International Aid Solutions - Médecins Sans Frontières Australia .: Chartered Accountants Student Challenge :.

International Aid Solutions

Team members:
Alicia Tan (University of Technology, Sydney) ,
Eleanor Webster (The University of Sydney) ,
Scott Thomas (The University of New South Wales)

In order to vote for this submission, please install Flash. Click here to install Flash

Synopsis

As a partner section of Médecins Sans Frontières International, Médecins Sans Frontières Australia is committed to the organisation's objectives of providing medical-humanitarian aid to those in need, regardless of race, religion, gender or political affiliation, and raising awareness of the plight of these people. The Australian section specifically achieves this through recruiting International Field Staff, supplying specialist paediatric and women's health medical assistance to operations, raising funds to support projects and raising awareness the issues faced in the field.

Through considering these objectives and operations, International Aid Solutions (IAS) has developed seven key performance indicators which will allow Médecins Sans Frontières Australia to monitor their performance in regards to cost effectiveness, human resources, awareness and maintaining their independence and ethical practices.

IAS's experience, as a Chartered Accounting firm that assists non-government organisations develop management strategies, has shown that selection of key performance indicators can often be problematic. In order to be effective, the indicators must be able to be accurately and transparently measured, remain relevant to the organisation over a number of periods to allow for proper comparison and also be able to be used to compare Médecins Sans Frontières Australia with other similar organisations, such as other partner Médecins Sans Frontières sections around the world and other non-government organisations in Australia.

In light of the objectives and operations of Médecins Sans Frontières Australia as well as the above criteria for successful indicators, IAS recommends the adoption of the following key performance indicatiors:
1.Marketing cost versus donations received
2.Administration expenses versus project expenses
3.Average cost of treatment
4.Number of patients treated versus successful treatments
5.Average number of years experience of volunteers
6.Average number of years volunteers are with Médecins Sans Frontières Australia
7.Origin of funding

This report details why each of these indicators are significant and should be monitored by Médecins Sans Frontières Australia and proposes how they should be measured.

If prompted, please "save" file before opening.

VIEWING 1 - 10 OF 10

Hi IAS,

I really like your structure of your report. It was well laid out and made it easy to read.

I really liked your ideas in HR on how to measure quality and experience of volunteers,as this is essentially the core of how MSFA provides its service. Your team has definitly thought about these KPIs and it seems easy enough to measure.

Well done IAS...good work!!!

Regards
Joel

By Joel Seah on May 5 2008, 10:58

Thanks for your feedback Joel!

By Eleanor Webster on May 5 2008, 15:53

Hi guys:

The report is great, the layout is good and it is very easy to follow.

We really like the last KPI(Origin of Funding), it is a great way for MSF Australia to measure their level of independent.

Well done

Andrea & Katy :)

By Katy Luo on May 6 2008, 16:47

Thankyou for your submission.
We were interested in you comment (in relation to the Origin of Funding KPI): "In order to ensure it maintains complete independence, Médecins Sans Frontières should not aim
maximise or minimise any of these percentages, but use it as an indicator of potential influence on their activities". Do you think their could be some risks associated with certain sources of funding? How might Médecins Sans Frontières Australia mitigate these risks (in terms of KPI measures)?

By Judge on May 7 2008, 16:13

Thank you for your feedback Andrea and Katy.

Judges, in response to your question, naturally all sources of funding have risks associated with them and some are more risky than others, especially when it comes to maintaining independence.

We suggested that Médecins Sans Frontières not aim to maximise or minimise the amount of funding coming from certain sources as this implies that ideally government funding, for example, should be reduced to 0%. While funding from public sources is likely to pose the largest threat to the organisation's independence, this does not mean that in the long term government grants or company donations should be avoided all together. Donations from these sources do not simply indicate that the independence of Médecins Sans Frontières is being threatened, but rather suggest that these source are aware of the work Médecins Sans Frontières does and would like to support it. Seeing as this is one of the goals of the organisation, we did not want to suggest that this should be discouraged in the long term.

