Why we publish the numbers that make us look bad
Seventy-nine per cent of the trees we plant survive to three years. That means a fifth of them die. Here is why we print the second sentence.
Most charity reporting is a highlight reel. Trees planted, camps held, sessions delivered. All true, all inputs, and none of them tells a donor whether anything lasted.
The problem with counting inputs
A plantation drive is easy to photograph and almost impossible to fail at. You put saplings in the ground on a Saturday morning, you count them, and you publish the number. Whether any of them are alive the following summer is a separate question that most programmes never ask.
We ask it at three years, which is roughly when a tree stops needing help. Our current figure is 79%. That is far better than the sector norm for drive-and-leave planting, and it also means that one in five of the trees we paid for is dead.
What publishing it changes
Three things, in our experience.
It changes what we fund. Once you are going to publish survival at three years, you stop treating a watering arrangement as optional. Almost every improvement we have made to that number came from budgeting for maintenance at the point of installation rather than hoping somebody would look after it.
It changes the conversations with donors. A partner who has seen us publish a disappointing figure believes the good ones. A partner who has only ever seen good figures is right to be sceptical.
It changes what our own staff report upward. In an organisation where bad numbers get published rather than buried, a field team that spots a problem tells you early instead of hoping it resolves before the annual report.
The numbers we hold ourselves to
Connectivity sites still live at twelve months. Water points functional at twenty-four. Skills-course graduates placed at six months, and still in the job at twelve. Health referrals actually confirmed as started, not merely made.
That last one currently sits at 76%. A quarter of the people we refer for treatment do not begin it. We are not satisfied with that, we have not found the fix, and we would rather say so here than let you find out from someone else.
