Minutes of the Meeting of the Task Force Constituted by the Planning Commission held on 23

Minutes of the Meeting of the Task Force Constituted by the Planning Commission held on 23.9.2009

The Second Meeting of the Task Force on Accreditation of Voluntary Organisations was held in the Conference Room of CAPART.

1. At the outset the Director General, CAPART and the Convenor of the Task Force welcomed all the participants and shared with them the progress subsequent to the first meeting of the Task Force on 2^nd July, 2009. To benefit from the inputs from a large set of stakeholders the representatives of Industry & Business Associations namely, ASSOCHAM, CII, FICCI which are seized with the issues including that of Corporate Social Responsibility were also invited. The Convenor appreciated that the representative of Give India, could also make it convenient to attend.

2. DG outlined the schedule for the meeting and hoped that at the end of the day long deliberations enough material and views will be available to compile the first draft of the report. To begin with Shri B.N. Makhija offered to make presentation on behalf of Sub Group I.

3. In his introductory remarks Shri Makhija mentioned that although he had prepared a paper on minimum norms/standards some times ago and circulated it amongst the members of the Sub-Group he was yet to receive comments on the same. Shri Makhija further mentioned that his presentation was based on the work done by the Credibility Alliance, an organisation already involved in evaluating voluntary organisations.

4. Shri Makhija stated that the main task before any agency involved in accreditation of voluntary organisations is to provide reliable information on the competence and performance of NGOs, which would help grant making organisations make informed decisions. The credibility of an organization providing accreditation services would also be incumbent on its ability to establish itself as credible and trustworthy institutions. An organisation of this kind had to be independent, impartial, credible and acceptable. More over it should be transparent in its working. He therefore suggested that the Accreditation Council should have representations of various stakeholders including the government, regulatory bodies, NGOs and grant making organisations. In addition it may be worthwhile to associate people from the academics, judiciary, corporate sector, credit rating agencies, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and Quality Council of India to provide expert advice and inputs.

5. Shri Makhija also stated that as established in the background of the work done by the Credibility Alliance, an exercise of this kind could not be based on third party inspection or evaluation and had to be necessarily an exercise where the voluntary organisation is an active participant. This was all the more essential as accreditation or evaluation had to factor-in the stated aims and objectives of the organisation concerned. The organisation had to be judged by the standards it has proclaimed to live by. Thus the entire exercise had to be NGO centric.

6. Shri Makhija stated that voluntary organisations varied a great deal in terms of size, feasibility, aims and objectives, resources etc and thus it was difficult to conceive of a single set of yardsticks for measuring all.

7. In view of the large number of voluntary organisations that exist in the country and who may like to seek accreditation, it may be prudent to begin with a minimum set of norms and gradually raise the bar. The initial task could be to find a basic due diligence (identity, governance, and disclosure), identity (registration, domicile, activities etc), the governance having disclosures and performance evaluation. He further felt that it would be difficult to rate organisations on a basis that involves a far more extensive exercise.

8. In order to guard its independence Shri Makhija felt that the Accreditation Council should not be a government agency. It could perhaps be established under the auspices of the Planning Commission.

The presentation made by Sub Group I is at Annex B.

9. Smt. Rupa Dutta, reacting to Shri Makhija’s presentation stated that the Planning Commission has already taken some steps towards making the entire system of grant more transparent and has set up a portal from where NGOs can access information about various schemes of the Govt. and also apply online. They could track the status of their applications. The portal would on one hand facilitate working of voluntary organisations and on the other hand provide information about them and also over a period of time, give an idea about the size of the voluntary sector in the country.

10. Shri Aijo Jacob, Consultant, Planning Commission, stated that Voluntary Action Cell itself is a small group in the Planning Commission with just about two full time employees and was not in a position to take up a task of this magnitude.

11. DG envisioned that one of the important drivers to attract VOs to get accredited by the proposed council would be to introduce a social safety net for workers of the voluntary organisations as add on. This could be used for making grants to volunteers in distress such as old age, illness etc. or to those working in areas where risk management demands social safety net. Such a move would create demand among people in the voluntary sector to come in for accreditation. DG, CAPART also suggested that CAPART may initially provide the institutional support to house and launch the accreditation council.

12. Dr Chatterjee, Dy. Director General, CAPART made a presentation on behalf of Sub Group II on (i) how to conceptualize the organizational structure and composition of the National Accreditation Council and its state/regional offices (ii) to define the functions of the National Accreditation Council.

13. In her introductory remarks, it was clarified that due to inability of the members, it was not possible for the sub groups to hold formal meetings and therefore, a concept paper was circulated on the above terms of reference requesting the members for their comments. Comments on the papers were received only from Shri Gagan Sethi of the Sub Group and his views had been made part of the presentation.

14. Dr Chatterjee suggested that the National Accreditation Council should take full advantage of recent advancements and expansion in computerization and web technology and come up with a system where it should be possible for an NGO to receive accreditation online, after fulfilling certain criteria. She felt that with most of the government agencies going online, it should be possible to design a network centric approach to verify the information provided almost instantly.

