Standard 10: Laying the foundations for effective donor engagement and accountability.

Lay the foundations for successful donor engagement throughout the project.

Develop project templates that support compliance with donor and grant requirements.

Why
Meeting donor expectations for award deliverables, including regular project reports, is key to effective donor engagement and accountability. In cases where donors do not provide specific templates for reports and other deliverables, the project team and subject-matter experts must develop appropriate templates. Developing such templates and providing orientation to project staff on their use early in the project start-up period:
- Demonstrates CRS’ commitment to compliance and accountability.
- Helps CRS and partner staff to internalize and understand donor requirements and expectations.
- Enables CRS to provide information in formats that address donor requirements, information needs, and communication preferences.
- Helps individual CRS and partner staff understand how the information they will collect and prepare fits into the bigger picture of stewardship and compliance.

Who
- Primary responsible: Project manager or chief of party (PM/CoP)
  - The PM or CoP oversees the process of developing project templates.
- Others involved: Head of operations (HoOps); MEAL staff; finance manager or designate; risk and compliance staff; supply chain management staff, as applicable; information and communication technology (ICT) staff; IDEA staff (for centrally-funded awards); CRS and partner project staff
  - The HoOps, MEAL staff, finance staff, risk and compliance, and other operations staff, along with IDEA staff, ensure that the templates developed are consistent with CRS and donor needs, policies, and requirements;
  - ICT staff support as needed with expertise related optimizing the flow and consolidation of data for reporting;
  - CRS and partner project staff provide feedback on the templates

When
Finalize templates before the submission of the first report(s) or any other early deliverable, generally:
- In the first month for projects shorter than 12 months
- In the first quarter for projects longer than 12 months
- As soon as possible for emergency projects
Whenever possible, prepare templates in time to review during the project start-up workshop.

How
Follow these steps to develop appropriate project templates:
1. The PM/CoP reviews the final donor agreement, the Award Management Deliverables CalendarThe Award Management Deliverables Calendar is an "at-a-glance" tracking tool that summarizes information about deliverables (e.g., technical and financial reports; MEAL documents such as Terms of Reference and evaluation reports; detailed implementation plans or project work plans, etc.) that CRS must submit to the donor under the terms of the donor award. and any issues highlighted in the review of the draft agreementFor example, financial reporting requirements that are more detailed or complex than usual. (see Standard 10, key action 1) to:
- Understand donor requirements for award deliverables including narrative, financial, and any supply chain reports, as well as MEAL deliverables (see MEAL Procedure 7.1MEAL Procedure 7.1 : Integrate donor MEAL requirements into the MEAL system and check on compliance during
  implementation. )
- Confirm if there are any donor templates for deliverables
- Identify which deliverables will require a CRS-developed template.
1. For centrally-funded awards where IDEA staff coordinate donor engagement, the PM/CoP reaches out to these staff for additional guidance on the donor’s requirements and expectations.
Reporting templates and the forms behind them: While CRS ultimately submits compiled information in its reports to the donor, the data behind these reports is often collected via forms that may be completed by a range of project staff. Work with subject matter experts (e.g. MEAL staff, supply chain management staff) to think through what is needed in the more detailed data collection forms as well as the higher-level templates. Engage ICT staff and any data protection focal point to identify ways to ensure a smooth process for consolidating the data that the project team will analyze, interpret, and integrate into reports for the donor, as well as a process for protecting and de-identifying the personally identifiable information of any project participants that may be used in these reports.
1. For programmatic deliverables: If the donor has not provided a template for a deliverable,For example, a project workplan, technical progress report, MEAL plan or indicator tracking table, or a project risk management plan.
  
