NGO Aid Map: We Built It. Have They Come?

The viability and success of NGO Aid Map, a mapping initiative that pools and shares data about the work of InterAction members around the world, depends entirely on whether InterAction members contribute data. Unlike an organization or donor that can require its staff or grantees to share certain information, participation in NGO Aid Map is completely voluntary. This means we have to be more sensitive than most to the issue of incentives: What motivates organizations to share their data on a regular basis with NGO Aid Map?

Here’s what we know. In a survey conducted in November 2011, organizations participating in NGO Aid Map selected the following as the top two reasons for contributing data: “to publicize our work” (47 percent) and “to demonstrate that we are transparent and accountable” (33 percent). About 10 percent gave other reasons, such as “to contribute to the database of information available,” or “to share and coordinate” their work with others. The remainder said they didn’t know why their organization was submitting data.

We believe another, unstated reason for participating in NGO Aid Map is “because InterAction asked.” As members of InterAction, organizations probably feel more of an obligation to participate. We also believe that, going forward, peer pressure will become an important motivation. As one person put it in a follow-up interview: “Once the momentum gets going, it gets to a point where I’ve got to be on there. Otherwise it looks like we’re not active.”

The next question we asked in the survey was whether people felt that their organization was actually benefitting from participating in NGO Aid Map. Thirty-five percent of respondents answered “Yes” to this question, explaining, for example, that they had been contacted by other NGOs for possible collaboration as a result of the site, or that the site had raised the visibility of their organizations’ work. While thankfully only nine percent of respondents answered “No,” it raised red flags that more than half answered “Maybe” (18 percent) or “Don’t know” (38 percent).

We still have an opportunity to demonstrate to these organizations that participation is worthwhile. And in another question, more than 80 percent of respondents said they believed their organization would continue providing data to the site, seemingly demonstrating that members share our opinion of the initiative’s potential. Still, these responses told us that we needed to do a better job of showing our members that the extra work of sharing data with us was making a difference (a challenge I’ll talk about in another post in this series). As one person commented, we “need to prove [the] value of aid maps to management and to field staff, so that [the] task of providing data is not just one more burden placed on field staff.”

We agree, and based on what we’ve learned have been making improvements. Knowing that visibility is a key incentive, we’re doing more to recognize organizations that participate – highlighting organizations that submit information for the first time in our monthly newsletter, or tweeting whenever organizations make updates to their data.

We’re also encouraging our members to join us in promoting NGO Aid Map. As members start to tweet and blog about their contributions to the site, we’ve begun to share with them how that affects traffic to their project or organization pages on NGO Aid Map (it does). InterAction has a large network, but if every member participating shared information about NGO Aid Map with theirs, we would have a much broader reach. Finally, we plan to be better about communicating to our members the positive feedback we receive on the site, and about proactively seeking out and sharing examples of use.

Organizations are asked for data all the time. To prevent NGO Aid Map from being just another information request, we must constantly focus on the question of why: Why should our members take the time to submit data? What difference does it make? In conversations with members about NGO Aid Map, visibility and “public good” reasons (such as improved collaboration and less duplication) come up time and time again as the primary motivations for participating in this initiative. Though visibility is a valid reason for sharing data, we view the “public good” motivation as much more crucial for NGO Aid Map’s long-term success. If we can demonstrate that sharing aid data actually improves development, then it becomes – or should become – part of an organization’s mission. 

Laia Grino is Manager of Transparency, Accountability and Results at InterAction. Read the other posts in this blog series: Two Years Older and Wiser, We Built It. Have They Come (Part 2: Making It Easy to Participate)?, The Tricky Question of Use, and Balancing More Data with Data Quality. Follow us on Twitter at @NGOAidMap.