Meet Our New GlassPockets Foundation: C&A Foundation reflects on becoming accountable from the inside out

C&A Foundation is the first European foundation to sign up for GlassPockets. Sarah Ong, Programme Manager, Supply Chain Innovation and Transformation, explains why.

Disclosure of transparent data is one of the C&A Foundation’s major strategies to improve conditions in the garment industry. We believe transparency is an essential tool to increase accountability in apparel production and much of our support is focused on enabling partners to disclose and use transparent data on supply chains and working conditions. Discovering GlassPockets, it only seemed right to practice what we preach and make our own way of working transparent too. Our Executive Director, Leslie Johnston explains:

"Joining GlassPockets was an important first step, allowing us to apply our deep commitment to transparency to ourselves while also learning from others how else we can be more open."

"C&A Foundation is working hard to positively transform one of the world’s most opaque industries: fashion. To do so, we believe in the power of transparency which can move hearts, change minds, and nudge action. It is therefore equally important that we embrace transparency in how we operate. Joining GlassPockets was an important first step, allowing us to apply our deep commitment to transparency to ourselves while also learning from others how else we can be more open. We still have work to do but are grateful for initiatives like GlassPockets that enable more accountability in the philanthropic sector.”

One of the things we’ve found from the transparency work we support is that disclosure is more useful when it is made in a standardised way, so that performance can be compared against peers and over time. It is for this reason we believe it’s important to disclose through our new GlassPockets profile, as well as on our own website.

As a relatively new foundation we are still on a transparency journey. We began by making our external evaluations public, and last year the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) conducted our first anonymous partner survey. CEP then used the survey results to benchmark our performance against 300 other funders, which we made a priority to publish on our website. The results were like holding up a mirror to our own performance. We learned that our first few years as a global foundation have not always been easy on our partners, particularly as we have been developing our processes and strategy. Reflecting on the results, we have identified two priorities for improvement:

• Improving the transparency and efficiency of our processes: Survey respondents rated the foundation lower than typical on the clarity and consistency of its communications. The feedback showed we need to be more transparent on what we do and don't fund, and on how our grantmaking process works.
• Improving our quality of relationship with partners: While foundation staff have higher than typical contact with survey respondents, we received lower than typical ratings for understanding of our partners' contexts. Simply, we need to listen better.

Publishing the results of our CEP benchmarking, was our way of taking them seriously, holding ourselves accountable and letting others hold us accountable to act on what we heard. We hope the changes we have made, and the process of being transparent will have improved the quality of our relationships with our partners and the change we can achieve together.

"We still have work to do but are grateful for initiatives like GlassPockets that enable more accountability in the philanthropic sector."

Participating in GlassPockets is the next step on our transparency journey. Completing the disclosure has highlighted several more areas where we can be more transparent, and we plan to add to our disclosures over the coming months. For example, we realised that we do not disclose our diversity data or diversity values and policies, which is an oversight since gender equity is so central to our work. We hope this disclosure encourages partners and those in the communities where we work to help us get better in how we do what we do. Our doors are open for your feedback.

--Sarah Ong