Financial flow diagrams to promote policy-making, based on 20 community management case studies from India

This paper reports the development of ‘Financial Flow Diagrams’ as a means of better communicating complex financial information, directly inspired by the development of ‘Shit Flow Diagrams’, in this case highlighting, for policy-makers, donors and service providers financial challenges. We describe the design considerations investigated during the preparation of visual oriented financial communications. This includes arguments about the merits and limitations of visuals and associated tools/software that best display flows of resources (in our case financial). We then present visuals that were submitted for testing across a panel of informants, some closely related to the Community Water Plus project, a 20 case study, 17 States research project of ‘successful’ community managed water schemes in India, which provided the source financial information. Finally, we provide a critical analysis and feedback on the limitations of using Financial Flow Diagrams as a mean to convey messages on funding distribution in the context rural water supply.