Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Jia B. Kangbai, Senior lecturer, Njala University

Given its speed, scale and scope, the Bundibugyo Ebola virus disease that broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo in mid-2026 could become a global epidemic.

I am an infectious disease epidemiologist with experience in managing the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in my country, Sierra Leone. Drawing lessons from Sierra Leone and having watched the mid-2026 outbreak in the DRC, I conclude that it risks become a global epidemic.

There are a number of reasons for this.

Preventing a fast-spreading outbreak that has already taken over a large geographical region is difficult.

The speed of the outbreak makes it challenging to even quantify the true scale of its spread. It’s hard to measure its true metrics, like incidence (the number of cases detected) and case fatality rates (the proportion or percentage deaths among the detected cases) on a daily basis.

It took on average four months for the cumulative 2013-2016 west Africa Ebola outbreak cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to reach 1,000 after official declaration. In the DRC outbreak it took less than two months to reach that same number.

These statistics are post-outbreak declaration statistics. This outbreak started a long time before it was officially detected, which implies transmissions and deaths have occurred that are not being captured. Only those Ebola cases that presented after its official declaration have been documented. This implies that frontline health workers have to contend with huge backlogs of Ebola cases for treatment, surveillance and contact tracing.

Given its current scale and speed, the following actions are needed:

• inject adequate and sustained multi-month funding to pay for frontline workers, lab consumables, personal protective equipment and infection prevention and control supplies

• ensure rigorous anti-infection measures are adhered to in health facilities and border posts

• actively involve community members in the response by working with trusted local leaders, religious leaders, youth groups and community health workers

• screen borders

• design a safer patient-care pathway – a triage, isolation, testing and treatment system.

Possible reasons for rapid spread

Ebola is generally a highly contagious disease with a high transmission rate. A primary Ebola case can transmit the infection to between 1.5 and 2.5 other people.

But the rapid spread of Bundibugyo virus disease falls outside this expected epidemiological unit. A number of interlinking factors are driving this rapid spread. These include: the emergence of super-spreaders; a lack of data; a lack of therapeutics and vaccines; the slow and non-adoption of public health interventions; challenges to full community engagement and trust; and insecurity due to ongoing armed conflict.

The role of super-spreaders

The role of disease super-spreaders in outbreaks is not new. In one study conducted during the 2014-2016 west Africa Ebola outbreak, super-spreaders were reported to have been responsible for more than 60% of sustained onward transmission.

Super-spreaders are infected people who disproportionately transmit pathogens to susceptible people during an outbreak. This can be due to the way disease affects the body, and to environmental, behavioural, social and demographic factors.

Disease super-spreading is more common during the early stage of an outbreak. It is more pronounced for a relatively new disease or a rare strain of a pathogen. In these situations, infected people serve as super-spreaders mostly because they don’t know how the infection is spread or prevented.

Read more: Ebola outbreak in the DRC: four reasons it will be hard to contain

The rarity of the Bundibugyo strain makes it a likely candidate for super-spreading. The lack of appropriate diagnostic kits was largely responsible for the late diagnosis in the early period of the outbreak. This has led to its continued spread. Because of the geographical size and velocity of this outbreak, the challenge caused by insufficient diagnostic kits added another layer to managing it.

When someone gets sick, the expected thing to do is to diagnose and treat. This works well when the infected person is familiar with the signs and symptoms of the disease. Unfamiliarity with the symptoms can lead to delays in seeking treatment and hence sustained transmission.

Age has also played a role in super-spreading – in this outbreak and in previous ones. The age of an infected person (especially infected children below 15 and adults above 45 years) was reported to have been primarily responsible for super-spreading in the 2014-2016 west Africa outbreaks. In the ongoing DRC outbreak, the age group of 18-49 years accounts for the bulk of the infection, while a quarter of deaths are children below 15 years. Children are unfamiliar with the signs and symptoms of Ebola and seek treatment late. Because of this they will spread the disease to their caregivers. The age group 18-49 years will engage in high-risk activities, including unprotected sex, that will increase the transmission rate of the disease. Bundibugyo Ebola virus is transmitted through contact with the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated surfaces or material.

Read more: Ebola survivors can pass on the virus: we’re trying to understand what role sex plays

Super-spreading is also affected by how the disease presents itself.

In the DRC, because of the rarity of Bundibugyo virus, little is known about its signs and symptoms, which makes it challenging during early physical diagnosis.

