Philanthropy

I came across a video posted to YouTube today by a group called Media For Good. I couldn’t find much about them, this is their first video, and all their profile doesn’t say much. The video starts off strong. Production quality is high, and it is actually quite moving. It starts by giving poignant examples of the many problems facing the Arab world today - high unemployment and low expenditure on education or innovation. But when it tries to give a hopeful message, everything goes south.

After asking that we “give strategically”, it then suggests some bold goals for employment and education. The thing is, setting goals isn’t the same thing as a strategy. Without a plan to achieve your goals, the whole endeavor will never get going.

There is certainly a place for inspiration, but I think you have to tell people what they can do with that inspiration.I assume the video is aimed at Arabs who would like to give money to a good cause, but how does this help them? There is no contact information for an organization, not even a connection to the Millenium Development Goals, which at least have some kind of loose plan, if not a coordinated strategy.

Media for Good is new to YouTube, and may be new to advocacy as well, so I don’t want to be too hard on them. This was a good first effort and I’ll be looking forward to their next video. If nothing else it is an interesting look at what a group of Arab activists see as the major problems in the region - the economy and education.

The FT reports that a large number of wealthy private philanthropists see the advantage in living like the world’s poor for a week - and are willing to pay 8,000 pounds for the privledge (along with a course on how to be a better philanthropist). That’s a lot of money, but the organizers say they that there is more demand than they can accomodate.

I’m not British, but can I please work for the British Department for International Development? They’ve just announced that their international staff will be immersed for one week with poorer communities every time they reach a new posting.

The idea is to give them a clearer perspective on who they are trying to help - and avoid the impression that the capital’s relative comforts are a normal part of life for most people. It’s a good idea, and I can’t imagine it isn’t popular with DFID’s staff. In fact, it almost sounds like some kind of dream that the career people were able to hoodwink the political staff into approving.

A coalition of local and international NGOs in Afghanistan have issued a negative report on the foreign aid effort so far. The two major complaints were that donors hadn’t given as much as they promised ($15 billion has been obligated on $25 billion in promises) and that too much of the money has been spent through contractors - meaning that not enough actually made it through to Afghans.

These are probably reasonable complaints, but I think is important to point out some of the potential biases in the report. First, it was written by someone who works for an international NGO - Oxfam, and published by a group of NGOs. More aid money means more money for their work. Further, more money to contractors means less money to NGOs.

The report points out that 40% of the foreign obligated to Afghanistan goes back to the donor countries either in the form of indirect costs and profit (money that just stays at HQ) or as salary and benefits to international staff. Afghans are entitled to resent that figure, but I’d be impressed if they kept it to that. Indirect cost rates (which are not technically profit, because they support actual expenses incurred to run the type of organization that can implement an aid project) run between 15% and 30%, depending on the organization. Add to that the costs of running an office or offices in Afghanistan, paying a country director, buying plane tickets to get that person to Afghanistan, and paying for their housing (which are direct, program costs, even if they don’t seem like it) all add up pretty quickly. Again, I think that people in Afghanistan have a right to resent this, but it isn’t unique to profit-making contractors - international NGOs charge for these too. It’s sad, but international development projects just cost a lot of money.

As for the amount pledged versus actually obligated, donors have a habit of attending big conferences and pledging a lot of money that never materializes. I understand why they do it, but I’ve never known why the press is willing to be their enabler and print the promises. It’s good to see the media covering this one, at least.

This isn’t a surprise, I guess, but a group of relief agencies announced that the security environment in Somalia has become too dangerous for them to reach millions of Somalis. The CNN headline reads “Relief agencies: Somalia too dangerous for us to work” and although they may have said that, the article doesn’t quote it, and I think it may have been a misinterpretation of what they meant. The actual quotes in the article sound a lot more to me like Oxfam and World Vision (2 of the NGOs listed in the article) were saying that the security conditions were stopping them from getting to some vulnerable populations, not that all work in Somalia was impossible. The article also doesn’t say that any organizations plan to leave.

AsianWeek ran an article yesterday discussing the differences between oriental and occidental philanthropic practices. The Asian model, they say, is more based on quiet philanthropy and assistance to families and communities. I commented on a similar article back in January. It doesn’t presume to establish large foundations.

