A complaints and feedback mechanism for the people you serve: how to build and run one

A project can follow its plan perfectly and still fail the people it was meant for. The plan will not tell you that the distribution point is too far for older women, that a staff member behaved badly, or that a promised service never arrived. The people affected will, if they have a safe and simple way to say so. That way is a complaints and feedback mechanism, and it is the practical heart of accountability in MEAL.

Why you need one

• It finds problems your indicators cannot. Indicators count what you planned to count. A complaint tells you about what you did not think to ask.
• It is an accountability commitment. Donors and communities increasingly expect organisations to show how people can raise concerns and what was done about them.
• It protects people. Some of the most serious issues, such as misconduct, are only ever reported through a channel people trust.
• It improves the project while it can still change. Feedback arrives continuously, not at the end.

Start with how people can reach you

A mechanism fails when the people it is for cannot or will not use it. So begin with them, not with your systems.

• Offer more than one channel. A phone number, a form, an email address, and a way to tell a field worker in person. People differ in literacy, phone access, confidence and language.
• Ask who is excluded. Women, older people, people with disabilities, children and minority groups often cannot use the channel you designed first. Ask them which channel they would use.
• Make it free and easy. Every cost or difficulty removes voices.
• Allow anonymity. Some people will only speak if they cannot be identified.
• Tell people it exists. Say what you will accept, how to reach you, and what happens next, in the languages people use. A mechanism nobody knows about collects nothing.

Record everything in one register

Whatever the channel, every message should end up in one place, so nothing sits in a notebook or an inbox. A useful entry records:

• The project it concerns.
• The type: a complaint, a piece of feedback, or a suggestion.
• The channel it arrived by.
• What the person actually said, in their words.
• When it was received, so you can see how quickly you respond.
• Who submitted it, or that it was anonymous.

Record feedback and suggestions as well as complaints, and record things you resolved on the spot. A register with only a handful of complaints may mean people do not know how to reach you, not that all is well.

Give each entry a status and an owner

Three simple statuses are enough:

• Open: received, nothing decided yet.
• In review: someone is working on it.
• Closed: a resolution is written, and shared with the person where possible.

Nothing should close by itself. Review the oldest open entries on a fixed day every week or two, because the ones that are forgotten are the ones that damage trust.

Close the loop

The step most mechanisms skip is telling people what happened. Where you can contact the person, tell them what was decided and why, even when the answer is no. Where you cannot, such as anonymous cases, share the common themes and what changed in a way the whole community can see.

Treat serious cases differently

Some complaints, especially about abuse, exploitation or safety, cannot go through the ordinary register on the ordinary timetable. Agree in advance who handles them, how fast, how the person is protected, and who is told. This register is also not the place for internal staff grievances: it is visible to everyone with access to the monitoring service, so use a separate, confidential process for those.

Read the register for patterns

One complaint is a case. Ten of the same kind are a finding. Look at the register by channel (if nearly everything arrives one way, the other channels may not be working), by status, oldest first (what has been forgotten), and by project and type. Feed what you find into your next plan and your donor report, so the learning in MEAL is visible.

In Pulseform

The Complaints and Feedback register records the project, the type, the channel, the message, who submitted it and when, with the three statuses above, and lets you filter by project, type, channel and status. A donor report includes complaints alongside indicators, activities and risks. See complaints and feedback and donor reports in the guide.