Hunger: what to look for in an organization

I've been throwing words and phrases around all week, talking about different hunger organizations, so maybe I should explain what I care about in any organization that purports to deal with hunger issues.

• Accountability: there should be a way to judge how well a group is doing what they say they do. That could be (preferably) with metrics that show hunger levels decreasing, but it could be even with freely given anecdotes from the beneficiaries. The important thing is that the work of the organization be measured by the impact on hunger, not by how much they necessarily did.
• Sustainability: the project should be moving towards self-sustaining, native-run maintenance. If an organization runs projects to build things, then has to raise money to maintain them, that's bad. If they don't even address maintenance, that's worse. The true job of any development professional should be to put him- or herself out of work; that means setting things up to run by themselves or with the help of the beneficiaries.
• Participatory: you may see a theme here; I really think that development shouldn't happen without the beneficiaries being involved. They should help identify the needs, help guide the interventions, help implement the solutions, and help measure the results. Any good organization will strive towards local ownership.
• Focused: if you get too distracted, you won't be as efficient. I really think organizations should pick one area in which they excel. If they see a crossover with another area, they should cooperate with whatever organization excels there.

There are other things that individual organizations should have in order to do their work, but these 4 are pretty much universal. If you find an organization that you're interested in supporting, first ask yourself where they stand on these. Any group that does well on all four probably will do good things with your time and money.