Case Study – Capacity and Capability Assessment

Case Study – Capacity and Capability Assessment

Issue

A Prime Recipient of Donor funding was experiencing programmatic delays relating to field activities, which were producing poor outputs that were not anticipated, resulting in contractual obligations not being met.

Request

The Company asked us to help assess the local Partner to establish why they were not meeting obligations and if we could develop a strategy to improve gaps in the management of the project activities and financial management.

Action

Through stakeholder interviews, we established that the main issue was delays in clearing payments to sub-recipients, which resulted in slow and paused field activities due to a lack of funds at a local level. We conducted a financial controls assessment of the Prime Recipient and Financial Management Capacity Assessments on all Subrecipients to identify weaknesses and gaps that could be responsible for the issue.

Outcome

First, we ensured that the local Subrecipient action plans we developed were implemented. This strengthened the Sub-recipients’ Financial Management through new policies and operating procedures that we tested to ensure they were fit for purpose, efficient and proportionate. The Prime recipient gained more assurance by lowering financial risk based on this strengthening. Coupled with our recommendations on improvements to their financial controls, the efficiency of the payment process was improved to the extent that program obligations were exceeded.