Real information sharing between the umbrella bodies and their members

Besides trainings, information sharing is an important task of the umbrella and quasi- umbrella NGOs. The umbrella bodies share information with members and beneficiaries

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but also expect the members to share some information with them. As mentioned earlier (see 5.2) the survival of the organization depends on how it plays the intermediary role and converts money to information/reputation coming from the members or other beneficiaries. Ideally and many times information is shared among the actors but there are many challenges as well which will be elaborated in this section. The kind of information the umbrella bodies share or want to share with members and beneficiaries varies from national policy issues to international processes as well as information on donors providing funding:

It's information about different things that is related to what we are doing. - - so usually information about the policy issues, maybe if we have been engaged in lobbying and advocacy about certain policies, changing policy directions, policy priorities or something like that. It's information about policy processes in general. Information about what other member organization are doing, sharing it to the wider civil society sector in Tanzania. So information is two-way: information goes to civil society and out of the civil society sectors. - - Kind of information we channel to our members: this is what happened at the international level. And when it comes to the national level there are these policy processes, budget processes that we share. Then there is that information that comes from the NGOs themselves, what they are doing and their success stories, their ongoing projects and activities that they have on the ground. They bring that and we use channels to share that information with other member organizations and other actors, like the government, donor community and politicians. (David June 2010)

We have the website where the donors are so we always want to send, we always disperse it to all members. (Idrisa July 2010)

Yet, different members have different access to the information provided by the umbrella and quasi-umbrella NGOs. During the field trip to Tanzania I met quite many members of the umbrella NGOs and they rarely had computers in their offices or access to internet from the office. Some could use internet cafes – when the connection works –but for others, especially in rural village areas, it might have been almost impossible. Yet, members in Dar es Salaam were explaining how internet and mailing lists are important channels to share information and especially the FCS’ large civil society mailing list was mentioned for getting a variety of information (Dennis July 2010; Judith July 2010). The rural-urban aspect becomes relevant again in terms of sharing information between stakeholders. Sometimes in order to give and get information from

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members, workers of the umbrella body need to travel to the member. One umbrella NGO’s worker is elaborating this issue:

Another challenge is that Tanzania is very big, getting all the NGOs here is challenging, so you usually opt to travel where the NGOs are, it is somehow challenging to coordinate NGOs in a big country like Tanzania. It takes a lot of resources to get the information out there for everyone and get the feedback when you need it. (David June 2010)

The location of the member’s office becomes crucial because members located in Dar es Salaam have better access to information and other services. It can also be asked how many member NGOs are attending the umbrella NGOs’ Annual General Meetings, the most important meeting once in a year to get feedback and give feedback and to hold the body accountable, except those ones situated in Dar es Salaam and the ones having well established funding (from the donors). Many members highlighted the cost of travelling from the rural areas to Dar es Salaam as being too much. The Annual General Meetings are also important events to share information and network among the members and other stakeholders. One of the member NGOs is explaining why they have two offices, one in the country side and the other one in Dar es Salaam, even though they do not implement any projects in Dar es Salaam:

We have two offices, one in [rural area] and this [in Dar es Salaam]. You know it's good for information, dissemination and gathering of information because if you are there you are out of information. That's what we do. We are benefiting a lot having office here in Dar es Salaam. (Judith July 2010)

Sometimes it is not enough to have an office in Dar es Salaam if the systems of sharing information are not in place and actively used in the umbrella NGOs. One staff member from the umbrella criticizes especially the lack of continuity in information sharing, whereby sometimes information is shared more actively and sometimes there are gaps:

Of course we have the public relations officer who is supposed to work on this. We had agreed, we should develop a list of different stakeholders including our members so that once we have any information, we forward it to all but also we need to create a way of getting feedback that is where we have not done anything. - - Of course, I know, as they [staff members working for one project] visit the organizations, it's also a means of getting feedback, but it should be constant. It's not a onetime thing. That means we need to create a system for flood of information. We provide information but also to get feedback for what is that and what is this. (Amina July 2010)

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Also, members do not so actively share their information on activities etc. This gives the impression that the member organizations do not see the relevance in sending information to umbrella bodies, while umbrella NGOs have not been too active in explaining the relevance and asking for the information to be sent:

We find that members are doing lot of work but we are not informed but a few of them also sent information to us. But this is an area that is a grey area that it's not something that really happens regularly. It doesn't happen that we get copies of information. (Selemani June 2010)

ME: I have understood that the members should send you the annual reports?

AMINA: They should but not many of them are, very few. I would even count them. I don't think they go beyond ten. I know some organizations that constantly bring their annual reports but not all of them do that. And at times, it is also, of course, like we are not very strong in following up.

Moreover, members who are active change. New NGOs are born and ‘old’ ones die. The NGO sector is changing all the time, even though some stability can be found among the stronger and/or donor-favored member NGOs. This affects also the information sharing between the members and umbrella NGOs, since it might be difficult to keep track of which members are active. This also explains why there is sometimes no total increase in memberships, even though the number of new members in the umbrella NGOs increases all the time.