Can open-source data help direct resources locally after disasters?
Social startups reject traditional competitive models and argue sharing knowledge can get help where it’s needed, quickly.
Local NGOs are almost always the first responders in the critical hours immediately following a disaster ⚡. And, given their understanding of the context, they are usually also the ones best placed to identify and address needs of those affected.
International organizations, donor governments, charities, and fundraising platforms are increasingly working with local NGOs to channel their funding directly to them (bypassing international relief organizations acting as middle men). That’s the good news. But here’s the problem: Identifying and Vetting local humanitarian organizations places significant administrative burden for NGOS and funders. All vetting is currently done in parallel, without collaboration, and without sharing of results.
What would it look like to create an open-source — dynamic — updated list of vetted local organizations? What would it look like if we all collaborated to make aid more efficient and effective?
👉The current model.
Before sending money, funders assess the capacity, accountability, and reliability of local NGOs. These are time- and resource consuming assessments which are a significant administrative burden for funders and often take up already scarce resources and time ⏱️.
👉 The Problem: We all do our own thing. And thus duplicate work.
Currently, each donor organization — including UN agencies, donor governments, charities, NGOs, fundraising platforms — conducts their own assessments applying their own standard and requirements. Very often, local NGOs are assessed by multiple donor organizations in parallel, causing a significant administrative burden. Results are almost never shared.
👉 Our Approach: To introduce standardized criteria and to open-source our findings.
We, OneRelief and NeedsList, two emerging humanitarian solutions, have started a collaborative initiative to rethink ways to apply innovate solutions to this challenge. We want to streamline and standardize vetting criteria and create an open-source database of vetted, local organizations.
Our ambition is to develop a set of standardized vetting criteria that allow agencies to collaborate:
- Agencies will be able to share results of their assessments.
- The process and results will be made transparent and publicly accessible to multiple stakeholders.
🔮 Our vision is to have an open-sourced directory to allow donors, relief organizations and local NGOs, big and small, to collaborate and to benefit from each other’s work. Not only would such an open database reduce the burden for all parties, it will benefit affected communities by making help faster, more transparent, and more effective.
👉 Our roadmap to get there.
Our plan for the coming months is to make this process as inclusive and participatory as possible. To include both the voices of local NGOs and donors in the process of developing the standard criteria and the development of a pilot directory.
- Phase I: Comparison of current assessement practices, identification of agency requirements and requirements for an open standard.
- Phase II: Development of Pilot open directory.
- Phase III: Deployment of Pilot open directory.
Current Partners
Below is a list of organizations and partners currently involved, which we will continue to update.
- OneRelief is a mobile platform leveraging social media to collect micro-donations for disaster relief aid.
- NeedsList is the world’s first online marketplace for communities in crisis.
We are looking for partners who are interested in the initiative. If you would like to learn more, if you would like to get involved, or simply be kept in the loop, send us a message or comment below. We will be in touch.
Note, an earlier version of this article was published by Peter Prix at the One Relief blog.
