Building a system to manage project and performance for ngos

Collecting information online by using Google Form hencebecomes easier, saves time and money than traditional paper data collection., whichhelps us easily create surveys to gather inform

Building a system to manage project and performance for NGOs

Group sciences: Lê Ngọc Nhung

Nguyễn Thị Thu HoàiVăn Thị Hoài ThươngNguyễn Quang Huy

Lê Hà Trung Class: MIS2015A Science

advisor: Dr Phạm Thị Huệ

Ms Trần Thị Hải

LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Introduction

The concept of project management emerged in the 1950s when organizationsput technical systems into practice to manage complex technical projects Thismilestone marked the beginning of the project managers have been developing until atpresent Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing,controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific

success criteria at the specified time (Wikipedia) There are some ways to approach

the project management such as: Phased, Lean, Interactive, and Incremental.Expanding project planning based on outcome (impact) or activities (progress-based)

According to a successful research of Mesly in 2017, a successful project isbased on four factors, called “four P's” The first is a smart plan, to judge thecircumstances that may occur in the future The second is progress with a holisticapproach for both staff and managers based on activities The third is people, theeffectiveness of human resource management in the project along with the responsible

enthusiasm of the staff The last is power from finance, policy (Mesly, 2017) Any

successful in project activities or project management success is demonstrated throughoutcome and impact The approach is based on target, timeline and cost to define theresponsibilities roles of participants and stakeholders

2 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and four key performance areas in an NGO

To enable effective management, “collecting the right information” is thecrucial first step to manage in order to create insights for management actions In order

to do that, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) need to be identified KPI is a type ofperformance measurement which evaluates the success of an organization or of aparticular activity It will answer the question “what information should be lookedfor?” A Management dashboard usually contains many KPIs highlightingcomplementary aspects of an organization to enable management action Ideally,dashboard should be automated and fed with regular new input data Together withpolicies and procedures of the organization, a dashboard, which is a strategicvisualization of the progress against the KPIs help to ensure that tasks are completed

timely and effectively to achieve the goal (FitSM Part 0: Overview and vocabulary, 2015)

An NGO is typically run with most of their resources on implementing projects,funded either through direct individual donations and public funding from both public(government aid and private sector funding) Supporting functions, depending on thesize and scale of the NGOs, can include from Finance & Administrative function(where IT can be separated or as a part of administration service), Human ResourceManagement, Marketing and Communications, Fundraising and Partnership,Monitoring and Evaluation and Learning/Research

These different aspects of an organization management can be grouped intofour typical dashboards

● A Financial KPIs dashboard to prove the profitability and development of anorganization or a business Their stockholders, investors, and customers will usethe financial dashboard to assess the performance and viability of the

organization (Financial Metrics and KPIs, 2018)

● An Human Resource Management Dashboard looks at “How functional orsupporting departments are doing?” and “Whether staffs have achieved thetargeted or planned performance?” Human Planning and Resource is a key

component in Operation KPIs (What is operational dashboard?, 2004)

● A Progress dashboard reflects on the performance of the different projects in It

is a great asset to keep portfolio managers aware of the schedule or completion

across the organization (Karola, 2015).

● An Impact/outcome dashboard highlights the achievements relating to changes

to society as a result of all the above mentioned organizational managementefforts and funding supports from donor These results might only be available

after a long time of interventions by the organization (Impact Dashboard, 2017).

3 Necessity

Public scrutiny has become more demanding to grant receiving organisationslike NGOs Organizations need to show both credibility to public via communicatingtheir results and making their business performance more visible via annual report orother forms of accreditation process This is even more a crucial matter where thefunding source to these NGOs are become stricter and increased competition between

NGOs and even Government organization applying for aid funding or public andfoundation grants Gaining trust from both public with persuasive presentation ofproject outcomes are increasingly important.

