Accountability vs. Reportability

In teaching situations, I have often used the words “accountability” and eportability” to help make a distinction between two different kinds of information sharing.

This is helpful is because I have found in talking with fundraisers that there is often a temptation to obscure accountability when talking about information sharing. It’s very easy, for example, to get wrapped up in decisions about “who should see which reports” and forget that an essential ingredient of good fundraising is direct-line accountability. But an equally helpful kind of information sharing is done in a lateral direction.

For example, let’s say we have developed an accountability system for our director of development in a small nonprofit. And we are looking monthly, quarterly and annually at such things as the number of calls to donors, the number of letters to donors, and the number of donor visits for cultivation and solicitation, and the amounts and types of gifts solicited.

On the one hand, the person who most needs to know that information is the boss, the CEO, the person to whom the director of development reports directly. That information is crucial to the executive’s being able to helpfully and accurately assess the director of development’s performance.

But this is also the sort of information that is helpfully shared either laterally with department heads or vertically, with board members, or with those who report to the director of development. The board members need to know that this information is being kept, and that the director of development is making progress on agreed-upon goals. This is part of the reporting procedure of the CEO to the board.

But sharing that type of information in the other direction of information sharing is equally helpful, because it allows those who report to the D. of D. to know that their boss is held accountable and is performing in ways that are directly benefiting the fundraising process of which they are a part.

So “accountability” is sharing the stats of the D of D’s performance with the CEO, while “reportability” is sharing those stats with the board members (for reassurance and oversight purposes) and with the fundraising staff (for an example and to show mutuality of performance). Both accountability and reportability are critical to the success of the fundraising effort.