Ebola Zaire, the most common strain of the virus, has an early acute wet-phase characterised by vomiting, diarrhoea, coughing and haemorrhaging. But the early symptoms of a Bundibugyo infection are dry: the person may experience fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and sore throat. These symptoms could easily be misclassified as other tropical infections. This mild nature gives false hope to patients and serves as an “incentive” to delay seeking treatment.

Adding to this layer of complexity is the prevailing insecurity climate in the DRC, which in turn delays people being able to source treatment. The eastern DRC has been plagued by violent conflict for decades, and this is where the outbreak is spreading.

Data gaps, resistance and insecurity

The DRC outbreak has shown what outbreak preparedness can achieve and what still needs to be delivered.

A big challenge is data. When an outbreak has been going on silently for weeks, undetected, the data that emerges after it’s declared an emergency is mostly speculative.

With less than 20% of all Bundibugyo incidences in some health zones traced to recognised contacts, there is a tendency for the disease to spread to unaffected regions. This makes controlling an outbreak difficult.

Adding to that problem are attacks on health and aid workers by the families of affected patients. August 2026 saw the highest number. The attacks mostly stem from deep mistrust of authorities, as well as cultures and traditions clashing with medical protocols.

Other factors contributing to the spread include:

• the sheer size of the DRC – almost the size of western Europe in land mass. By September 2026 Bundibugyo had affected an area the size of France.

• porous borders, making it impossible to trace people

• ongoing insecurity: the government in Kinshasa finds it difficult to govern and provide basic services across the entire country

• treatment void – the lack of registered therapeutics and vaccines to treat and prevent the spread of Bundibugyo is another reason it risks becoming a global epidemic.

Read more: The hunt for a new Ebola vaccine: two scientists explain the challenges

The failure to develop a Bundibugyo vaccine has been a catastrophic biomedical and governance oversight. It should not have happened, given that localised Bundibugyo outbreaks had occurred several times in the DRC.

Potential diagnostic kits, therapeutics and vaccine candidates have been put into trial stage. But outbreak preparedness should have started much earlier.

Preventing a global Bundibugyo epidemic

Preventing a fast-spreading outbreak that has already taken over a large geographical region will be difficult. It requires nuanced strategy.

One major lesson I learned from the 2014-2016 west Africa Ebola outbreaks was that prevention strategies should always be designed to accommodate setbacks. Planners need to be able to address, persevere with and respond to those emerging challenges as they go along.

The deployment of Ervebo Ebola Zaire vaccine in the DRC is welcomed. But stopping an epidemic relies on strong public health interventions, including vaccination, in the presence of total community engagement and trust. At least the current Ervebo Ebola Zaire vaccine trial will lead to the collection of evidence, which is better than starting all over again in future.

The input of global health actors at the international and national levels is also needed. The dissolution of USAID and cuts in public health funding are bound to create more global health problems. Providing ad hoc funding during a public health crisis cannot fill the gaps in outbreak preparedness and prevention.

The cut in funding has placed tremendous pressure on surveillance, which is very important during such a high-paced outbreak. Health zones where the Bundibugyo prevalence, mortality and transmission rates are high should be areas of paramount concern for surveillance. In a country as vast as the DRC, surveillance requires huge logistics and human resources.

The most urgent action needed to prevent a global epidemic is to double down on real-time testing, which in turn depends on robust disease surveillance.

Funding is key. Lack of funds can affect the arrival of international experts, logistics and humanitarian aid to the remaining unaffected areas outside eastern DRC. Over US$500 million is reported to have already moved into the DRC since the outbreak was declared. This means there shouldn’t be any reason for frontline workers to go unpaid. The strike actions by frontline workers suggest that public health activities to tackle an outbreak of such scale and pace should work in tandem with financial accountability and thorough administrative policies.

– DRC’s Ebola outbreak has the potential to become a global pandemic. How to make sure it doesn’t
– https://theconversation.com/drcs-ebola-outbreak-has-the-potential-to-become-a-global-pandemic-how-to-make-sure-it-doesnt-290965

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Felix Dube, Lecturer in the Department of Public Law, University of Venda

The South African government has released a new electricity pricing policy for the first time in 18 years. The policy sets rules that the national energy regulator, the state-owned electricity utility Eskom and municipalities must follow when working out electricity prices.