Similarly, private donations demonstrate wide spread awareness and support for Médecins Sans Frontières, but also carry risks. For example, complete reliance on private donations could lead to the organisation being forced to focus on 'popular' humanitarian aid issues rather than on the places and people that need them most.

Due to this multi-dimensional nature of funding, we do not believe that the risks associated with the independence of Médecins Sans Frontières could be mitigated by simply maximising or minimising or proposed KPI. Rather, this KPI should be monitored over time and any large variations should be investigated, as they may reflect an attempt by certain groups to influence their operations.

By Eleanor Webster on May 8 2008, 19:51

Really well presented report. I think that your HR quality KPIs are good measure of how MSF Australia can improve their selections of volunteers.

From my understanding MSF Australia main functions are:
1)Recruitment of International Field Staff, both medical and non medical
2) Specialist paediatric and women's health medical assistance to operations through the Project Unit in Sydney;

3) Raising funds to support this work and informing donors of the work undertaken on their behalf; and
4) Raising awareness of issues in the field, and Médecins Sans Frontières' work and experiences.

Can you just clarify how the Average cost of treatment and the Number of patient treated versus project expenses KPIs are related to MSF Australia.

Cheers
Ronny

By Ronny Ho Von on May 9 2008, 21:43

Thank you for your comment Ronny.
IAS agrees with your definition of the main functions of MSF Australia, and we targeted each of our KPIs to these.
The average cost of treatment measure is intended to measure the fourth goal of the organisation, that is, raising awareness. According to the MSF website, while the most visible operations towards this objective are public advertising campaigns, a large portion of time is also spent lobbying pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of drugs that are essential for their operations. This KPI aims to measure the effectiveness of this campaigning.

The second KPI you mention seems to be a mix between two of our KPIs: administration expenses versus project expenses and number of patients treated versus successful treatments. These two KPIs are independent of each other and are designed to measure different objectives of MSF Australia. We're not sure if you just got confused between them, but we will explain them anyway.

Administration expenses versus project expenses measures the cost effectiveness of the organisations operations. We are aware that MSF Australia is not directly involved in the operation of overseas projects, and in our report we suggest a way that this could be measured to overcome this fact. Even though the organisation does not have a direct influence on the cost effectiveness of overseas operations, it is important that administration is cost effective so that the majority of funds raised reach overseas projects.

On the other hand, number of patients treated versus successful treatments measures both the quality of staff recruited and the cost-effectiveness of treatment (this indirectly relates to raising awareness, as we discussed above). Again, though MSF Australia does not play an active role in running overseas projects, by monitoring the performance of their recruits in this manner they can have an indication of the quality of their recruitment process and the results of their campaigning.

We hope this answers your question fully. Feel free to ask for further clarification.

IAS

By Eleanor Webster on May 9 2008, 22:57

Hi Guys

I really liked the layout of your report and the detail you gave regarding the measurement method and how to interpret it.

I also really like the 7th KPI; Origin of Funding and completely agree that the source of donations is an important indicator for the independence of an organisation.

Overall it was really well presented with the pictures, diagrams and formulae.

Rhonda

By Rhonda Lum on May 11 2008, 10:27

Hey guys,

Your report was very professionally set out, and effective in addressing all areas - diversity of skills, retention of volunteers, independence and impacts of MSF's work.

The implementation of your formulae was well explained also, as well as some "benchmark" or yard for MSF to work towards.

The origin of funding chart and measurement was particularly interesting.

Well done and best of luck.

By Andrew D'Azevedo on May 11 2008, 12:46

Thanks for your comments Rhonda and Andrew.

We thought that the origins of funding was particularly important to ensure that MSF maintained an independent stance when providing health care to those that need it the most.

By Alicia Tan on May 11 2008, 19:04

VIEWING 1 - 10 OF 10