I’d be interested in hearing anyone’s thoughts on ways material suppliers can report donations of goods such as medical supplies to humanitarian organizations.

If the supplier is a nonprofit organization, could a material donation be reported using the “Funding” participating organization role code? How could the budget and transaction fields be used properly by the material donor and receiver? I’m presuming the supplies would be reported based on their value. As an option, could a zero value be assigned?

What other reporting elements would be or relevant use? Also under what cases could a supplier justifiably report themselves as an implementer?

Do any problems or concerns come to mind relative to suppliers reporting to IATI?

Comments (2)

Brent Phillips
Brent Phillips

Because suppliers interact with a broad range of organizations, they could play an important role in helping grow IATI and establish traceable links between aid activities. It would be good to add the subject to discussions.

Bill Anderson
Bill Anderson

Brent, the whole area of non-monetised technical cooperation - which includes materials, people (time and expertise) and services - requires further work. I am sure there will be a session at the TAG aimed at moving this forward and your input would be invaluable.

The provision of materials can be accurately reported as outputs within the results element. My personal view is that the widespread reporting of outputs by all publishers is one of the next big wins for IATI. (The problem at the moment is that because so few publishers use this facility users don’t look for it.) Here’s a challenge for the humanitarian community: can you devise and agree on a standard set of output indicators to describe material assistance?

For an activity that cannot be monetised a workaround could be to create a zero value transaction with transaction-type = 4 (Expenditure) and aid-type = D02 (Other technical assisitance). This is not a recognised guideline but we could agree on something like this at the TAG.


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