The policy explains which costs can be recovered from customers and how these charges should appear on electricity bills. Its aim is to ensure that prices are fair and clear, while bringing in enough money to maintain the electricity system and support poor households.

Read more: South Africa’s power utility Eskom wants to cut electricity to municipalities that haven’t paid: households may pay the price

It also updates the pricing rules to reflect major changes since the last policy was released in 2008. Recent changes include the entry of private power producers and the addition of large amounts of rooftop solar power by businesses, farms and households since 2022.

The new policy explains how households and businesses with solar should contribute to maintaining the national grid. It also aims to prevent certain costs, such as unpaid bills and electricity that is stolen or lost through faulty infrastructure, from simply being added to electricity price increases.

I research electricity governance, administrative law, constitutional accountability and the right to electricity. I argue that there are some things the new electricity pricing policy gets right, and some it doesn’t.

About 10 million poor households in South Africa are entitled to a limited amount of free electricity each month. The minister of electricity and energy recently proposed giving these households substantially more free electricity.

Read more: South African court orders Eskom to disclose R70 billion coal and diesel contracts – why the ruling matters

But the new electricity pricing policy does not include this proposal. A separate policy governs free electricity for poor households. The two policies are not clearly linked. This means it is unclear who will pay for the extra free electricity or how it will be protected when tariffs are set.

It is my view that the government needs to update both policies together. It must explain how the increased free electricity will be funded, how it will fit into the new tariff system and how municipalities and Eskom will ensure that every qualifying household actually receives it.

The new pricing policy’s weakness

When free basic electricity was introduced in 2003, impoverished households received 50kWh per month. This was a basic survival amount, enough for lights and very limited use of a kettle, iron, television and radio.

Households need at least five times more electricity to improve their living conditions.

Read more: South Africa’s 36.1% electricity price hike for 2025: why the power utility Eskom’s request is unrealistic

However, the new draft pricing policy does not guarantee poor households more free electricity. It says two government departments and the National Treasury must decide each year how much they should receive. The amount will depend on regular reviews and available funding. The government must also study the effects of the allocation over two years. Therefore, the draft creates a process for considering an increase, but does not promise one.

This is a concern because many qualifying households already do not receive free electricity, in part because local municipalities don’t keep accurate registers of families who qualify. Other reasons are poor communication, and a complicated claiming process. Eskom estimates that 10 million households may qualify, but only about 2 million receive the benefit. Increasing the amount on paper will make little difference unless the government guarantees it and ensures that all qualifying households can access it.

What the policy gets right

The draft electricity pricing policy recognises that Eskom is no longer the country’s only major electricity producer. Private companies have entered the market, and different organisations are increasingly responsible for generating, transmitting and distributing electricity.

Therefore, the draft policy seeks to ensure that paying customers are not made to pay for other people’s unpaid bills and for other losses caused elsewhere in the electricity system. This could make electricity prices fairer.

Read more: Secret electricity price hikes in South Africa to be curbed in a game-changing court ruling

The draft also responds to a problem identified in my own research about households and businesses moving off-grid. Electricity sales help municipalities to fund other services. Therefore, when customers with solar panels buy fewer units but still use the grid for backup, some costs can shift to poorer customers who remain fully dependent on the grid.

Eskom now faces a tariff-and-sales trap

As South Africa’s state-owned electricity utility, Eskom is responsible for generating, transmitting and selling electricity. It earns most of its revenue from tariffs paid by municipalities, businesses and other electricity customers.

From 1 April 2026, direct Eskom customers faced an average tariff increase of 8.76%. Eskom’s bulk tariffs to municipalities rose by an average of 9.01% from 1 July 2026. The national energy regulator has also approved an average increase of 8.83% from April 2027. These increases are lower than the 12.74% increase in the previous year. But they are still difficult for households and businesses whose incomes are not rising at the same pace.

In the last two decades, electricity prices shot up by 1,172%, compared with 174% inflation. In 2025 alone, tariffs rose by 12.74%, while inflation was 3.79%.

Read more: What’s stopping sunny South Africa’s solar industry? Court case sheds light on the wider problem

Electricity sales fell by 6.2% in 2026. Eskom said this was because of “weak industrial demand and the effects of embedded self-generation”.

These figures do not mean that Eskom is about to collapse, given that it turned a profit of more than R30 billion (about US$1.88 billion). In fact, Eskom achieved this growth even though it was owed billions by municipalities. This prompted questions about whether Eskom was funding its profitability by increasing prices.

