The question Hong Kong charities must answer

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust’s first impact report has put a sharper focus on how Hong Kong judges organisations that claim a public or social role.

Beyond spending and launches

Hong Kong has many institutions that use the language of service and responsibility, but it too often lacks a clear account of the difference those institutions actually make.

That gap is why the HKJC Charities Trust’s first impact report deserves attention.

On one level, publishing such a report can look like routine institutional business.

The larger significance is that it raises a question Hong Kong has often tended to skirt round: how should organisations with a public or social role be judged?

The limits of scale

Large charities, public bodies and companies have become skilled at reporting what they have spent, what they have launched and how many people they have reached.

Those figures matter because they can show scale and, in some cases, efficiency.

But those figures cannot, by themselves, show whether people’s lives have improved.

They also cannot show on their own whether a need was met or whether a problem was eased in any lasting way.

A test of accountability

The report could help push Hong Kong’s NGOs towards a more serious culture of accountability.

That would mean looking beyond activity and reach, and asking what changed as a result of the work being reported.

For charities and other public-facing organisations, the central issue is not only what they did, but whether that work made a measurable difference.

Source: South China Morning Post