WWF Greater Mekong has embarked on the process of building an organizationalwide management information system since 2010 whereas other NGOs in Vietnam,given their small size of organization and lack of OD funding, information on differentfunctions are still fragmented and take time to aggregate for management However,even with a dedicated function, M&E set up, it is a steep learning curve for theorganization in evolving their tool to a truly organizational wide application, wherecost is a major push back and the deployment issues

4 Advantages and disadvantages of popular tools.

Out of these needs and gaps in tool for organizational wide managementinformation system, this research aimed to find out a solution that a typical IT person

or business controller of an organization would be able to customize to set up asolution to collect and analyze organization performance data with low cost Thecurrently popular online applications such as Commcare and ODK, and GoogleSpreadsheet versus the traditional, offline tools of Excel were considered

4.1 ODK

Open Data Kit (ODK) is developed by the University of Washington ComputerScience and Engineering department as an open source suite of tools Mostly popularfor collecting data via mobile devices and data submission to an online server, evenwithout an Internet connection or mobile carrier service at the time of data collection.Data then can be hosted Then, host your data online using Google's powerful hostingplatform, Google AppEngine, and visualize your data as a map using Google FusionTables and Google Earth

ODK would be especially suitable for the need of collecting large survey andeliminate the administration of records in paper forms The questions need to be pre-designed The option of sequential linking to a previous response is not possible to set

up Hence, ODK would only best suitable for a particular task of collecting data in aproject or a department in an organization, but would not be suitable as a platform tointegrate various organization information to produce even a simple version of

dashboards with various organization KPIs In addition, the fact that ODK is not ahosted solution means it would be only available for organization with a server set up.

4.2 Commcare

Commcare is a commercial solution, building on the idea of ODK and thus hasbeen able to make it more user-friendly for those who need to set up a solution tocollect information via forms of surveys The ability to track or monitor a case overtime is particular relevant for the need of organization KPI tracking For example,monitoring the performance of a staff over time, or of the impact changes of aparticular site11

While Commcare offers different pricing options to use, including a free 30-daytrial, the dashboard feature is not ready until a plan is paid Due to this requirement,

we are not able to complete the whole exercise of demonstrate a complete system onCommcare to collect and analyze and show the results of KPIs However, it showedthat technically, it is more user friendly than ODK

4.3 Excel

Excel is one of the tools we tried and it showed that it is possible to collect dataand visualize KPIs at organizational scale on Excel, utilizing various features such ascalculations, charting, data filtering, etc However, the inability to collaborate onlinewithout Office 365 is the biggest drawback to this solution The option of using freeDropbox account would mitigate this but it is very likely that someone would misusethe tool, e.g accidentally delete, or the problem of handling conflict versions whentwo users access forms at the same time

One possible solution to work around with Excel is to create forms andintegrate data via Microsoft Access However due to the knowledge and timelimitation of the research group, we have not been able to test this solution

5 Our solution

We aimed to produce a completely free solution to use for an NGO to collectand manage and analyze their data for analysis of organizational level KPIs We usedinputs and real experience of WWF Vietnam and WWF Greater Mekong to shape oursolution Particularly, in the interviews with WWF, our question mainly focused on thesystem they are using, and its drawbacks and what management questions they use as

11 Commcare, https://confluence.dimagi.com/display/commcarepublic/Case+Management

well as kind of data being collected It is clearly mentioned that NGOs staff prefers alight system which does not require IT knowledge to use and set up, but withanalytical and online collaboration features because users of such system are workingfrom various geographical places Thus, a platform that can address the need of bothreporting staff and senior managers and being cloud-based and multi-deviceaccessibility is essential.

We demonstrated in this research a free solution addressing the aboverequirements with integrating four Google services and tools: Google Form, GoogleSpreadsheet, Awesome Table, and Google Site

This solution meets various immediate needs for organizational datamanagement

First, it is free and allows multiple editors while keeps track of all changesmade to a document Collecting information online by using Google Form hencebecomes easier, saves time and money than traditional paper data collection., whichhelps us easily create surveys to gather information from employees The inputs fromGoogle Form will be stored automatically to a Google Spreadsheet, which has a lot offunctions like Excel such as data filtering, charting Manager of a form will also beautomatically updated when there are any changes We use Awesome table feature topublish monitoring information from google spreadsheet and embed it to a GoogleSite This allows users with correct right setting, can edit information if there areerrors, rather than having to notify the admin and cutting the waiting time