  Note that risk management plans are listed under “programmatic” deliverables as donors who require them typically request them as part of technical program reporting. However, it’s important to note that the risks in the risk management plan/project risk assessment may go beyond programmatic risks and include many operations-related risks. See Standard 11, key action 2 for more on project risk and issue identification and management. the PM/CoP works with other project team members and subject-matter experts to develop or adapt templates and any related forms or tools.
- Use the templates in “Tools & Templates” section as a starting point.
- If the donor is funding other CRS projects, request copies of templates developed by other country programs and any lessons learned from the country programs regarding the usefulness of these templates. Ask IDEA staff if the donor has provided any formal or informal feedback on their satisfaction with those templates.
- For technical progress reports, keep in mind that the process of developing the project MEAL system and operating manual includes comprehensive reporting templates and underlying forms that will replace any preliminary documents developed at this early stage.
1. For financial reports: For USG prime awards, CRS Overseas Finance submits all project financial reports using the required SF 425 template. For financial reports submitted by a country program or regional office or for non-USG prime awards submitted by a headquarters project team, the PM/CoP works with the finance manager (or equivalent staff in HQ) to develop an appropriate financial report template.
- Use the template from the proposal cost application as a starting point.
- Seek support from the regional finance officer or Overseas Finance staff as needed as needed with template development and/or review.
- See “When CRS is a sub-recipient” below for guidance on developing financial report templates when CRS is not the prime.
1. For supply chain management deliverables and reports: Most donors who fund projects that include the distribution of goods will have their own templates for deliverables and reports, or other requirements for the information CRS and its partners must track. In the absence of donor templates, the PM/CoP works with country program supply chain management staff to develop appropriate templates.
- Use resources from the Supply Chain Management Handbook (e.g. Distribution Report Examples) as a starting point.
- Seek support from regional and Global Supply Chain Management staff as needed with template development and/or review.
1. After finalization of the initial templates, the PM/CoP works with program and operations leads (e.g. MEAL staff, HoOps, finance manager or designate, supply chain management staff) to orient CRS and project team members to the details of the reporting templates and the process for completing them.
- Click here for Tips on orienting CRS and partner staff to new project templates.
  Include this orientation as part of the start-up workshop whenever possible, or as part of a team meeting as soon as possible once the templates are finalized.
  
  Provide more in-depth training as needed on more complex templates.
  
  Provide individualized support to partners as needed (for example during project financial system set-up - see Standard 8, Key Action 6).
  
  Ensure that any staff with roles in project reporting who join the project after the initial project team orientation to reporting templates receive the same orientation as part of their onboarding.
1. As CRS and partner staff begin to use the templates for deliverables submitted to donors on a recurring basis (e.g. reporting templates), the PM/CoP gathers feedback from staff involved in preparing these reports, to identify any improvements or refinements needed to the formats and/or guidance on how to complete them.

Partnership
- While CRS rather than partners are typically responsible for completing the templates for donor deliverables, partners collect much of the data which ultimately is reported to the donor. As noted under Standard 7, key action 4, partner participation in the development and finalization of MEAL system forms and templates is critical.
- For partner financial reporting templates, the starting point is the Sub-Recipient Liquidation Report TemplatePer CRS policy, “Country Programs or Regions may use their own liquidation formats as long as their report versions contain at a minimum all information that appears on the Liquidation Report Templates furnished as attachments to this policy.” from CRS’ Sub-Recipient Financial Monitoring Policy tools.
- Provide orientation and support to partner staff to fill out all templates (as applicable) and underlying data collection forms correctly and on time (see also Standard 8, key action 6 and Standard 10, key action 2). Orientation is especially important for more complex forms and/or templates and processes that may be new for partner staff.
- Check with partner staff on their experience using the templates and underlying forms in the early days post-roll-out, to adjust or provide additional training as needed.
When CRS is a sub-recipient
- As a sub-recipient, CRS’ focus is on complying with the prime’s requirements for reports and other deliverables. The prime may develop project-specific templates and may include CRS in their development.
- If the prime does not provide templates, CRS works with the prime to clarify their requirements and develops templates accordingly per the process described above.
Emergency projects
- Follow the same process for emergency projects, telescoping as needed.
- For emergency responses funded by multiple donors, work with donors as possible to streamline the diversity of templates. Ideally, CRS would develop a single template for each deliverable required by multiple donors, rather than customized templates for different donors.
- If you are working on a large-scale emergency where several Caritas Internationalis (CI) Members are responding and/or supporting a response of the national Caritas, please refer to the Protocol for CI Coordination in Emergency Response, Emergency Framework and Toolkit for Emergency Response documents on the CI Baobab website. These documents provide guidance on coordination and the process of developing, implementing, monitoring and reporting on an Emergency Appeal for funding via the CI Network. If you are not registered on the CI Baobab site, please register here.When registering for the CI Baobab site, CRS staff should select "Caritas United States - CRS" as their organization and list the Humanitarian Response Department and [email protected] as the reference contact. If you have any questions, please contact CRS’ Humanitarian Response Department ([email protected]).

Standard 10: Laying the foundations for effective donor engagement and accountability.

Key resources

Tools and templates

Policies and procedures

Other resources