Read more: South Africans are opting to go off-grid: how they’re being helped, and hindered, in their efforts

Eskom is also spending more money. Its staff numbers rose from 42,030 employees to 43,274 in the year to March 2026. Its employee benefit costs rose by 11% to R50.4 billion (about US$3.16 billion). In its annual results presentation, Eskom said the new hiring was intended to rebuild critical skills and support its operational recovery. The utility noted that it had suffered from years of skills drain and needed more human capital to address chronic plant breakdowns and restore stability to the power grid.

Eskom pays its permanent employees from the money it collects through electricity tariffs. Therefore, it should disclose what new jobs were created and why, whether it spent less on contractors as a result, whether staff became more productive, and whether bonuses were awarded for improvements that lasted. Cutting too many jobs could undermine maintenance and lead to more power cuts. However, allowing staff numbers to grow without proper scrutiny could leave customers paying permanently higher electricity prices.

What needs to happen next

I have previously argued that access to electricity is a human right, and that prices cannot be legitimate when the cost-of-supply studies behind them are hidden.

To protect poor households, the final policy should guarantee them a minimum amount of free electricity nationwide, or set out how this minimum will be introduced over time.

Read more: South Africa’s electricity price is soaring. Why protests are often the only way for people to be heard

It should require all municipalities to use a national database, apply the same rules when deciding who qualifies, and provide a simple way to appeal if someone is wrongly excluded.

It should also explain exactly how the free electricity will be paid for and ensure that municipalities cannot spend this money on anything else.

– South Africa has new electricity pricing rules after 18 years: what it gets right and wrong
– https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-new-electricity-pricing-rules-after-18-years-what-it-gets-right-and-wrong-291214

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ralph Hamann, Professor, University of Cape Town

The Southern Africa Food Lab has brought businesses, farmers, government and community groups together since 2010 to help address the problems of hunger and malnutrition. When these diverse groups first came together, everyone agreed that the region’s food system was in trouble. The disagreement came next.

For some, the priority was resilience: keeping supply chains running through droughts, price spikes and political shocks. For others, those same supply chains were the problem and they needed to be transformed. For instance, they wanted a shift towards agroecological farming — working with natural processes instead of chemical inputs, and favouring diverse smallholdings over monocultures. This would have meant changing some of the very structures their partners were trying to protect.

This tension is not a quirk of one initiative. In a recent article, we argue that it is a common challenge for cross-sector partnerships. These are initiatives in which government, private sector and civil society come together to jointly address shared problems. They are the world’s favourite tool for tackling sustainability problems.

The logic is appealing. No single sector can fix food insecurity, water stress or climate change alone, so why not pool resources and act together?

But do they work?

Despite their obvious appeal, partnerships often flounder. One of the difficulties is that many partnerships face a version of the Food Lab’s question: what should be preserved, and what should be changed?

We are scholars who have studied cross-sector partnerships for many years. We are especially interested in how they respond to complex problems like food insecurity.

Two concepts have been central to this work. Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb a shock and reorganise while keeping its essential structure and identity. Transformation is about changing that structure, so that the system becomes more just and less ecologically damaging.

The two are bound together because sometimes a system has to change in order to endure. But they can pull in different directions, because resilience emphasises what should be maintained, while transformation is about what must go.

We explore this relationship in our recent paper. It is based on a review of the literature, some of our previous research and case studies, as well as papers we included in the special issue of the journal Business & Society that our article introduces.

Our argument is that partnerships generally emphasise either resilience or transformation, especially if they are focused on a particular scale, such as a small town. Some partnerships do include both ambitions but this often involves focusing on one or the other at different scales or in separate programmes. Truly integrated approaches are rare and difficult.

We describe these common emphases and ambitions below. We then recommend three practices, through which partnerships can proactively manage this relationship between what should stay and what should change.

Common approaches

Our analysis suggests that partnerships tend to follow one of three pathways.

Some emphasise resilience. Take the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, founded in 2004 by the World Wildlife Fund alongside Unilever, the Malaysian Palm Oil Association and other companies. It is now more than 6,000 members strong, including growers, traders, retailers, banks and NGOs. Or the Marine Stewardship Council, founded in 1997 out of talks between the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, which now certifies fisheries with its blue label. Both aim to limit the damage of existing industries and safeguard supplies.