6 The novelty and creation

We develop a prototype of a free solution for organization data collection andanalysis based on a set of suggested KPIs Although this topic is very necessary, there

is little information available on such tool Rather, what we have found are commercialsolutions that requires investment on servers and subscription fee, which would be aluxury for a small NGO or it requires some IT expertise to set up and customize

METHODOLOGY

1 Case study

The case study research method is the most widely used qualitative researchmethod in information systems research and is well suited to understanding theinteractions between information technology (IT)-related innovations and

organizational contexts Much of the discussion of case study research withininformation systems has centered on the different philosophical perspectives, whichmay be adopted (in particular, the positivist and the interpretive approaches), and theirparticular implications for data collection and analysis methods and for research

outcomes (Izak, David & Melissa) The case study is an up-close, in-depth, and

detailed study of a particular situation rather than a sweeping statistical survey tonarrow down a very broad field of research into one easily researchable topic Itexamines a phenomenon in its natural setting, employing multiple methods of datacollection to gather information from one or a few entities (people, groups, ororganizations)

The motivation for the use of theory in the earlier stages of interpretive casesstudies is to create an initial the theoretical framework which takes account of previousknowledge, and which creates a sensible theoretical basis to inform the topics and

approach of the early empirical work (Walsham) Moreover, the case study is

particularly well suited to IS research because the technology is relatively new andinterest has shifted to organizational rather than technical issues, and case studies canprovide the organizational context for the study of the relationship between strategy

and information technology (Izak et al.) In the information system, the case study is

‘an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-lifecontext, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not

clearly evident’ and it ‘relies on multiple sources of evidence’ (Yin, 1996) Case study

research can be used to achieve various research aims: to provide descriptions ofphenomena, develop theory, and test theory Case study research has often beenassociated with a description and with theory development, where it is used to provideevidence for hypothesis generation and for exploration of areas where existing

knowledge is limited (Cavaye, A.L.M & Cragg, P.B., 1995) For our research, we

studied our case study at WWF - one of the largest and the most prominent NGOs inthe world

For more than half a century, WWF has been working to protect world’s speciesand natural places, pushing for the more sustainable world WWF has a presence inover 100 countries across the world, and their efforts have involved from localizedefforts in favor of a single species and individual habitats to ambitious strategy to

preserve biodiversity and achieve sustainable development across the planet WWFhas a long- established presence in the Mekong region, starting in Vietnam in 1990.Since then, WWF operations have grown to four Country offices based in Cambodia(Phnom Penh), Laos (Vientiane), Thailand (Bangkok) & Vietnam (Hanoi), including aRegional team in the Hanoi, Vientiane and Bangkok offices WWF is one of theleading NGOs in the world, with many years of experience in managing aninternational project at a variety of locations Therefore, with a topic we chose, WWF

is extremely suitable Furthermore, our team has been offered directly guidance fromsenior management on information systems managers at WWF During our internship,

we have been familiarized with, and gained the insights on how a management system

is used for management purposes as well as the need for improvements of suchsystem

2.System development life cycle (SDLC)

Another methodology we use is “System Development Life Cycle” to build anddevelop our application The systems development life cycle (SDLC), also referred to

as the application development life cycle, is a term used in systems engineering,information systems, and software engineering to describe a process for planning,creating, testing, and deploying an information system The systems development life-cycle concept applies to a range of hardware and software configurations, as a systemcan be composed of hardware only, software only, or a combination of both It is amethodology used to describe the process for building information systems, intended

to develop information systems in a very deliberate, structured, and methodologicalway, reiterating each stage of the life cycle The systems development life cycle,according to Elliott & Strachan & Radford (2004), "originated in the 1960s, to developlarge-scale functional business systems in an age of large-scale businessconglomerates Information systems activities revolved around heavy data processing

and number crunching routines (Wikipedia)

In “the system development life cycle, there are six steps, including planning,analyzing, designing, implementing, testing and maintaining Our product is createdbased on these steps The first step in SDLC is planning Without the perfect plan,calculating the strengths and weaknesses of the project, development of software ismeaningless

Planning kicks off a project flawlessly and affects its progress positively.