15. The presentation made by Sub Group II is at Annex C.

16. While discussing the concept, Shri Vivek Mathur suggested that several other ministries that provide large funds to NGOs had been left out of the suggested governing council of the proposed National Accredited Council – the important ones include the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, Ministry of Empowerment and Social Justice, Health etc.

17. Shri B. N. Makhija reiterated that the proposed NACI should not be a government agency and should be an independent body, possibly an NGO. In this context, it was commented upon that NACI could succeed and be acceptable only if it had adequate government support and sanction. It was reported that NGO accreditation bodies in Philippines and Pakistan had not been very successful. NACI for the NGO, by the NGO and of the NGOs may sound attractive but may not live up to the task it is envisaged to perform creditably.

18. Some members suggested that accreditation without physical verification and on-site visits would be meaningless. To this Dr Chatterjee suggested that keeping in view the numbers involved, it would be prudent for the Council to take up only a manageable task. It would, in consultation with its Executive Board, free to raise the bar. In its presently suggested form, NACI would achieve two major tasks – verification of all documents and transparency on part of the NGOs. These two steps in themselves would inspire a lot of confidence in thus accredited NGOs and save them of tremendous amount of documentation and paper work, thereby hasten the process of resource mobilization.

19. In the opinion of Shri S. Vemuri, accreditation process had to be evolved keeping the size of the organization in view and one set of norms would not be adequate for NGOs not only of varying size but also working in diverse fields.

20. Presenting the Base Paper for Sub Group III that was to deal with (i) the procedure for accreditation (ii) the possibility and mechanism of grading VOs/NGOs, Dr Sumedh Gurjar advocated of a system of accreditation that would be simple, clear and practical. He felt that in view of the diversity of the sector and logistical constraints the process was vulnerable to human errors and biases.

21. In his view, accreditation should be a three step process, involving registration, check on minimum norms, and grading/rating in the area of specialization. Since the numbers involved were large, he suggested various methodologies depending on the nature of the subject NGO in terms of size and area of specialization – including self-accreditation, accreditation through peer review and accreditation by an agency appointed for the purpose.

22. The presentation made by Dr Gurjar is at Annex D. Dr Gurjar also circulated a set of formats that had been evolved by YASHADA for the purposes of accreditation.

23. While appreciating the efforts made by sub-group III, the DG felt that physical verification of such a large number of voluntary organizations may not be an easy task by the NACI or any one agency itself.

24. In response Dr Gurjar spoke about having a panel of highly qualified assessors mentioned by him in his paper. Shri Makhija pointed out that peer group review was an accepted practice in some countries, particularly in case of accounts of smaller agencies and this mechanism could be extended to accreditation.

DG, CAPART supplemented the view by reiterating what Ms. Ruth Manorma defined as the hallmark of a practical regime for accreditation in the previous meeting. It should be simple, enhance NGOs' capacity to access funds and not become a policing mechanism by any other name. If one goes by this thumb rule it will have to provide different evaluation/compliance requirement with a common goal to enhance capacities of NGOs with regard to access of funds. At the rudimentary level it should be as simple as registration on NGO portal. Mere registration should be sufficient for a grant making body to choose NGOs for small and emergent grant of say upto two lakhs. In any case the information provided by an NGO is in public domain and the grant making body will be comparing facts with the originals before release of funds and can always file FIR under the appropriate provision of IPC if found misleading or misrepresentation. In the same vein DG elaborated that the simplicity of the proposed system has to be guaged from the parameter whether NGO aspiring to get accredited has to leave foot prints and touch base with a larger number of institutions. By this measure if a CA who is going to audit accounts may also be authorised to certify entries on the NGO portal and upload the certification, this may be considered sufficient for grants upto says 25 lakhs. RBI has already created a list of empanelled CA's on its website. These CAs may be authorised to certify the credential of the CA who has done the certification for accreditation of an NGO.

For higher level grants grading of NGOs as elaborated by Mr Makhija and CRISIL and other colleague may be fine tuned for grants of say upto five crore. The grading mechanism could be constructed based on a 3XN matrix. The three being Governings Finance and sectoral core competence on each there can be a Yes/No band calculation/evaluation parameters and a 'pen picture'. For project funding of five crore plus rating of projects may be envisaged and this will be in addition to the grading of NGOs.

25. Making a presentation on behalf of the Sub Group IV, Shri S. Vemuri stated that accreditation should be voluntary rather than mandatory, as is the case with the corporate sector. Voluntary agencies would opt for accreditation and grading if they saw value in it. The presentation of Sub Group IV is at Annuexure-E.

26. Regarding the cost of accreditation process, he suggested that there had to be a fine balance between the capacity of NGOs to pay and the costs involved. However, subsidy towards the cost was critical to the success of the exercise. In this context he gave the example of SSIs, where costs of rating were subsidized by the government.