But critics point out that these schemes do little to move the industries away from extractive models. Greenpeace and a coalition of NGOs have gone further, accusing the palm oil roundtable of certifying business as usual.

Other partnerships are more explicitly about transformation. Oxfam, the anti-poverty confederation, works with the Stockholm Environment Institute, a research body. They track the emissions of the very richest individuals, finding that the richest 1% produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 as the five billion people making up the poorest two-thirds of humanity. And then they push for policies that confront the concentrations of wealth and associated environmental impacts.

Partnerships like these tend to meet resistance from the industries and governments whose models they question, and they struggle for funding, precisely because they challenge entrenched interests.

A third group does both, at different scales. For instance, CGIAR, the global agricultural research partnership founded in 1971, helps local communities adapt to climate change while pushing for transformative shifts in global food and trade policy.

That third path is promising, because local resilience and global transformation can feed each other rather than compete. It is also the hardest. What partners agree on at one scale can be unintelligible, or threatening, to people at another. For example, the European Green Deal, the EU’s plan to reach climate neutrality by 2050, set continental ambitions that collided with farmers protesting for their livelihoods and short-term security. Tractors blockaded Brussels in early 2024, and the European Commission rolled back several environmental rules.

What helps

Our review points to three practices that help partnerships hold the tension between what to preserve and what to change rather than be paralysed by it.

First, pay attention. Partnerships may notice social or ecological warning signs late. One study in our collection looked at France’s river basin committees, multi-stakeholder bodies of local officials, water users and state representatives, sometimes nicknamed “water parliaments”. It found they took years to start deliberating about climate change despite some early signals that basin temperatures had already begun to rise. Partnerships need to build in ways of noticing signals early, drawing in researchers and regulators who work at other scales, rather than waiting until the signals are impossible to ignore.

Second, argue honestly. Smoothing over disagreement may enable initial progress, but silencing awkward voices tends to backfire later. Power imbalances inside the partnership need to be named, and where possible rebalanced. The Food Lab is an example. Its convenors found that progress depended on moving beyond polite exchange to a deeper form of dialogue, in which the power imbalances between, say, black small-scale farmers and white corporate managers could be put on the table.

Third, follow through and persevere. It is tempting to harvest easy wins that look good in an annual report, but interventions matter when they match what the partners set out to preserve or change.

Another study in our collection follows a partnership in Milan that set up neighbourhood hubs to get food to people during the COVID-19 crisis. Rather than winding down when the emergency passed, the city, the food banks and private partners built the hubs into a lasting structure for tackling food waste and food insecurity together, and cut the city’s dependence on corporate food donations along the way. An initial emphasis on resilience carried through into an effort towards transformation.

The Food Lab’s argument over supply chains, in other words, was not a failure of partnership. It was the real work, surfacing the underlying differences in partners’ priorities in a dialogue.

The partnerships that will matter over the next decade are the ones willing to have that argument openly, and to decide together what is worth keeping and what must change.

– Partnerships between government, business and civil society are often tense: 3 tips on how to manage them
– https://theconversation.com/partnerships-between-government-business-and-civil-society-are-often-tense-3-tips-on-how-to-manage-them-290795

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Wayne van Zijl, Associate Professor and CLM Assistant Dean of Research, University of the Witwatersrand

Imagine being asked to prepare monthly reports that all demand their own classifications, measurement bases and templates.

This is the reality that nonprofit organisations (NPOs) face across the world.

In a recent paper, my co-authors and I present findings from interviews with 21 nonprofit stakeholders from South Africa, the UK, the US, Sweden and Uganda. The aim was to understand the reporting challenges they faced, and to consider possible solutions.

One NPO spends two weeks each month just reporting to donors. The problem is not how much information is required, but that each donor uses different templates to request largely the same information.

The lack of standardisation matters because funding is scarce and every hour and dollar spent repackaging the same information is an hour and dollar not spent, for example, feeding vulnerable children, protecting endangered species or educating disadvantaged communities.

Part of the problem is a lack of globally accepted and adopted reporting frameworks that satisfy donors’ and other users’ financial and non-financial information needs. At present, many NPOs comply with financial accounting frameworks. But these were designed for entities with a fundamentally different purpose: profit-making.

The International Non-Profit Accounting Standard, launched in 2025, marks a significant milestone for NPO standardisation. But, while it includes some non-financial reporting, it is primarily a financial accounting framework.

Consequently, many donors need more non-financial information and design their own templates. However, these often request irrelevant information while omitting other useful information.