(Tyagi, 2016) Therefore, we have started with a detailed plan of what to do, how long

it took, how to do it, and divided the work for the team members

After planning, the next step is analysis In Tyagi’s report shows that: “This step is about analyzing the performance of the software at various stages and making notes on additional requirements Analysis is very important to proceed further to the next step.” In this step, we also analyzed the necessity for developing this application.

This helped everyone involved in the project clear of the expectation We haveanalyzed a number of different popular tools In this report, we showed the strengthsand weaknesses of these tools After all the above analysis, we decided on onesolution, Google Applications, including Google Forms, Google Spreadsheets, Awe-some Table, and Google Site to take the next steps

The third step in SDLC is designing Once the analysis is completed, the step ofdesigning takes over, which is building the architecture of the project This step helpsremove possible flaws by setting a standard and attempting to comply with what was

set (Tyagi, 2016) This step has taken most of our time The first thing we did was

building KPIs in four components: finance, human resources (HR), progress, andimpact There is a strong link between these components since information flowsacross the functional areas of finance Project or progress we designed with detailedinstructions on our site to collect data from users and to ease the process of filling ininformation for users Our tools were designed for managing and analyzinginformation in all four components with a visual interface and easy-to-use functions

The next step is developing and implementing According to Tyagi, “The actualtask of developing the software starts here with data recording going on in thebackground Once the software is developed, the stage of implementation comes inwhere the product goes through a pilot study to see if it’s functioning properly.” After

we finished designing, we continued to build and develop the forms with sets ofindicators Forms are created to get information from employees with clear description

in each information box, e.g information about new and old projects, basic employeeinformation, employee performance evaluation, or project progress, etc

Testing is one of the most important steps in SDLC after we designed,developed, and implemented the system The testing stage assesses the software for

errors and documents bugs if there are any (Tyagi, 2016) We had to test many times to

get the final product During the testing process, there were many problems, so we had

to fix those errors from the redesign of the forms to the export of information from theforms to the tables, calculations, statements

Final yet important step is maintaining the process Once the software passesthrough all the stages without any issues, it is to undergo a maintenance processwherein it will be maintained and upgraded from time to time to adapt to changes

(Tyagi, 2016) Maintaining is an extremely important step for a software product A

product is good but it still needs maintenance, and upgrades to be able to operatelonger However, testing the prototype developed with a variety of organization isbeyond the scope of our research

3 Data collection

Multiple data collection methods are typically employed in case study research.Ideally, evidence from two or more sources will converge to support the researchfindings The goal is to obtain a rich set of data surrounding the specific research issue,

as well as capturing the contextual complexity (Izak et al) The data we collected was

from interacting with current WWF systems, desk research, interviews and expertconsultation with key WWF Greater Mekong and Vietnam staff

We collected data from various sources documents not only in WWF website(wwf.panda.org) but also in some other organizations that have the similarorganizational goals with WWF, such as WCS (Worldwide Conservation Society), FFI(Fauna and Flora International), and so on The documents were annual reports aboutfinance, HR, progress, and impact, forms, tables, dashboards etc to show how thoseorganizations work and how their jobs, projects impact nature, especially the forest.This information is important for us to construct key functions of our systems and beinformed of the KPIs used in NGOs For example, in the finance, we designed anddeveloped features to manage cash flows, income, fundraising, types of investors, etc The purpose of the research interview is to explore the views, experiences,

beliefs, and/or motivations of individuals on specific matters (Gill, Stewart, Treasure

& Chadwick., 2008) We interviewed a professional manager of forest projects in

Vietnam at WWF and collected more specific and realistic information about what thebusiness does, the strengths, and the weaknesses of the project management system

and the performance With many years of experience in the field of projectmanagement, the manager explained, presented, and provided suggestions for ourproject to help our research become better and completely.

