Philanthropy

This video is funny, and funny foreign aid jokes don’t come up very often. Just for that it would be worth posting.

At risk of taking the joke too seriously, I would like to point out that the US government does not give foreign aid in the way described here (random amount of money sent for whatever the recipient country wants to do). Well, not in the vast majority of cases, anyway. A few years ago, Slate wrote a good, general guide to how the system works.

The US Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the British Deptarment for International Development (DFID) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to increase their cooperation in Africa. The MOU specifically pertains to Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. I didn’t check, but I’m willing to bet those are the only African countries where both the MCC and DFID work.

The press release is short on specifics, but does mentioned a few areas of cooperation: data and statistics sharing and coordinated approaches to issues such as environmental protection, infrastructure projects, transparency in large-scale procurements, rigorous evaluation of aid effectiveness, future staff exchanges.

MOU’s can be very useful, or a waste of paper. A lot depends on the wording, whether coordination is compelled or merely allowed by the document. Even more depends on how much the parties are willing to work to make the cooperation happen, particularly in the field. But a good sign all in all.

CSRwire is a site that covers pretty much everything to do with corporate social responsibility. It tends to take a pro-business slant on the issue, but also contains a lot of useful information. Interested in the CSR profile of Coke vs. Pepsi, CSRwire is a good place to start.

They’ve just added a multimedia section that they call Video, Commentary, and Research (VCR). So far it has a few videos and audio files, as well as a lot of information about VCR itself, but should be collecting more. They also put out a press release on VCR.

Thanks to Tactical Philanthropy for pointing out this Ellison Research study that suggests a majority of Americans do not trust non-profits to spend their money efficiently. Most of us apparently believe non-profits spend too much money on fund-raising and administration. The average American believes that 22.4 cents out of every dollar would be reasonable, but that most non-profits spend 36.3 cents/dollar. (Note: This is the perception of Americans, not necessarily the actual figures. The Ellison poll didn’t comment on the real levels.) I suppose if nothing else this tells non-profits what level of non-program support would be acceptable to most Americans.

The fiesty WHO malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, thinks that the Gates Foundation’s $1.2 billion supporting for malaria research gives them too much influence over the field. He believes that it is now becoming difficult to find non-biased scientists to peer review research, and that the Foundation using its weight to to ensure that research from its scientists is put into policy instead of letting the best research win.

Dr. Kochi is apparently known for being undiplomatic, and this could easily just be a turf war - he might simply be worried that the WHO will lose some of its clout as the health policy arbiter for the world. But that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily wrong, either. It’s definitely something to watch.

A new IMF Working Paper has found an association between remittances a country receives, and the deterioration of institutional quality in that country. It seems counter intuitive but basically they are saying that if citizens have more non-taxable income, there is less incentive for the government to spend its own resources on those citizens. The government is then more likely to blow their money on private jets and whatever else it is corrupt leaders buy (diamond mines?). The authors say it works similarly to the oil curse, which says that natural resource-rich countries are more likely to be corrupt.

As Cho points out on his blog, New Zambia, showing association doesn’t prove causality, and there could easily be other factors that explain both of these phenomena.  But it’s a fascinating idea. If we assume that the prevailing wisdom is correct and institutions are a vital part of economic development, this report would suggest the match institution building programs with our efforts to make remittances easier to transfer.

Like a lot of non-democratic governments (and some democratic ones as well), the junta that rules Burma likes to keep track of the international NGOs operating in its country. You never know when they’re going to be stirring up an insurrection. This article gives a brief description of the policies they have put in place to make sure the NGOs stay in line.

One of the recurring themes here is that public and private philanthropy have many driving purposes. There probably isn’t a better example of this than the US current aid policy in Africa. Not only is aid is the dominant feature of US foreign policy on the continent, but we also see the three major purposes of public foreign aid all at once.

Those purposes are morality, economics, and security and this article discusses them all. The article discusses that in addition to a genuine desire to help people, the US also has an interest in gaining access to large oil reserves and other resources as well as addressing the security concerns presented by Africa’s several “ungoverned spaces”. The article also suggests that this strategy is working. The US Government-sponsored Voice of America agrees with this assessment, directly tying US foreign aid to Mali with the Global War on Terror.
As a closing thought, the US doesn’t have a monopoly on using aid for its own economic benefit. China is pretty good at it too.

This online Op/Ed by David Dickson originally comes from scidev.net, but I found it on an interesting blog called Gates Keepers. It keeps an unbiased eye on the Gates Foundation, as is worth a read if you have interest in what Gates is up to.

The Op/Ed makes a sound argument that the Gates contribution is welcome, but that they shouldn’t become so dominant that they completely drive the development agenda. Among his reasons I am particularly drawn to the critique that Gates seems drawn to technical fixes, and the belief that science can solve all of our problems. Science can do a lot, and a good deal more research is needed in a lot of areas. But there continues to be a need for the less exciting long-term work like education.

Even as a I say this, though, I wonder if Dr. Dickson and I are just shouting to stop the sun from coming up. Gates and Google are in the development field now, and they will bring their technology/business perspective with them. There isn’t anything we can do about it. But I also think that there may be something good in this change (in addition to the money).

As business people and computer guys they are used to problems that can be solved, and seem to be treating development in the same way. That’s a pretty radical departure from the way we normally think about development - as a situation to be improved, not fixed. I still think that Dr. Dickson and I are right and not all problems have solutions, but it is going to be fun working with the newcomers and their frame of mind.

As part of the Slate’s special on philanthropy the executive director of Google.org, Larry Brilliant, wrote a very good explanation of the thought process behind Google’s philanthropic funding decisions. Because most of this post will be a negative critique of his reasoning, I want to start by saying I appreciated Brilliant’s view, and think that he did a great job explaining what must have been an agonizingly difficult process. He also manages to defend Google’s ultimate funding decisions very well, and even makes their programs sound exciting.

Now, the criticism:

Brilliant discusses the eternal question of which charity to choose, when there is so much need in the world and limited resources. According to Brilliant, to answer this question Google turned to advice attributed to Mahatma Ghandi:

“Gandhi was once asked, ‘How can I know that the decisions I am making are the best I can make?’ He answered: ‘I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it?’”

This seems like pretty good advice. But as a guiding principle I think it has two fairly obvious weaknesses.
First, why this assumption that the poorest and weakest should benefit? Surely there people living in poverty and risk that deserve help, but are still above the very poorest people in the world. For example, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute there are $162 million people in the world living on less than 50 cents a day. These are probably the very poorest, very weakest people on Earth. But there are also approximately a billion people living on less than $1 a day. My guess is that from Google’s perspective those two groups are lumped together, and perhaps they should be. But I think drawing that line is a tricky business.

The second weakness to Ghandi’s advice is the requirement that our hypothetical poor man should gain “anything” by it. I agree that a poverty reduction program that doesn’t help the poor is a bad program, but the poor can gain from a lot of things. The trick is optimizing those benefits. Ghandi’s advice sets an awfully low bar.

Maybe that’s Ghandi’s point. Maybe the bar should be set low, so that the time and effort philanthropists spend considering how to help doesn’t stop them from actually helping. That makes a lot of sense, but it makes more sense with the small amounts of money that I can give than the large amounts of money that Google plans to spend.