A UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2021 report found that the percentage of people expressing confidence or trust in their countries peaked at 46 percent in 2006 and by 2019 had fallen to 36 percent. This falling trust brings many risks, including increased violence. Political scientists Karin Dyrstad and Solveig Hillesund surveyed countries that had experienced civil war and found that when citizens didn’t trust institutions to address existing grievances or treat citizens justly, willingness to use violence increased.

Social impact organisations are part of a network of other institutions and actors in the spaces where we operate, and our work has implications for not just how we are seen but also for these other organisations. This means that social impact organisations can play a key role in countering the decline in trust and bolstering institutional confidence. Alternately if we are careless in our work we can contribute to the loss of trust.

If people are given the opportunity for their voices to be heard, they are much more likely to trust an institution. When given the choice between an unfair process they benefit from and a fair process that they don’t benefit from, most people prefer the latter

In our work, we must be cautious of having an over-emphasis on narrow theories of change and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems. Planning and tracking only explicit outcomes of our work may unintentionally and unknowingly undercut local institutions and their relationship with their constituencies. A relatively simple shift in how we think about or assess impact can help social impact organisations consider issues of institutional trust as an integral part of our work. If organisations center issues of process and engagement in their planning and then track the impact of their work on trust, the result can be more effective social impact.

Research on institutional trust or legitimacy, suggests that there are two primary ways that trust is built: through process and through outcomes. Of the two, process appears to be the most important. Psychologist Tom Tyler has documented how people strongly prefer to participate in institutions whose decisions are made fairly and with consideration of all viewpoints. If people are given the opportunity for their voices to be heard, they are much more likely to trust an institution. When given the choice between an unfair process they benefit from and a fair process that they don’t benefit from, most people prefer the latter. When people don’t have direct access to the processes of decision-making, they tend to default to the question of outcomes and whether they are benefitting from the results of the process as a way of thinking through its fairness.

These aren’t the only pathways – in some cases, governments or institutions have a claim to history, religious authority, or other aspects of identity that can help legitimize them. But generally speaking, it’s these two issues of voice and benefits that drive perceptions of institutional trust.

These two pathways directly connect to the work of social impact organisations, which, by definition, focus on spreading benefits within communities. Work by political scientist Jami Nelson Nuñez, among others, has looked at what this means for the intersection of social impact work and institutional trust. This research shows that social impact organisations can support local trust in institutions, by connecting people more closely to their governments and facilitating habits of civic engagement and collective problem-solving. However, when social impact organisations work in a way that competes with local institutions for service delivery, or is delivered without any engagement with local institutions in a way that suggests local institutions are unable or uncaring, the result may be an unflattering comparison with local institutions and an unintentional decline in trust.

This risk is compounded by a general trend in the social impact field towards narrow planning of specific programme goals with explicit, easily measurable indicators of success. These plans may overlook or not incorporate government institutions – ones who might be charged with, if not actively working on, the same issues. Further, corresponding M&E frameworks tend to be designed around the direct outcomes that are expected and acknowledge only the narrow set of actors needed to accomplish them, leaving the indirect or long-term impacts to exist as an assumed or hoped-for ripple effect.

This narrow focus belies the fact that our work is always done in the context of local systems, including local institutions at all levels of government. The roles they play or don’t – or better said, the roles they are perceived to play or not by their constituents – have important implications for institutional trust. The effects can be both positive and negative. Even in the most successful of projects, non-profit organisations that deliver positive outcomes but are given all the credit by target populations can damage the perception of governing institutions. As a result, the importance of acknowledging these effects incorporating them into project design, and measuring the impact on institutional trust, cannot be understated.

A relatively simple shift in how organisations approach design and M&E can help address this issue. Our organization, One Earth Future, has attempted to develop institutional learning mechanisms that both meet our needs for narrow and specific assessments of impact, but also track the larger question of social trust. Programmes are designed with an eye for how they can work within existing social structures and institutions, and trust is tracked through just three simple questions; (1) a rating of how much they trust any given institution, (2) how their trust in that institution has changed over the last year and (3) which institution they think best represents their interests. Even a light-touch approach provides significant insight into how our work impacts trust.

Our work under the programme PASO Colombia is designed to address a specific issue. Sustainable peace and stability in rural Colombia are stifled by limited opportunities for legal economic development and poor social cohesion amongst farming communities, reincorporated ex-combatants, and migrants in rural Colombia, all within a context of widespread criminal violent activity. In many ways, our response to this issue is a traditional development model; identifying economic sectors appropriate to the local communities and providing agricultural skills training, value chain strengthening, and commercialization capacity building to members of these communities.