Moreover, we had weekly consultations with an expert in Monitoring andEvaluation of WWF every week who had many years of experience in managing dataand information for various projects, not just within WWF She was the one whoguided and helped us to work more effectively, providing useful information materials,sharing work experience in the field of information management In addition to theinformation from literature and previous studies and users from internet on pros andcons of current systems or solution, we also used some of her own opinions as anexpert view

4.Data analysis

Data analysis is a process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modelingdata with the goal of discovering useful information, suggesting conclusions, andsupporting decision-making Data analysis has multiple facets and approaches,encompassing diverse techniques under a variety of names, in the different business,

science, and social science domains (Wikipedia) In information systems and research,

data analysis is a method of analyzing theories into parts, and historical relationships

of time to perceive, discover and exploit different aspects of the theory from and applyinformation for research topics This method includes techniques for content analysis

of text documents and system evaluation of the current project management systems inWWF

Thus, the annual reports of WWF and interview transcripts were thoroughlyanalyzed to discover key themes of and identified gaps in over the years Apart fromWWF's report, we also analyzed the reports of other organizations such as WCS, FFI

to find out the strengths and shortcomings of WWF reports in compared to those twoorganizations In general, most organizations share the same project components,including finance, HR, progress, and impact In addition, the methodology inmanagement is quite similar

In order to analyze the interview, it was necessary to follow three steps The firststep was listening to the tape and transcribing the interview The second step wasreading through the transcripts several to be familiar with what is being said

Moreover, in the last step, we coded the interview using color-coding technique.Coding means defining, categorizing and grouping the main topics and sub-topics todevelop themes and sub-themes After coding, refining codes is undertaken to ensure

themes are consistent across multiple interviews (Griffee) Having done all those

analyzing steps, we used the information on the strengths and weaknesses of WWFGreater Mekong information management systems to formulate a free onlineInformation Management solution for a typical NGO

FINDINGS

1 The tool

In order to find or create a tool that is applicable to many, the tool must achievesome of the requirements for some specific purposes After our research, it seemed thatmost of the organization profit or nonprofit usually used four main components:Finance, Progress, HR, and Impact

Finance information is the most important part of every organization No matterwhat kind of organization or company, this part of information must be included It isnot just counting the profit company or organization make, it helps managers tomonitor the money flowing in the company and to make sure the company ororganization can afford to run

The activity progress information helps the managers being informed of thestatus of projects or activities of a company or organization It keeps the managersupdated of what is happening so he or she can have the quickest reaction in time Thishas become the most common most company and organization

Human Resource Management Information is also a must-have information tohelp the company or organization control its human power efficiently The importance

of this component increases as the size of company or organization and an effective

HR system will contribute to ensure the company run smoothly through variousunexpected changes of staff HR management involves information from recruitment,training, staff performance appraisal, promotion, thus it would be difficult for a HRmanager to control without a system to help them However, a small company with asize of less than 20 employees would only need a simple information system for HRpurposes

Showing the organization impact was not important previously, but withdevelopment of technology and information sharing, this information has become animportant currency of an NGO It is not only being used to produce reports as perdonors’ requirements of a grant but useful to promote the credibility of an NGO aswell as for adaptive management for better results

- KPIs is the crucial part of the tool, mainly because the data and information willhold no value to the manager if it not serving its purpose A system must have away to indicate the data and information that the manager wants A set oftypical KPIs for the for areas, Finance, Progress, HR management and Impactwere suggested

The final information system solution developed is a free, online tool that iscustomizable to the need of the NGO A Google site serves as landing page to for users

to update information and to managers to access analysis as well as raw information

1.1 Intended institution/ user

The research team developed a tool to address the needs of a hypothesis NGOorganization with the following features:

- It has mission in promoting people in planting trees and to increase the forestcover in various provinces in Vietnam, through various projects

- It receives funding from various sources, including its own network, privatedonations, corporates, government aid agencies through various grants whichhas different end dates However, the organization uses both USD and VND inits reports

- It has a reasonable size of staff, of less than 300 staff

In term of system, they will need:

- A simple platform that can be accessible by all staff via single sign on

- There is a super admin who can admin google site, work with Google formsand Google spreadsheet at medium to advanced level

1.2 Choice of platforms

As previously mentioned we have compared and rated different platforms to choosethe most suitable, free and easy to set up and summarized in this table

Criteria Excel CommCare ODK Google suites

(Grade: 1- very negative; 2 - negative; 3 - normal; 4 - positive; 5 - very positive)