I’ve seen this practice for myself in Russia (not exactly an eastern culture) and Central Asia, and friends have reported similar stories from their travels in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. For that reason, I always assumed that this community giving was a survival practice in places where the safety net isn’t provided by the state or financial system - not a factor of an inherent element of Asian culture. To survive people have to band together and help out when their brother/neighbor/friend is having problems. I don’t know, but would guess that Europeans and Americans had similar practices in leaner times.

There may yet be something to this idea of Asian family values driving very private philanthropy, but to be convinced I’d have to see the pattern hold while controlling for levels of economic development. It is interesting that AsianWeek is writing about Asian Americans - many of whom may have been in the US for generations.  It would also be interesting to look at giving patterns in an Asian country that has been wealthy for a multiple generations - Japan comes to mind, and then to watch giving patterns in China as its economy grows. I don’t have the time to investigate these issues, but wish that I did.

I wrote a post recently on a British program to encourage volunteerism abroad. For those of us who aren’t extremely wealthy, sometimes it seems like the only way to make a difference is to give our own time. I also think it is natural for people who become very interested in a movement as important as addressing global poverty to want to dedicate themselves to it full time. But it isn’t an easy field to break into, especially if you want one of the more interesting jobs overseas.

A frequent commenter to this blog, Alanna Shaikh (who is also married to me) recently wrote what I think is a very good description of why it is so hard to get an international development position, and how to overcome the challenges. She was writing for the women’s professional advice website Damsels in Success, but her comments are equally relevant for men.

This Wired blog post is  a couple weeks old now, but interesting if you didn’t see it. The article discusses a presentation given by Joel Selanikio of the non-profit tech consultancy Datadyne. He makes a convincing argument that cell phone based text messaging are a more important and powerful tool for development than the internet. The internet offers a much higher level of functionality - I can make this blog post as long as I like, for example - but cell phones are already pervasive in the developing world because the technology is less expensive and easier to use. The internet requires a lot more infrastructure, so you don’t get the returns to scale as quickly.

It sounds like Selanikio’s presentation was just meant to scratch the surface of what text messages can already do, or could do with some improvements, but those he listed are all good ideas. My favorite is providing parents with a text message reminder of when to get their children vaccinated. I like this because it fits into existing project models, but offers a less expensive and more effective way of doing it. It requires office support, but nothing that we don’t know how to do.

It’s more fun to think of world changing programs that take a lot of time and money to work out, but more useful to suggest these tiny changes to improve on what we already do.

PS: On a completely unrelated note, I just noticed that the spell-checker on the blogging software we use here at FPA does not know the word “blog”. How did I never see that before?

The British Department For International Development is partnering with the Guardian to sponsor a journalism competition on international development and reducing global poverty. Only UK residents are eligible, and they have separate categories for true amateurs and freelance writers. The finalists get their articles published and some computer equipment.

This one essay contest isn’t going to change the world, but the UK government has also recently funded two programs to encourage its citizens to volunteer in poor countries. One program provides financial incentives to British public servants with relevant skills. The other is geared towards British youth from less-advantaged backgrounds. These programs together start to look like a pretty solid effort to get the British populace engaged in the nation’s international development work.

There isn’t a lot of direct impact of these efforts, but it has to be helpful for DFID to have the electorates political support when it wants to start a new program, ask for more money, or in any way challenge the existing political-economic balance in Britain. Maybe if USAID had a more programs that directly engaged Americans in development issues it would get more respect in Washington.

Of course, the UK has a stronger tradition of government involvement in private life than the US. We don’t rely on USAID to get people involved in development because we have NGOs like the Foreign Policy Association. But I think there is a place for both.

This might only be amusing to me, but today my google alerts inbox had articles with African leaders stating completely opposite views on foreign aid.  Gaddafi warned against imperialist powers using their foreign aid to buy influence in Africa. Meanwhile, the new leaders of the new coalition government in Kenya were asking Western diplomats to increase their foreign aid, in order to encourage stability. That article went on to note that a recent Human Rights Watch report accuses the two parties’ leaders of instigating the recent post-election violence.

Neither article is particularly interesting, but such divergent views being expressed on the same day is an interesting example that the recipients of aid have their own positions, and that assistance is not universally recognized as benevolent.