Principles and Practice

Civil Society Accountability: Principles and Practice is a toolkit developed by the Co-operative for Research and Education (CORE) in partnership with the Commonwealth Foundation (CF). It explores what accountability means for civil society organisations (CSOs) in South Africa and provides suggestions on how to put accountability into practice.

The toolkit has four aims:

1. To identify common principles of accountability for CSOs in South Africa;
2. To identify the current good accountability practices that exist among CSOs;
3. To identify areas where capacity needs building in the sector; and
4. To provide practical tools and frameworks that CSOs can use to achieve accountability in their day-to-day activities and interactions with stakeholders.

The toolkit is being developed through a participatory process involving a wide range of representatives from the CSO community in South Africa. Whilst there are organisations that were not contacted, we hope they can still draw insights from the toolkit, relate to the issues being discussed and experiment with some of the approaches and tools outlined. At the same time we would also like your feedback. If you have any suggestions you would like to share, please contact us at corejhb@mail.ngo.za .

We invite you to provide your input by responding to our forum question that will be posted every week.