Google suites come out as highest among the 4 platforms/ solution

Excel

Despite its popularity and good features, the biggest limitation of using Excel isits inability to real time collaboration by various users, without Office 365subscription and have updated to Version 1707 Build 8326.2058 or later Excel 2016users who don’t have an Office 365 subscription (or users of older versions of Excel)can’t currently collaborate from within the desktop version of Excel, although they canstill collaborate (or invite others to collaborate) using Excel Online in a browser Atsome point, Microsoft says, the non-subscription desktop version of Excel will also getcollaboration features, but the company isn’t saying exactly when.12

ODK

ODK does requires a administrator or system manager having some certainlevel of IT In addition, the organization needs to have its own server In addition, theinability to sequential updating based on previous inputs make it difficult forlongitudinal comparison, one of the key requirement from manager when analyzingdata

Commcare

collaboration.html

12https://www.computerworld.com/article/3212262/office-software/how-to-use-excel-live-Commcare had many good comments from their clients and is a reasonablyeasy to use solution However, it costs nearly 500 USD per month subscription to anorganization with dashboard creation feature We experimented the system and wasable to create forms, creating linkages like a relational database We did not pay thesubscription so that we could not access to the dashboard feature but it seemed like anoption if the organization can afford However for the objective of a free, onlinesolution Commcare was not the selected answer.

Google suite products

With the advantage of acting as a free hosting service when combining Googledrive and Google site, and the ability to allow multiple users, allow data editing withtrack changes, plus the ability to analyse, Google suite comes out as highest mark.With more advanced use of Google Apps Script, more sophisticated solution can becreated, however we can also try with some ready-made apps and some work-around

1.3 Technical process to set up the tool using Google suites products

To collect information for office management and performance management,

we assume the data is coming from staff inputs on a pre-defined reporting time via aset of pre-set forms with analysis categories are set up as drop- down box The userhence will just choose from a list of information in each section However, there is achoice to enter new option for drop down For example, if there is a new project, thestaff will enter the project name information This information will be automaticallyupdated to the drop-down list, available to use by all other users It means that theinformation is only entered once to ensure consistency

Product development is a crucial phase, includes building data point, analyzingdata flow, using the five different Google suite products : Google Drive for storage,Google Forms Sheets, Sites and Awesome Tables, an example of Google Apps Scriptused to create a table from a spreadsheet and add interactive controls (filters) tomanipulate the data it displays Each application has its own purpose, as follows:

Google Form was used to create forms In total, we have created Google forms

to enable the data entry from staff Specifically,

- Finance: 1 Google form - Grant Information

- HR: 2 Google forms: Job satisfaction, Performance Plan and PerformanceDetails

- Progress: 2 Google forms: Project Performance Management, DepartmentPerformance Management

- Impact: 1 Google form: Impact Summary

We used additional Google Apps Script, Form Rangers to help create down solution from a Google sheet called Parameter, which contains categories thatneed to be used consistently by different users and departments such as staff names,project names, locations

drop-The information filled into a Google Form are exported to a Google Sheet,called the "Form Response" The most creative solution applied here is that users caneither choose from existing option or add a new entry to the drop-down list

To do this, we link the drop-down options to separate Google Sheet, callParameter, where all the categories and options are pre-populated

If the users want to add a new entry, firstly, they will choose to option, “Enter anew project” prompt from the Google Form question Once the new projectinformation is filled in, it will automatically be updated to the basic informationcolumns in the parameter sheet and automatically update the form to become an "old"project

The admin will write the statement to the automatically update thecorresponding worksheet For example, the basic information about the project,information about the donation, donor information, etc

Lastly, we used Charting function in Google Sheet to create visualizationincluding pie or bar charts so that staff and managers can understand and supportdecision making more quickly

In order to facilitate retrieving data entered through Google forms, we set up aGoogle site and embed the raw data (collected to Google Sheets) and use AwesomeTables so that users can filter or query the data entered quickly and simply The Googlesite thus serves as both landing page for three important purposes:

- To retrieve data, with option of filter through all data entered

- As a visualization dashboard: Entered data are aggregated to basicallyequivalent to KPIs and related information, useful for senior managers Chartsand cross tab are produced automatically and real time to support managers indecision making as well as in future planning

