Accountability and funding decision-making

Accountability is a core issue in the lives of non-profit organizations in this new century, simply because many funders determine the continuity of their contributions to the level of transparency in the management of donated resources. However, accountability should not be focused strictly on being transparent regarding to how resources are spent, but also regarding to the quality of services delivered to the public. It is true that one may be spending resources in a transparent way 'free of corruption', but is the public feeling comfortable with the service? In addition to determine whether a given organization is delivering X amount of service or not, the community will surely find the channel to express their dissatisfaction in the case of not being well served. Here is where I think about the importance of public feedback when funders do surveys to find out about the fulfillment of the goals. Many funders have “modified grant-making or contracting activities in response to changing community needs”. This infers that -somehow- the community’s feedback information has weight in funding decisions. But looking at Campbell et al research, it is striking to learn that among the main purposes that motivate some human service provider organizations to collect feedback from the public, the issue of "community needs" appears at the bottom of the roster. Definitely human service providers should pay more attention to the voice of the community in order to be constantly adjusting their service delivery performance ... this will surely influence public’s feedback and build on their accountability process to the long run.