Resource Type: Foundation strategic document

Welcome to this annual report on the Commonwealth Foundation’s work for the financial year 2017/18. This has been the first year of a new Strategic Plan period (2017-2021). This has required adjustments in approaches and the introduction of new methodologies. These have enabled the organisation to make good progress against the agreed strategic framework.

Planning and delivering civil society inputs to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting has been a significant feature of our work this year. This report includes an immediate assessment of the Commonwealth People’s Forum (CPF 2018). The Forum was well received and this is a moment to record thanks to the United Kingdom as the CHOGM host for the way it partnered with the Foundation on this project.

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Annual Report 2017-2018

Welcome to the Commonwealth Foundation Annual financial statement on work during 2016 to 2017. The period since June has seen the organisation conclude the implementation of the Strategic Plan (2012-2017) and simultaneously start preparation for the next Strategic Plan (2017-2021).

Please see the signed copy of our Financial Statements for financial year ending 30 June 2017.  This has been endorsed and approved by the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors on 4 December 2017.

The Commonwealth Foundation’s Strategic Plan 2017-21 will be guided by a Logic Model that constitutes the single theory of change for the period of 2017-21.

This is the Plan’s highest-level framework. As set out in the Strategic Plan, the Logic Model will be accompanied by a Strategic Performance Framework, which links the outcomes to indicators at the short term and intermediate outcomes, the levels at which contributions may be evaluable.

At the Foundation’s planning conference in April 2017, a participatory process was facilitated with all staff involved in identifying indicators for both short term and intermediate outcomes. The process helped to further define the specific contributions that the Foundation could make to strengthening civic voice and resulted in the development of a Programme Performance Framework and a Risk Register for each of the following:

1. Participatory Governance and Gender
2. Commonwealth Writers
3. Grants Programme
4. Support Services with includes the four support areas and Knowledge, Learning and Communication

The annual planning was undertaken with the view of designing projects for the next two years of the strategy period. The activity-based budgeting however was confined to cover the first year of the strategy period: 2017-18. This approach to planning is consistent with the Foundation’s commitment to results-based management.

Welcome to this annual report on the Commonwealth Foundation’s work during 2016/17. The period since last June has seen the organisation conclude the implementation of the current Strategic Plan (2012-2017) and simultaneously prepare for the next, which will take us through to 2021.

My colleagues and I have remained focussed on delivering on the annual workplan for 2016/17 and are able to report some considerable successes. The 6,000 entries to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the publication of an anthology of short stories translated from Bangla, the establishment of a vibrant Southern African youth employment network, the support to women’s organisations getting a gender bill debated at the East African Legislative Assembly. All this on top of a grant portfolio of more than 50 projects awarded over the past five years, worth £3.75 million.

This year’s achievements are all the more impressive when one considers that the staff team have combined to design and produce a Strategic Plan for the next five years, which was approved by Governors at a specially convened meeting held last December. The new Plan builds on the advances made during the current planning period and takes account of the learning (for staff and partners) that has taken place. Much of this is well documented in the external evaluation that we commissioned last year.

Learning provided an essential keystone in the building of the new Plan, which retains our focus as a development organisation fixed on people’s participation in governance. We will be placing new emphasis on civic voice to take account of the ways in which civil society is changing, and to bring writers and artists into our community of practice. We will be more joined up as we seek to work across our programmes, for example by making a more immediate connection between developing civic capacity to engage with institutions and exploring opportunities for engagement to take place. We will also be more overt in our focus on gender equality and the many ways this can be addressed in a governance setting.

Like any report the following pages provide a retrospective view but I hope they also provide a glimpse of what’s to come.

With thanks for your continuing support.

Vijay Krishnarayan
Director

The Commonwealth Foundation is delighted to present a newly approved Strategic Plan. This new plan is the result of extensive evaluation and consultation, undertaken to ensure we will deliver in our mission to strengthen civic voices until 2021.

In response to the CHOGM mandate, the 2012-2017 Strategic Plan marked the beginning of a third phase in the evolution of the Foundation. Civil society contributions to responsive and accountable governance for effective development were the central concepts in the Strategy and informed a new Vision and Mission.

These two pillars of the Plan, along with a new set of Values and a strategic Logic Model , were developed with the participation of the Foundation’s staff and consultations with other stakeholders, including Member States, civil society organisations and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

In December 2015, following a competitive bidding process, the Foundation commissioned an external evaluation of its progress under the 2012-17 strategy. Evidence was gathered over a five-month period and included more than 60 interviews and, separately, the capture of the views of 30 stakeholder institutions through an on-line survey. The evaluator also visited a grant project and an area of regional programme activity in the Caribbean. The results of that evaluation are available to view here.

Building on the emerging findings, conclusions and recommendations of the external evaluation, the Foundation conducted a series of strategy development workshops in August and September 2016 facilitated by the Foundation’s Results Based Management adviser. A synopsis of emerging directions for the strategy was presented and discussed in regional meetings with representatives of Member States (which were supplemented with bi-lateral meetings as requested) in October. This led to another workshop with staff and the final draft of the 2017-2021 strategy in November.

The overall purpose of the evaluation is to evaluate the work of the Commonwealth Foundation during the 2012-16 Strategy period (subsequently extended to 2017).

In addition, the evaluation has three complementary purposes:

• Learning: Provide lessons to feed into the consultations on the new Commonwealth Foundation strategy to be launched in July 2017. The ToR make specific reference to lessons regarding the Foundation’s future Logic Model  or Theory of Change; the shape and modalities of its programmes; and the Foundation’s own organisation and ways of working, including its planning, monitoring, assessment and knowledge sharing processes.
• Accountability: Provide the basis for the Foundation to be accountable to its Board of Governance and Executive Committee for the achievements of its programmes and projects, and of the quality of organisational support associated with those.
• Communications: Identify for a wider audience some of the key issues and findings of the evaluation in relation to the Foundation’s outcomes of creative expression, capacity development and constructive engagement with governance.

The primary objective of the Foundation’s work is to promote the participation of civil society in effective, responsive and accountable governance. In pursuit of this objective the Foundation supports four Outcome Area programmes – Creative Expression, Capacity Development, Constructive Engagement and Knowledge Management – and a Grants Programme which is aligned to those Outcome Areas. The evaluation reviews the performance of the Outcome Area and Grants programmes during the strategy period, and the support offered by the Foundation to these programmes.