The Search for a New Executive Director
Dear IBP friends and partners,
In January, I announced my decision to step down at the end of 2022 as Executive Director. It has been an extraordinary privilege to lead IBP for 21 years. The opening for a new Executive Director is available here. I will continue to work closely with our board to assist with the transition throughout this year.
The most rewarding part of this job has been to cultivate and benefit from so many enduring partnerships with organizations around the world that are leveraging budget advocacy to shift power and transform communities. I am deeply grateful for our partnership and proud of what we have accomplished together. I am also in awe of your collective power to drive change forward.
Just 20 years ago, the idea of civic actors influencing public budgets was unthinkable. Today, we partner with a vast and diverse network of social movements, think tanks and advocacy organizations across 120 countries that use public finance analysis and advocacy to advance social justice. Together, we have ensured civic organizations have a seat at the table influencing game-changing resource decisions and systems for excluded communities. Working together at the international level, we have reinforced these changes by transforming global norms. Thanks to our collective efforts, the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, among others, promote open and equitable budgets as good practice. As Mandela observed, it only seems impossible until it is done.
We are poised to deepen our collective impact and drive this agenda forward at a critical time. Despite the tightening of civic space globally, it is exciting to hear the calls for fiscal justice in campaigns for racial and gender justice and decolonizing aid. Our work has also never been more urgent. As countries address the burden of mounting debt, pandemic relief and recovery, and declining tax receipts, they will face intense budgetary trade-offs. We have difficult battles ahead to continue to build the evidence and the coalitions to advance equity and justice in this environment. But we also know that to restore our societies and our democracies in the years ahead, people must have a voice in deeply consequential decisions around how resources are raised and managed, especially systematically underserved communities.
This is a powerful moment to bring into IBP a leader with new ideas, lived experiences, and profile to reposition the organization for the next phase in its evolution.
I am proud and profoundly optimistic about IBP’s potential to seize change and be a driving force for equity and justice globally. Thank you for continuing to believe in us and our partnership.
With gratitude,
Warren Krafchik
For the Board, Warren’s decision is bittersweet. It is difficult to imagine IBP without Warren and his style of leadership – kind, inclusive, driven by values – and his never-ending curiosity. These have helped forge a deeply thoughtful, rigorous and caring organizational culture and passion to improving people’s lives. I know those values will continue to propel IBP’s mission and work as we look to the future. On behalf of the board, I want to extend my gratitude and admiration for Warren’s singular contribution to IBP and to the work of fiscal justice.
We also welcome this decision. First, we are glad for Warren to take time to step back and consider what comes next. Second, we are confident with the strength of the organization – from its people and partnerships to its governance and systems. Third, we are excited about building an even more diverse, global and powerful future for our work.
IBP’s work is living testimony of the promise of budgets to drive transformational change, and there is no better time to deepen this work. Around the world, there is growing momentum to connect and drive grassroots, national and international policy shifts, and in the process to bolster democratic systems in which government works with and for all people, including those long denied a voice. We are seeing impressive results as we engage with both social movements and others to inform and shape consequential decisions around public resources.
I know IBP is well positioned to enter this next chapter with new leadership. The board and I are deeply committed to supporting the organization during the transition and to sustain its progress.
I look forward to working with my board colleagues, including my fellow members of the search committee, Sofía Sprechmann Sineiro and Faith Mwangi-Powell, to identify a successor. We have engaged SRI, a global executive search and consulting firm, to help with the search.
Rakesh Rajani
IBP Board Chair