I have never seen so many accounts is so many strange places as at Concern.

Every country office has several staff accountants, and many of the field offices have accountants, as well. I’ve seen them in emergencies, as in Liberia, and way out in the hinterlands, like rural Niger.

It’s a further sign of how accountability is baked into the Concern culture. At the highest levels, Concern believes in accounting to donors about where their money has gone, but at the other end of the line, Concern believes it must also be accountable to beneficiaries.

“We can show you right down to the exact family in the remotest village what we gave to each beneficiary,” says Concern systems manager James Kiernan. “We keep track of everything at every distribution and report it all back. There is a paper trail... Except in Pakistan (during the emergency relief after the 2005 earthquake there), when we were just heaving tents into military helicopters and having them dropped in the high mountain villages.”

Inventory control is strict; procedures are even stricter. Everyone at every level knows they are merely handling other people’s money, gasoline, piping and concrete. Absolutely every item – down to the crappiest mirror in a staff house – is logged with an inventory control number and tracked through the project’s life.

Anyone can make grand pronouncements about honesty and accountability, but actually living up to those words takes a lot of hard work. Once you’ve seen field staff sorting through pipe fittings on the floor as the storekeeper marks down the totals, you know everyone here can walk their talk.