Our research developed the Civil-Society Organisations Reporting Practice (CORP) framework. The goal is not another layer of compliance reporting, but a common reporting structure that integrates financial and non-financial information to meet users’ general information needs.

This reduces the need for donors to waste time developing templates themselves. It also reduces NPO stress and anxiety when trying to meet all their stakeholders’ needs.

Why profit tells the wrong story

Financial reporting is largely developed around the needs of investors and lenders. They care about cash flows, financial position and a company’s ability to generate financial returns. Applied to nonprofits, these metrics can distort more than they reveal.

Read more: Nepal floods: China’s strict control of Tibet makes it harder to prepare for Himalayan disasters

Why?

Because NPOs deliver social and environmental services to those who cannot pay for them. They don’t try to make profits. To illustrate, consider two otherwise identical NPOs that each receive R10 million.

NPO A spends R1 million on salaries and R9 million delivering services. At year-end, it reports no surplus and no financial return.

NPO B also spends R1 million on salaries but nothing to advance its mission. At year-end, it reports a R9 million surplus, R9 million in net cash inflows and a strong balance sheet.

NPO B appears to significantly outperform NPO A but has provided no social or environmental services. In contrast, NPO A used all its resources for precisely its intended purpose.

While deliberately extreme, the example highlights why using financial performance alone can be misleading and incentivise bad behaviour. Organisations can appear financially stronger by accumulating cash and cutting programme costs – precisely the behaviours that limit impact.

Non-financial information is vital. Suppose a maths tuition NPO delivers 1,000 lessons. This is its output. Comparing participants’ and non-participants’ pass rates helps assess outcomes. Most importantly, impact asks what happened in the longer term: did participants enter and graduate from university, find employment and ultimately improve their households’ circumstances?

The distinction between outputs, outcomes and impact matters. NPOs can be busy but make no difference to society. Outputs speak to effort; outcomes to short-term changes; and impact to whether NPOs are actually making a difference.

Reporting impact is the hardest and could be costly. Accordingly, reporting must be proportional, balancing costs with benefits.

Accountability in both directions

Donors dominate what nonprofits report as they, understandably, want evidence that their money is being used as intended. It’s known as upward accountability.

But this risks letting donors define what “good” and “bad” NPO performance looks like, potentially driving undesirable behaviour.

It can also exclude the people that NPOs exist to serve.

Downward accountability is needed to balance this power relationship. Beneficiaries should be able to evaluate NPO performance and influence service delivery. A tuition programme may have excellent pass rates but inadvertently exclude under-resourced learners if lessons finish after the last bus departs, leaving those without private transport unable to attend. Such feedback helps NPOs and donors understand what is needed to drive impact.

An integrated structure

Our framework contains five elements.

First, a report from the CEO or trustee explaining:

• the NPO’s theory of change – how its activities are expected to create impact

• strategy – how it plans to achieve its objectives

• commentary on past performance and future expectations.

This will help donors and beneficiaries assess whether their interests and needs align with the NPO’s mission and activities.

Second, a report providing key historical financial and non-financial information with year-to-date information – what we’ve termed a flash report. This is key because contexts change quickly and users need certain information to stay up to date.

Third, a statement of credibility addressing legitimacy risks, including concerns about NPOs being used for self-enrichment. It reflects the NPO’s legal status, governance structures, assurance arrangements, track record and key partnerships, which provide important signals about which NPOs to engage and which to avoid.

Fourth, a statement of activities in which the NPO integrates financial and non-financial information to tell its story and facilitate comparability.

Financial statements, summarised or linked, complete the picture.

Next steps

Standardising reporting structures is not the same as making NPOs look alike. The content will – and should – differ. A common structure reduces the cost and anxiety of reporting while allowing users to find what they need without first decoding unfamiliar documents.

Helping the NPOs that serve society and the environment requires NPOs, governments, donors, beneficiaries, academics and standard-setters to work together towards a commonly accepted and adopted NPO integrated reporting framework.

The International Non-Profit Accounting Standard provides an important foundation in this direction while our framework provides a complementary non-financial starting point for further testing, refinement and, ultimately, acceptance by those who produce and use NPO reports.

– Nonprofits spend too much time reporting to funders: a single universal template could help
– https://theconversation.com/nonprofits-spend-too-much-time-reporting-to-funders-a-single-universal-template-could-help-290312