"My CEO will tear off my head,
if I suggest to him that we implement IATI."

These were the precise words of a senior policy person of a big German NGO when I presented IATI some 18 months ago. In the past, reactions of other NGO representatives have been less drastic but still very clearly negative. But times are changing! In the last few months the OpenAid project continued the exchange with NGO representatives. There seems to be a growing willingness to talk about IATI. At the award ceremony of the PricewaterhouseCooper German Transparency Price for non-profits I was able to present IATI in the keynote and discuss with a number of CEOS and the reaction was much more positive than anticipated. Likewise at the workshop on IATI organised by VENRO and OpenAid the response by participants was overwhelmingly positive. The NGO representatives at the workshop acknowledged the value of IATI, but still worried how to make a convincing case for IATI within their organisations. So what is the business case for IATI? Why should NGOs in Germany and in other donor countries publish their data to IATI?

Let me outline three main reasons, why it is in the best own interest of NGOs themselves to implement IATI. These arguments have been collected in a crowdsourcing effort of NGO representatives and open dat activists prior to the OKFest in Helsinki. The three reasons relate to the internal management of donor organisations, the core values of NGOs and aid effectiveness.

I. INTERNAL MANAGEMENT

Improved information flow: The IATI standard requires donors to publish all their project data in a standardised and machine-readible way. This allows donors to use e.g. open source visualisation tools to have a better overview themselves of all their activities. Experiences in bilateral donor organisations have shown that the implementation of IATI improves the internal information flow and management procedures.