Today is exactly nine months since we have been experimenting the iFollowTheMoney community and this is a perfect time to write about this community;  what led the Follow the Money Team to the community, why the need for it and what exactly is the future we see to have invested in such a platform.

What is a Community?

Merriam Webster defined community as an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (such as species) in a common location.

With the definition, there are some key elements of a community which are “interacting population” and “in a common place”.

As such, we cannot have an interacting population without a common place.

While reading Babajide Durosaye post on medium about community, I cannot but agree with his definition of a community which he defines as “Communities are networks with shared ideals or demographics, people concentrate on building valuable relationships rather than using each other”.

At Follow the Money, we have community champions in various states and communities in the country and outside of it, we cannot afford to have the kind of community which Babajide defined. Hence, there is a need for us to improvise and find a better way to bring people together in a common place (ifollowthemoney).

The Journey to Follow the Money Community

In the past, Follow the Money Community Reporters (as they are fondly called then) uses WhatsApp as a common place to interact, the WhatsApp group has grown to the point that we had to group them according to geopolitical zones in Nigeria.

We had six groups on WhatsApp and sometimes while waking up (even though I am always on the group at midnight communicating with the night owls amongst the Community Reporters) the user’s end up meeting more than 100 messages on the group which eventually led to us having to losing some of our community reporters. Hence, the need for a better community (common place) to bring people together to interact.

At a point, due to the staff strength of Connected Development as we have only two persons managing the 6 WhatsApp groups, the users and also the social media accounts, so we started missing out relevant contents coming from the community champions on the WhatsApp.

Also, on boarding new users on the platform (WhatsApp) started becoming a problem as we keep on repeating the same on boarding message over and over again.

Was That The Only Reason Why we Have to Switch to Have a Universal Community?

NO, we have a big vision of expanding across Africa as we started receiving an overwhelming request for expansion and we also plan on making Follow the Money a household name by having a movement in all the states in Nigeria while having community champions in all 774 local governments in Nigeria.

Also, we need to have a knowledge sharing platform where anyone who is interested in our work could learn from, connect and collaborate on Follow the Money activities while taking some factors into cognizance – like, where we can have people learning from one other, a platform where we can have a community (movement kind of thing). A place we can have people with a shared interest (Transparency and Accountability in Government in Africa and beyond) and a place people can be motivated to act by learning from the actions of others.

We are more aware that it was because people are not asking questions from our political office holders on how our collective monies have been spent, and that was why we keep on having same corruption narratives.

Alas, we had seen in the past and present when people in government reacted to our request knowing we follow the money (no one wants to be labeled someone who embezzled community project money).

Is That All?

With close to a thousand members,  the community is gradually translating into the largest movement of community champions working on transparency and accountability in their various community., These inspiring members are the intermediaries that are taking the Follow The Money work to local communities, mobilizing them, to engage their various government on basic infrastructure issues.

Do we Have a Requirement for Community Champions?

I still do not know how to answer this question but the most important thing is, a Follow the Money Community Champion is a fire starter. He is someone who thinks something must be done about the gross corruption in governance and he is ready to make an impact in his community by Following The Money. Thus enabling the community to have access to good governance,  improved infrastructures and in the proper sense, an empowered community who can speak for themselves and ask government questions about how their monies are spent.

Just as my friend, Babajide Durosaye (never met or know him o) categorized the community ecosystem in his article, I understand that there are movers of a community and such structure is also expected of a Transparent and Accountability community like ifollowthemoney, but for now – the conversation is just getting started and we hope to grow the community to that level someday soon.

We are in need of more enablers, and you may want to become one too by joining the conversation on Transparency and Accountability on ifollowthemoney which we created for change makers like you!

Have a contribution or clarification? Do not hesitate to leave a comment on the box below.

Photo by Nathaniel Tetteh on Unsplash

In global development governance and the development sector more specifically, the question of sustainability has always recurred. Ideally, if a sustainable structure is put in place, projects and programs will still continue to run, long after the initial efforts are not there anymore. In our work through which we use a knowledge-based scientific process to visualize, track and monitor funds spent for development in rural communities by the government and other development partners and ensure such funds are spent for the reason they are budgeted for, we have always thought of sustainability. One of the ways to achieve this is by letting communities own Follow The Money (FTM) process. It was based on this that we have started identifying community activists, who have been working on FTM activities four years ago.with young people, which reside in rural communities and tracks the funds themselves while we provide technical assistance.

As part of our sustainability plan, we initiated the ifollowthemoney.org, a platform that already hosts over 500 people. Furthermore, we developed the idea of creating chapters. A Follow The Money chapter can be made up of individuals, an already existing association, or a non-government organization that carries out Follow The Money activities. We are officially piloting with 4 chapters in Nigeria, which will be led by Ali Isa in Kano State; Muazu Modu in Yobe State; Erdoo Anongo of Kwasi Foundation in Benue State; and these leads, having been completely empowered to follow the money themselves, will lead in following the money in their states, mobilize more community members in the process while the core team in Abuja provides technical support. They are responsible to formalize their chapters for better governance which includes having four principal officers like the lead, a treasurer, community outreach officer, public relations officer

Starting with these pilot chapters, the core team organized an internal 2-day training for these State Chapter Leads from 29th to 30th of June, 2017 at the Ventures Platform in Abuja. The training started by reiterating and broadening some of the things they already know and work with, from Getting Data of Money to Follow, Leveraging and Drafting of Freedom of Information requests, Mapping of Stakeholders (Government Agencies, Media House, Other NGOs), Drafting Short Write-ups on Campaigns, Organizing Community Outreaches/Preparing Questionnaires, Organizing Town Hall Meetings, as well as new trainings on Mobile Journalism, Hostile Environment Reportage, Preparing Budget and Financial Reporting, Making Use of Social Media for Engagement, ifollowthemoney Platform, Management, Theory of Change, Deliverables for Local Chapters etc. These sessions were facilitated by relevant CODE personnel.

In the meantime, we want to support more chapters, and not to forget that there are already intending chapters in Gambia, Kenya, Mozambique and Togo. Yes, we say they are intending as for CODE to support an intending chapter, or to recognize it as a chapter, there must be a leader, and the lead must have independently carried out Follow The Money activities within one year, with the assistance of the core team. Anyone can Follow The Money using our methodologies, we only provide guidance to the use of Follow The Money activities, with the hope that the vision of making everyone in every community in Africa to be empowered to engage their various government on funds meant for them. So, if you want to start a chapter, why not join us at http://ifollowthemoney.org and kickstart your activities, and in one year, you become eligible to run a chapter!