Accountability Lab

In 2012, Blair Glencorse founded Accountability Lab in Kathmandu, Nepal. He had previously worked at the World Bank studying fragile states, and had spent years asking young people around the world what they thought the biggest problem was — the answer he heard back, again and again, pointed to a single word: accountability. People in power needed to be held responsible, and corruption needed to stop. That was enough to make him leave the World Bank and set "make governance work for people" as his mission, building a "translocal" network of independently governed Labs across 20 countries — including Nepal, Liberia, Mali, Pakistan, Nigeria, and South Africa — that push accountability culture through unconventional formats: a reality-show-style naming campaign called Integrity Icon (launched 2014), the global anti-corruption hackathon HackCorruption, and the music project Voice2Rep. In 2025, when the U.S. government cancelled 83 percent of its foreign aid programs (roughly 5,200 contracts) and USAID formally stopped operating as an independent agency, local NGOs worldwide fell off a funding cliff — a UN survey found that three-quarters of local organizations had received termination notices, and some shut down entirely. Accountability Lab's response wasn't to fundraise or write a report — it launched Civil Society Wayfinder: instead of building a database, the team simply asks around — who do you know doing important work that no one sees? — and spotlights one local organization on LinkedIn every week. Before being named, each organization must clear checks on activity, media coverage, and legal status, receive final sign-off from the three co-CEOs, and give its own consent. Wayfinder started with four focus areas — youth leadership, the power of storytelling, health information ecosystems, and decentralized funding — and added a fifth, gender equality, after the data showed an unusually large share of recommended organizations working on gender issues. Since launch, the list of spotlighted organizations has grown from a starting point of more than fifty to fifty-six, across 25 countries; the LinkedIn posts have drawn responses from more than 50 countries and over ten thousand views, producing a "cascade effect" as organizations began recommending each other. Harriet Mukajambo, team lead at the Uganda-based youth organization Global Learning for Sustainability (GLS), says the campaign helps civil society groups connect resources, build collaboration, and avoid duplicating work. But Accountability Lab is candid about the project's limits: Wayfinder offers no funding channel at all; the most active region is North America (148 interactions), while every spotlighted organization is in the Global South — a geographic mismatch the team openly acknowledges; and in countries like Pakistan, Nepal, and Mali, being named by an international organization can draw unwanted attention from authorities, so for some organizations the team only acknowledges the work without including them in the public campaign. The team's own conclusion: "visibility itself can act as a form of support," and "connectedness builds resiliency."