Mango Newsletter, February 2006
|
|
Welcome to Mango’s newsletter! Mango works with NGOs around the world, helping them strengthen their financial management. This newsletter gives a flavour of what we do, what’s coming up and how we help NGOs achieve more with their funds. More information available at: www.mango.org.uk. Click on
the headlines for the full story below. Headlines 1. Major new
publications – welcomed by DfID minister Two
important new publications, both available for free on-line: Mango’s Guide to Financial Management for
NGOs and Financial Management for
Emergencies. 2. Training in
financial sustainability to tackle tropical disease An
example of enthusiastic feedback from our training courses – this time, for
the first one run in both English and French at the same time, in the same
place. 3. Training
forging ahead – new calendar and recruiting new staff News of
our calendar of training events for 2006, including new locations – and a
vacancy in our training team. Full details of all courses available here. 4. Register
members support tsunami reconstruction Mango
register member takes on the financial management of the British Red Cross
Society’s multi-million pound programme in the 5.
Accountability: spreading good practice Mango
helps NGOs to be more accountable to the people they aim to help – including
running seminars for staff and piloting a new checklist (available on-line). 6. Possible
new finance directors’ seminar series Stop press news! Mango is responding to demand for
a high-level seminar series for Finance Directors of large and medium sized
UK NGOs. Find out more here. 7. Piloting
long-term work in Sri Lanka We are in
advanced discussions with Christian Aid to second one of our trainers to work
with them in 8. Thank you
very much to our donors A
particular thanks to PwC, which has substantially increased its support for
Mango, and to the Methodist Relief and Development Fund. We couldn’t do all
this without you! Mango is a Please reply with the subject line “unsubscribe” if you
would prefer not to receive these emails. |
1. Major new
publications – welcomed by DfID minister
Mango has
published two major new publications: our “Guide to Financial Management
for NGOs” and “Financial Management for Emergencies”, both
available for free on-line at www.mango.org.uk/guide and www.fme-online.org.
We were
delighted to welcome Gareth Thomas MP, Under Secretary of State at the
Department for International Development (DfID), to our recent launch, hosted
by PwC. “DFID recognises the importance
of strong financial management for NGOs,” he commented.
“Mango’s publications are an important resource for NGO staff, providing
practical guidance in this crucial area.” Mango’s
Guide is a comprehensive introduction to financial management for staff and
trustees of NGOs. Based on Mango’s work with NGOs all over the world, it
covers subjects from book-keeping and budgeting to sustainability and
accountability. Financial
Management for Emergencies is a survival guide for humanitarian programme
managers. Written by expert authors with years of first-hand experience of
emergency humanitarian work, it provides an invaluable, accessible guide to
the essentials. Alex
Jacobs, Mango’s Director, said “We are thrilled to make these cutting edge
publications available for free. They are both specially designed to help
busy NGO staff and trustees tackle the real practical problems they face
every day.” Both
publications are written in Plain English, and come complete with case
studies, worked examples and tools to download to use. We are extremely
grateful to the donors who made these publications possible: ECHO, Christian
Aid, the British Red Cross Society, Oxfam and CAFOD. The Guide
is also available on credit-card sized CD. We have been distributing to them
to NGOs by the dozen. Let us know how many copies you would like! 2. Training in financial
sustainability to tackle tropical disease In
January 2006, Mango ran two training courses in The SCI
asked Mango to run our Strategic Financial Management course for their local
partners. As SCI work in English and French-speaking countries, from They
particularly looked at the issue of financial sustainability. The SCI and
their partners currently rely on funding from the Melinda and Bill Gates
Foundation. But it is about to come to an end. Mango’s training helped all
those involved analyse the problem and work out ways of responding to it. “It was
certainly most effective as far as meeting our own objectives is concerned,”
commented Howard Thompson, SCI’s Programme Manager. “It was salutary to confront [national co-ordinators] with the hard
facts of what it means to raise funds. To give them some technical expertise
did a lot to boost their confidence. We all greatly enjoyed the work last
week.” 3. Training forging ahead – new
calendar and opportunities Mango has
published a full calendar of training events in 2006, including courses in new
locations for us, such as: In
September 2006 we will be repeating our successful two-week residential
course Financial Management for Development NGOs in
4. Register members
support tsunami reconstruction
Mango
recently placed register member Karen Swyny FCA with the British Red Cross Society
(BRCS), to support their major tsunami recovery programme in the Karen
joined Mango’s register in December 2005. Previously, she qualified and
practised as an accountant in the private sector and worked in Thirteen
months ago, the tsunami ravaged the The work
focuses on long-term rehabilitation, including building houses and crucial
water and sanitation infrastructure. Just moving goods between islands has
proved difficult - so high quality planning and financial management support
is vital for the programme. As Finance and Administration Delegate, this will
be Karen’s responsibility for the next year. Karen
said, “I’m
very excited to have the opportunity to use my professional skills and
knowledge to support such important work, and in being directly involved
in ensuring donors’ money is used to help people who were hit so hard by
the tsunami.” Other
members of Mango’s register are working on tsunami reconstruction programmes
elsewhere (such as in Find out
more about:
5. Accountability: spreading good
practice Mango’s
Who Counts? campaign – encouraging NGOs to provide financial reports to their
beneficiaries – continues to generate lively interest in the sector. Click here
for details and resource materials. Evidence
shows that this reporting can enhance dialogue between agency staff and
beneficiaries, increase the impact of their work and reduce the risk of
fraud. Further evidence, summarised here in
Mango’s Guide, shows how focusing too much on accountability to donors can
undermine the quality of field work. Mango has
run seminars on Who Counts? with agencies including: Save the Children UK,
Tearfund, the Lutheran World Federation and the British Red Cross Society.
Nick Roberts from Tearfund said, “Many thanks
for your participation in our conference last week - your session on Who
Counts was a great success and much appreciated. Looking forward to receiving
the 100 CD [copies of the Guide] as an early Christmas present!” Please contact us if you would like to
discuss setting up a seminar for your staff. We are
also helping NGOs develop new approaches to accountability. For example, we
are supporting Oxfam GB and Concern to pilot standardised techniques for accountability
to the people they aim to help. (Click here for a
draft checklist we are using, under section 2 of this web page.) In
addition, Mango is working with other initiatives focused on the central
issues of quality and accountability, including BOND (where Alex Jacobs is
chairing an advisory group on quality standards), HAP-I (where, with many
others, we are contributing to developing new standards on accountability)
and Keystone (which is using our health check to help NGOs assess their
capacity).
7. Piloting long-term
work in
We are
delighted to be developing plans with Christian Aid to second one of our
trainers to work with them in Christian
Aid is committed to building the financial capacity of their partners in We expect
that from the middle of 2006 Sara Hooper, one of Mango’s core trainers, will
be based in Colombo to work with Christian Aid, providing practical financial
management support to NGOs in Sri Lanka. 8. Thank you very much to our
donors Mango
continues to depend on its donors. Thank you very much for your support. In
particular, we are thrilled to be deepening our relationship with PwC. PwC
hosted the launch of our new publications and made a generous financial
donation to Mango. In addition, we are about to start exploring collaboration
on a distance-learning project, to make Mango’s training more accessible
around the world. We are
also extremely grateful to the Methodist Relief and Development Fund for
their financial support and to the many other donors who make our work
possible. |