Under a programme funded by IFAD and delivered through the Uganda Cooperative Alliance, the problem was not unwillingness. Boards wanted to govern well and had nothing to measure themselves against. They could not answer whether they were sound, or vulnerable, or already in trouble.
I authored a SACCO mentoring guide and a financial diagnostic tool, and then trained 125 cooperatives against it, in a programme delivered through UCA with IFAD funding. The instrument was designed for boards, not for accountants.
Boards across Uganda and the wider region began assessing their own financial health against a common instrument. Sixteen years later it is still in use, and its structure is the direct ancestor of the Governance Scorecard on this site.
None of it was clever. It was sequenced, written down, and reported on monthly.
Wrote the SACCO mentoring guide, for boards rather than for accountants.
Designed a financial diagnostic tool a board could complete without a consultant.
Trained 125 cooperatives against the instrument, in a programme funded by IFAD.
Left an instrument that boards across the region were still using sixteen years later.
A tool a board cannot use without a consultant is not a tool. It is a dependency.
The scorecard takes fifteen minutes and tells you where the gap sits before you spend anything.