27. DG, CAPART agreed that cost of accreditation may not be fully passed on to the NGOs. As rightly pointed out there is an element of conflict of interest that comes into play if the cost is to be borne by the NGO. At the same time subsidy from the budget is also not a solution as it has its own share of inefficiencies. One can create a much more practical solution, that is, making it mandatory for grants making bodies to additionally contribute one percent of the grant to NACI corpus. This corpus will be able to fund the cost of accreditation over and above that borne by the NGO.

28. Shri Ajay Mehta, Executive Director, National Foundation of India who joined post lunch commented that there may be a lot of 'buy in' to the idea if the grant makers find "value for money" in this subvention. DG, CAPART further elaborated that this corpus may also serve the social safety net for persons working in the voluntary sector. Once this is agreed in principal the actuarial studies will unveil the dimensions of the social safety net. Shri Ajay Mehta stated that accreditation will be a great confidence building measure. While the grant making organisations will continue to make their own independent enquiries and judging capabilities/capacity of NGOs, accreditation will help expediting process, as basic credential of the concerned voluntary agency would stand verified. This in term would help reduce cost and thus make more money available for grant making.

29. Mr. Makhija was of the view that more dimensions we add more complicated the system becomes and equally difficult its roll out. Dr. Nandita Chatterjee assured the house that the report shall try to do justice to terms of reference with as little complication as possible

30. Summing up the discussion, the Director General thanked all members of the sub-groups for providing useful inputs and insights. He also informed the Committee that Shri Gagan Sethi, Shri Alok Misra and Shri Pushpendra Kumar Singh had informed that they were unable to attend the meeting on account of their pre-occupation but had sent their views and comments. All these, along with the recommendations of the four sub-groups would be placed on the website of CAPART for wider circulation and eliciting views not only of the members of the task force but also of the voluntary sector.

31. It was decided that an attempt will be made to prepare a draft report after having taken into account all the concept papers and comments made there upon. This draft report will be circulated to all the members of the Task Force by 31st October, 2009 and will be followed up with consultation in November, 2009.

Annexure-A

List of Participants

Sl.No.	Name and Address	Telephone No.	Email Address
1.	Shri Mohd. Haleem Khan Director General CAPART New Delhi	011-24642390 9868805444	dg@caparthq.delhi.nic.in
2.	Dr. Nandita Chatterjee Deputy Director General CAPART New Delhi.	011-24642392 9650425534	chatterjeen@caparthq.delhi.nic.in
3.	Mr. B.N. Makhija Credibility Alliance 3^rd Floor, West Khetwadi Municipal School 5^th Lane, Back Road Near Alankar Cinema Khetwadi Mumbai – 400 004.	022-224332 09370351230	bnmakhija@gmail.com
4.	Dr. Sumedh Gurjar Centre for Innovation & Dissemination Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration Raj Bhawan Complex, Baner Road, Pune – 411007.	020-25608149 9823338244(M)	rdcyashada@gmail.com
5.	Ms. Ruth Manorama National Alliance for Women 392, 11^th Main Road III Block Jeyanagar Bangalore – 560011 Karnataka.	09844057734	ruth.manorama@gmail.com
6.	Shri Somasekhar Vemuri CRISIL Limited 7^th Floor, West Wing, CRISIL House, CRISIL Limited 121-122, Andheri – Kurla Road,Andheri (E), Mumbai – 400093.	022-66913106(O)	svemuri@crisil.com
7.	Dr. D.S. Tyagi ASSOCHAM1, Community Centre Zamrudpur, Kailash Colony New Delhi-110 048	011-46550512	ombeer.tyagi@assocham.com
8.	Ms. Kanchan Tuli GiveIndia, 3rd Floor, West Khetwadi Municipal School, Khetwadi lane No.5, Mumbai. Maharashtra.	09920298859	kanchan@giveindia.org
9.	Shri Kush Sapru National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) 24, Rajendra Place, New Delhi.	9650671666

10.

Shri Sachin Gupta

CRISIL Limited

The Mira, G 1, First Floor,

Plot No.1&2, Ishwar Nagar(Near Okhla Crossing)

New Delhi-110065.

9818277753

sgupta@crisil.com

11.

Shri Ajay Mehta

Executive Director

National Foundation for India
Zone 4A, India Habitat Centre

Lodhi Road, New Delhi.

ajay_s_mehta@nfi.org.ngo

12.

Shri Vivek Mathur

Sr. Group Vice-President Building No.8, 2^nd Floor,

Tower A DLF Cyber City,

Phase-II,

Gurgaon-122002

0124-4545310

9871221122

13.

Mrs. Rupa Dutta

Director

Voluntary Action Cell

Planning Commission

Yojana Bhawan

New Delhi.

23353437

Fax No.23096764

rupa-pc@nic.in

14.

Shri A.Jacob

Consultant

Voluntary Action Cell

Planning Commission

Yojana Bhawan

New Delhi.

15.

Shri Arun Shah

Deputy Director

CAPART

New Delhi.

011-24648604

9810608085

arunshah100@yahoo.com