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Last week, Publish What you Fund launched their Make Aid Transparent campaign, which calls on aid donors to publish information on what they are doing with their development aid.

Over forty civil society groups from twenty countries around the world, pledge to call on governments and other aid donors to publish more information on how, when, where and why their budgets are being spent.

At the center of the campaign, whose members include Oxfam International, Transparency International, ONE, and eighteen groups from developing countries, is a petition aimed at donor governments to make their aid more transparent.

The message after signing the petition clearly illustrates their overall mission:

Your action will remind donors to keep their promises to make aid more transparent. And this in turn will help citizens around the world to benefit from better aid and hold their governments to account.

All of these organizations have been working to improve the transparency on how aid money is distributed and should be mindfully spent, as any scope for corruption and inefficiency should be diminished and eliminated.

One of the best ways to do this rarely costs a thing: transparency.

Last December, the State Department and USAID launched a Foreign Assistance Dashboard that helps U.S. citizens know more about how their taxes are being spent on foreign assistance. It provides a visual presentation of, and access to, key foreign assistance budget and appropriation of data for the Department of State and USAID.

The Make Aid Transparent campaign has a similar aim, but targets the spending of civil society groups to enhance transparency and accessibility for their donors.

Making the information available can also help citizens of developing countries know how much their governments are receiving and can push for it to be spent it in ways that really meet their needs.

The first petition handover is planned to present in Paris, at a meeting of Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF) in early July hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The organization has other activities and actions that will take place through the year, with the campaign culminating at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea from November 29 – December 1.