We also help establish community-run local markets, support access to credit for growing businesses, and facilitate connections with national and international buyers for products. By default, this model is not connected to local government and could be run (perhaps more efficiently) without engaging local institutions other than those needed to achieve legal licenses to operate. However, that approach would run the risk of strengthening the local economy while weakening local institutions. Instead, every step of the process was developed and executed through a network of local leaders including representatives of the national government, local government, businesses, and local communities. We wanted to ensure the process was seen as legitimate and embedded in local institutions, with fair outcomes.

Trust tests

The impact of this work was put to a litmus test in 2020 when Colombia faced a severe outbreak of violent protests in major cities against the government. During this time, despite the agitation experienced throughout the country and the substantial collapse in trust in the national government, survey respondents from our PASO programme expressed historically high trust in local and regional government. While we can’t definitively claim PASO’s work caused this without future research, we feel it is significant that this is the level of government most meaningfully engaged with PASO’s work.

We have comparable data from Somalia, where the fishing sector presents a complex issue: with the longest coast in Africa, fishing is a major part of Somalia’s economy, and thus, has been the center of socio-political flashpoints resulting from anger about the presence of international fishing vessels and the lack of action by government in response. In addition, unsustainable fishing practices have led to the instability of fish stocks, putting pressure on local fishers dependent on plentiful stocks close to shore for their livelihoods. Many times, this lack of fish is attributed to the presence of foreign fishing vessels with vastly superior – albeit unsustainable – fishing gear. This builds resentment and deteriorates trust towards government institutions in Somalia, in addition to fanning tensions in and between local communities. The result is that fisheries management can be a source of political, and occasionally violent, conflict in Somalia.

When we decided to engage in this issue area, we knew that effective governance was at the heart of success and was critical to supporting peace and stability in coastal Somalia. Therefore, we knew our model had to explicitly and directly involve government institutions. As of 2022, OEF’s programme, Secure Fisheries, has facilitated the signing of power-sharing agreements between government entities and fishing communities that establish standing co-management associations (CMA) with a board comprised of government representatives, community-elected representatives, and Secure Fisheries as technical advisors. The CMA serves as a platform for communication and collaboration between government and communities. It also serves as a mechanism to voice grievances and propose solutions to the issues of illegal fishing vessels, fisheries management and policy development.

Our most recent survey of nearly 500 members of Somali coastal communities where we work showed that nearly 3 out of every 4 participants’ trust in government institutions (Federal, Regional and Local) had improved since participating in the CMA.

By design, the CMA model provides the venue and structure for community members to have a voice. Further, it amplifies otherwise isolated voices and connects them to the formal institutions of government. The CMA also serves as a platform to advance tangible outcomes for community members, such as increased livelihood, food security, and safety. We advance these outcomes through service delivery, such as training and capacity building provided via the CMA, such as fishing net making, boat engine repair, cold chain infrastructure maintenance, and value chain development. The impact of the CMA project is tracked via measurable indicators of progress; however, the broader theory of change is tied to promoting stability and livelihoods, preventing conflict, and supporting the legitimacy of government. To evaluate this outcome, we apply a yearly perception survey.

Our most recent survey of nearly 500 members of Somali coastal communities where we work showed that nearly 3 out of every 4 participants’ trust in government institutions (Federal, Regional and Local) had improved since participating in the CMA. This is despite the fact that only about half of respondents indicated that they felt that the different levels of government had responded somewhat effectively to the fisheries-related issue they felt was most pressing in their community.

Broadly, with these two examples we have tried to illustrate two things. The first is to demonstrate that social impact work can, if it is developed appropriately, result in an increased connection to local governments and a counterweight to falling levels of trust internationally. Secondly, we hope that we have demonstrated that robust and detailed systems for M&E do not require a narrow approach to scoping and measuring impact and that it’s possible to have strong systems while simultaneously keeping a broad focus that supports systemic positive impact.

As civil society organisations, our presence in the places where we work is temporary, or at the very least, it does not have the same permanence as the government. Within this reality, at worst, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) enter a location, deliver the project, and depart. In better scenarios, long-term capacity building is intentionally designed into the project, to empower stakeholders with the tools needed to maintain and further enhance the outcomes achieved through the project. But how many times do NGOs think about the systemic changes that are necessary to ensure that impact is sustainable over time?

We are referring here to three main dimensions of change: changes in relationships and power dynamics between actors, changes in policies or doctrines, or changes in resource flows. Of these, the first is most directly impacted by changes in institutional trust. The intentional cultivation of institutional trust and the centering of it in planning, measurement, and evaluation could lead to more effective and long-term social impact, and in turn, a more stable, prosperous and peaceful humanity.

Conor Seyle is the Senior Strategic Advisor for One Earth Future Foundation (OEF) and Vice President of Operations at OEF’s sister foundation PAX sapiens.  Roberto Chavarria Simpson is the Director of Impact, Learning and Accountability at One Earth Future, where he works to develop OEF’s systems for designing, measuring and understanding OEF’s impact.