- Acting as a communication portal, where staff can bookmark to update the newinformation according to the agreed schedule of reporting

It is noteworthy on the role of the admin of the system The admin will have theresponsibility to pre-populate the drop- down options such as local name, project nameand quarterly report in the Parameter This allows a new NGO can customize thesolution anytime to fit their needs

2 Setting KPIs for Organizations

2.1 Finance

Financial sustainability of an NGO depends on generating revenue andresponsibly managing its budget The donors, public, beneficiaries and managers canlook at a financial dashboard to assess the performance and viability of a NGO(Financial Metrics and KPIs.) Moreover, using a financial dashboard can helpmanager making decisions efficiency and effectively e.g by comparing with itsplanned targets or a benchmark

There are many ways to describe financial KPIs such as using column charts torepresent the number of new donors over the years, or pie charts to show thecomposition of income in a year, or line charts to highlight the rate of changes inincome (increase or decrease) over the years, or a crosstab table to summarize absolutedata about grants, projects

2.1.1 Finance KPIs in NGOs

The team studied a sample of other organizations such as Wildlife ConservationSociety (WCS), Fauna and Flora International (FFI) for what are covered in financialreports of all these organizations The information is quite similar, covering donation,income, and expenditure However, the visualizations are different

In NGOs, it is common that there is not one fixed source of funding but comingfrom a variety of sources On one hand, it is a good practice to have diverse source offunding, depending on the stage of development, a NGO might need to attract newdonors or donators An NGO always need to have some level of reserved funds inplace to reduce the risks that occur in their operations

Therefore, the team has developed a set of KPIs based on the characteristics andnature of NGOs, including stability, long-term, flexibility and risk reduction:

First, the stability here is to assess the stability of cash inflows over the yearsincluding the restricted income and unrestricted income A chart showing the totalamount of money goes up gradually over the years, without strong fluctuations (up-down) can mean a good and effective organization The target for percentage ofchanges in income of course depends on the stage of the organization E.g it candeliberately see a lower income period during restructuring On the other hand,according to The World Bank, there is "a sharp decline in public and private fundingfor key growth sectors and basic infrastructure are creating huge gaps in long-term

finance for development” (http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/longtermfinance) Thus,

it called for attracting private sector finance and investment to help the world meetglobal development goals Therefore, it is also important to watch out for thedevelopment in income from a certain category

The next aspect is flexibility The financial flexibility used to describe acompany's ability to react to unexpected expenses and investment opportunities.Financial flexibility is usually assessed by examining the company's use of advantage

as well as cash holdings (Financial Flexibility, 2018) With their flexibility, NGOs can

overcome the shortage of investment resources and take advantage of unexpectedopportunities Therefore, these organizations can completely reduce risks throughflexibility

2.1.2 Financial Data point

Figure 10: Financial Data point

“Grant Information” is a basic information table of each project, includingproject code, project name, start – end dates of the project, type of income, likelihood,donor name, kinds of donor currency, and the amount of project that is donated inUSD

We recommended that each grant contract is considered as the basis of dataentry, as normally each grant is associated with a specific condition and informationcan be aggregated per year or per donor, but can also be drilled down to a singlecontract If there is no requirement to track at the single contract level, the organizationcan choose another dimension as its basic unit to enter, such as donor name, or projectwhich income should be broken down per year (either financial year or calendar year,depending on practice of the organization)

From that basic information, the table of “donor information” will be created Inthis table, the data included donor name, donor currency, type of donor, start – enddate donation, donated amount and project code to query from “Grant Information”

“Donor Opportunity” shows the likelihood of securing a project 100% meansthat amount absolutely secured to the organization, and the percentage decreases withthe likelihood.

