The Charitable Measurement Initiative: Mumbai is in trouble!

Welcome to the Charitable Measurement Initiative!

The Charitable Measurement Initiative is a collaboration of people and organizations that are deeply committed to the belief that social change organizations can mobilize significant new and better investment if they are able to implement a measurement reporting framework that credibly communicates their real impact to donors. The Initiative is directed by GiveIndia and calls on the resources of pilot program partners Keystone Accountability, Global Giving, and New Philanthropy Capital, as well as many other organizations committed to social welfare.

The process began when we decided to combine our previous experiences in humanitarian and charitable work with our current work as corporate lawyers. We sought to find a group in India that was looking to incorporate capital markets/securities concepts in reporting and analysis to create more valuable and transparent information.

Thankfully, we were put in touch with GiveIndia. Give discussed the idea of running a pilot program implementing the Keystone framework developed by Keystone Accountability to see if we could help organizations more clearly articulate the outcomes they wanted and better communicate their actual results to donors. This was exactly what we were hoping to do and gladly agreed to donate a year of time to making this work.

While we were in London, Give put us in touch with Keystone Accountability and New Philanthropy Capital. After many meetings throughout the spring and summer, we arrived at our joint creation – the Charitable Measurement Initiative – and a plan as to how we would seek to help NGOs in India become more transparent, responsive, and efficient, as well as help donors become more engaged and involved.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Mumbai is in trouble!

Alex and I attended a conference with high level officials from Mumbai and London, including London Mayor Ken Livingston. We concluded that Mumbai leadership has an unrealistic view about what is happening here and has satisfied themselves by hiring advisers to support their belief that as long as Mumbai keeps on its current path, it will be the greatest city in the world.

There seems to be no plan on how to tackle the problems that are apparent to everyone. In fact, I don’t think they recognize half the problems that there are. And a lot of this, I think comes from a lack of thinking about what they want to ultimately achieve. This is in strong contrast to what the London officials had to say. They saw a financially robust city economy as their vision and made development happen to accommodate that.