief summary of the attachment in the mail body would ease the burden of reading long documents which should have been channeled to the relevant authority instantly. Marking the email with an appropriate level of “Urgent”, “Importance””New” all helps the reader to filter through and attend to mails that are urgent or important. Upcoming events like material handovers, decisions, declarations, timelines etc should be flagged out to the donors before the actual events occur or are published by reporters. In the developing world and particularly in post conflict countries, the challenges to electoral administration are enormous and the costs for conducting elections and referenda events are vast. Occasional communications on high quality headed paper to major donors requesting for financial support should not be ignored, especially if they are dropped at the door or by post. This also breaks the monotony of electronic mails that are currently clogging every top executive’s inbox.
• Events for Special Occasions: The organization can take advantage of events that are held under special circumstances. Electoral processes provide greater opportunities for special events. These may include a visit by internationally reputable dignitaries.  On such occasions, arrangements can be made to meet with Ambassadors and Heads of donor agencies. Instead of donors reading of such events from the news papers, they will feel valued if they are part of the process and have obtained the information from the “horse mouth”.
• Identify a Lead Agency: The organization may ask countries with good reputation and reputable coordination ethics to take a lead in coordinating other donors. Such countries include Canada and the United Kingdom. In such cases, the organization will provide the necessary information and may provide administrative support. There are organizations that are particularly known for electoral assistance: The United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Electoral Assistance Division, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and many others. Because of internal repute of such organizations, many donors prefer to channel their funding through such organizations. Once a lead agency has been identified, ensure that electoral support is included in their Country Action Plans.
•  Direct Participation: Occasionally donor representatives may be invited to attend some of the regular activities. Electoral process provide great opportunities for such activities: launch of voter registration, public outreach, announcement of results etc. Donor representatives may also be invited occasionally to attend an insider activity like a staff meeting, to travel with a senior manager to a land mark event or to inspect a production line or some of the procured item. This participatory approach enables donors to get a more in-depth understanding of organizational operations, the challenges they are facing.
• Meet Donor Expectations: Donors generate funds from tax payers in their own countries. Each donor hence wants to feel that their contributions have been used in the most effective way. This means getting the highest value for every donor and ensuring transparency and accountability. Meeting donor expectations increases the likelihood of getting more resources for electoral processes.
• Have a Buffer from your Own Government: Funds pledged are not always timely released. Many Governments and Electoral Management Bodies complain of unfilled pledges or delays in release of funds. For electoral processes to be successfully implemented, even when donor support is inevitable, the EMB and the government must always have a fallback position: the national treasury. Domestic contributions also increase national ownership of an electoral process.

CONCLUSIONS:

Implementing a successful donor strategy requires substantive resources in terms of time, finances, expertise and dedication.  It also requires flexibility and willingness to compromise on the side of coordination providers and recipients. The time and resources are not always enough. Nonetheless, because of the importance of the successful and harmonious conclusion of electoral processes and the significant roles donors are playing in the process, adoption and implementation of a well thought out and effectively implemented resource mobilization and donor coordination strategy will generate unimaginable results.