“Project Information” is connected to “Grant Information” via a project code,project name, start – end date, and total amount after being converted to USD Otherinformation of organization, Progress, Human Resource Management and Impact, will

be attributed or linked to a project code from this table

Expenditure is another important finance information another important financeinformation of the organization It can be can be divided into three kinds, projectexpenditure, department expenditure, and staff cost Project and departmentexpenditure contain project code, department name,, amount and budget To calculatethe budget for project and expenditure, there are some kinds of the budget such asmeetings fee, traveling, advisory, management fee, etc Staff cost includes wages andsalaries of employees, social security cost, and pension cost for retired employees

Reserve is the last KPIs in Finance It is calculated by total income minus totalexpenditure The annual reserve can help to sustain the organization operating at times

of no additional or lack of income or when the organization needs to invest into newareas but do not have a dedicated donation yet or to cover an unexpected expense such

as office move

2.1.3 Financial KPIs

Based on all these natures and the data point, the researchers built anddeveloped financial KPIs The first KPI is about the type of income, include thepercentage of total gross income that is restricted and unrestricted Restricted income

is income the use of which is restricted for a specific purpose (by the donor), forexample to grow mangroves Consequently, they are not available for general use such

as for investing in fundraising Conversely, unrestricted income may be used for any ofthe organization's purposes These KPIs is a measure of how flexibly the income can

be used, to provide perspective on the level of risk that has in its ability to coverongoing non-conservation costs and unexpected costs arising from unforeseen events

It is also a measure of flexibility that the organization has in using its income for new

developments (Figure 2.1.3.1 Type of income in 2018)

Figure 11: Type of income in 2018 Figure 12: The total income from 2014 to

2022

The next KPI is the total annual income The total income can come fromvarious sources It is a measure of the stability of income over the years, which cancome from the level of trust with a particular group of donor, success of fundraising

and the performance of the organization itself (Figure 2.1.3.2 The total income from

2014 to 2022)

The financial department also manages information about the project, includingthe information about project code, project name, likelihood, type of income, start aday, end a day, who is donating, kinds of donor's currency, and the most important isthe total amount of agreed by donor for a project over a period of time, or in a single

year (Figure 2.1.3.3 Budget of the project)

Figure 13: Budget of the project Figure 14: Type of donors

On donor analysis, the main types of the donors can be individuals, business,government, corporation development organization, public partnership, and WWF

Networks These categories should be customized to the context of each organization.E.g for WWF case, WWF network is one important source of funding For some otherNGOs, they might not have this category These KPIs is used as a measure of the

stability of donor funds to identify the target audience (Figure 2.1.3.4 Type of donors)

Another financial KPI is the expenditure This KPI has been divided it into twokinds of expenditure, include project expenditure and department expenditure.Expenditure consists of staff and other costs and includes travel, telecommunications,office running costs, field spending, allocated overheads, etc It is used to assess if ahealthy proportion of money is spent on their conservation program, whilst ensuringthat administrative and fundraising spend is at the right level to ensure that current andfuture capacity needs are met Moreover, this KPIs has enabled the tracking of plannedinvestments and expected savings

The last KPI we built is the reserve, which is equal to total income minus totalexpenditure Besides, the reserve also shows the total unrestricted and restrictedreserves expressed as the number of the month of average monthly spend It assesseshow financially flexible is to ensure that it is able to cover expenses relating tounforeseen events and whether amounts stored in the bank are reasonable (not toohigh), thereby ensuring that as much money as possible is being spent on conservationprojects to maximize conservation impacts and to meet stakeholders' (especiallydonors') expectations

2.2 Human Resource Management KPIs

An NGOs should have smart plans and policies to attract people as well as to todevelop and retain qualified personnel with with experience, and skills These These are the key to the success of any organization

2.1.2 Data point and data flow.

Data flow and the data link in management is shown as the below:

Figure 15: HRM Data point

All information of employees is stored in a separate table for the convenientquery when needed This table is called “Basic information” with some informationsuch as name, date of birth, position, department, contact etc This table is entered by

an HR staff when there is a new employee

For the KPIs of the recruitment section, the system will retrieve the necessaryinformation from the query "Basic information" and aggregate the number of Position

by the department Once the Planned position is entered by a department head or HRMadmin, the numbers needed for recruitment will be calculated This is the informationfor the "recruitment detail", the information fields on the table are shown as shownabove

To report the recruitment, we need two tables as a result of the query: The first

is the “recruitment time” table, giving results on the number of recruitment daysneeded for each batch This gives employers the ability to make predictions of futureemployment more accurate and credible