Tag International development

For the next while, we will be focusing on sustainable holidays. There are a lot of decisions/plans etc to make around the holidays, and not all decisions are easy, clear or straightforward. For today, we’re looking at holiday and year-end donations, although these guidelines apply to all year-round giving, as well.

If you are anything like me, your email inbox is getting overloaded with asks from various NGOs, political parties, faith groups etc, asking for a year-end donation (in addition to phone call asks for money etc.) Sometimes, it’s easy to sort out how to manage all of the requests, and sometimes it can get a bit muddy. So, today, we’re going to talk about some of the red flags and how to make sure that the projects you are donating to are deserving of your donation. In general, these will show up more often in really small organizations, but big organizations can have challenges, as well.

So, here’s a quick (but not exhaustive) list of things to check for before sending off a donation, using an email request (one of many) that I received recently as a case study (in this case asking for funds for an extremely large capital campaign, from a very small organization):

• Email received – Check how often the org emails me, and how often they are asking for $.
  • Answer: Only a handful of short emails per year, and all are asking for $.
  • Result: Fail
  • What to Look For: Regular communication and updates on programming etc, going well beyond asks for $.
• Website Check – After reading the email, I checked the website.
  • Answer: The website has not been maintained in any way. Basic pages are up, but most/all pages are basically empty, because the website has not been maintained. Given that the org is asking for donations for a very large capital campaign, this is very problematic. If the org can’t even maintain a basic website, how can they handle large sums of money? What does this gap say about their ability to run effective programming?
  • Result: Fail
  • What to Look For: Well designed website, appropriate for the size of the org and the projects being funded. Clear, concise info, easy to navigate.
• Overall Transparency and Financial Accountability: With the website and other checks, I’m also checking for accountability and transparency
  • Answer: There are no budgets, annual reports or any other transparency/accountability measures shown anywhere. It appears that funds received are not accounted for, to the public in any way.
  • Result: Fail
  • What to Look For: This piece is really important, and often undervalued in poorly run orgs. (Note: For orgs that are not registered to give tax receipts or acting as a charitable org etc, naturally, some of these rules are a bit different). This, in my opinion, is a significant red flag that funds should not be given.
• Contact info and Org Structure: In addition to the basic website info, I’m looking for easy ways to get in touch with senior leadership, board etc. to help ensure that the org is accountable to the public.
  • Answer: Nobody other than the Exec Director is listed on the website. Given that the website is poorly maintained, the board and others are not named, and the other issues, it does not give confidence that contacting the ED through the website would result in a meaningful and timely reply.
  • Result: Fail
  • What to Look For: Senior Leadership, staff, board etc named and with contact info (eg an email address associated with the org). Reasonable term limits etc are also important. Watch out to see if the same person(s) is in a senior position for 15-20+ years at a time, especially in a small org (instead of transitioning by 10-15 max) – as that’s a red flag for other challenges. The org is at high risk of not successfully managing the transition to the next director, and may end up closing down in the relatively near future, which has implications for your donor dollars.
• Others – This is not an exhaustive list, but is a good start for evaluating end or year (or anytime of the year) support for orgs (particularly small orgs) that might be asking for help, whether financial, volunteer time or other.

Summary: Naturally, in this case, I will not be sending a donation to this organization. I would advise them, if I were their consultant, to drop the large capital campaign and spend their time building up a well-designed website, developing a clear and consistent communications plan with a strong senior leadership team, ensuring that the basic work of transparency and accountability happens every year (eg annual reports, budgets etc), creating a meaningful fundraising plan with an appropriately sized donor base and so on. It’s much better to have a well-designed program in a smaller building than a huge building with poorly designed organizational structures. Ultimately, donors give to support impact first, not for a shiny new building.

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Reference: Tracy Ebarb: National Director of the National Association of Nonprofit Organizations & Executives (NANOE) 

I recently came across this article (see link above, and it’s posted on the NGO section of my website, along with other resources) and wanted to share it here, as well. While much of it I agree with, I have a few small points of possible disagreement (although it may be a misinterpretation of wording, not content).

The real data from National Center on Charitable Statistics reveals that approximately 30% of nonprofits fail to exist after 10 years, and according to Forbes, over half of all nonprofits that are chartered are destined to fail or stall within a few years due to leadership issues and the lack of a strategic plan, among other things.

Nanoe

Within in the NGO world, there is a lot of great work being done. At the same time, the cycle above (new NGOs starting, failing, and opening up a spot for the next one to open and then fail) is a significant problem. In my experience, it’s a problem that is not being talked about enough, and I think we can change that. So, let’s talk. 🙂

Reason #1: Empty Optimism – or Pie in the Sky Dreams (without the proper ingredients to bake a pie)
I’ve seen some of the best, most needed (in my view), and earnest efforts falter and fail because the leaders simply did not accurately calculate the amount of support that would be available and the alliances and partnerships that they would need to support their humble beginnings. In other words – they lacked a sound business plan upon which to build a platform for success. The old saying ‘to fail to plan is to plan to fail’ is so very, very true. (Bold mine).

Nanoe

Many of the reasons given are clear, and I have no disagreement. Lack of strategic plans, failure to develop a strong organizational leadership team (outside of the founding CEO) and others are clearly top of the list for why countless small NGOs fail to make it through the first few years, and the transition to a new CEO. I have some disagreement with point #6:

Misplacing Priority #1 – or forgetting who the ‘real boss’ is
At the end of the day, for nonprofit organizations – Money is more important than Mission. Nonprofits exist to serve and to meet needs on a global scale, and we care deeply for the causes we embrace, often to the detriment of our funders. A successful nonprofit knows that their #1 Customer is their donors, period. Without the donors, there would be no impact, no people served, no mouths fed, no backs clothed. Those we serve are important, but if we really want to have an impact, we must take care of our donors first, we must make sure that our programs are designed to give our donors an opportunity to fulfill the goals they have for their philanthropy, and then constantly communicate to them the impact their dollars are having. And when it comes to taking care of donors, relationships, personal relationships are KING! No fancy CRM or automated gift response mechanism will ever trump a personal relationship.

Nanoe

I agree that NGOs need money to operate, and that NGOs need to be clear, open and transparent with donors about what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how the money is being spent. I do not agree, however, that as non-profits, we are here to serve the donors. Rather, the organization and the donors together are working together for greater good, and to serve the communities in which we work. We share a common goal, and are on the same time to reach our goals.

Here is the author’s summary, along with the items earlier in the article (Nanoe) of the primary reasons NGOs fail:

• Not Having a Qualified Leader.
• No Website Or Poorly Designed Website.
• Poor Planning and Record Keeping
• Poor Accounting and Money Management
• Marketing Only to Large Donors and Not Thinking Smaller Donors are Just As Important
• Nonprofit Doesn’t Mean Tax Exempt.
• Ultimately, the real reason nonprofits fail is because they shouldn’t have existed in the first place. (Bold mine).

One that I would add (perhaps as a subset of leadership or money management) is the expectation that goods and services (rent, IT support, computers, staff time, experts/consultants, advertising, pro bono work etc etc) are somehow automatically “owed” to the org, by virtue of the fact that the org is trying to do something good or is a registered non-profit. Volunteer recruitment is important, but does not substitute for a budget to cover the basic costs of running an organization and paying for the goods, services and skills that you need to get the job done. If you don’t have the money (or a plan to get money) to pay for any of the basic items or staff that are required to run an organization, you don’t have a viable plan yet.

And, further to his first point(s), I would emphasize that failure to plan (essentially variations on “I have never run an NGO and have no idea how to do it. I have a different full-time job, no strategic plans, no website and no money, but I’m sure that if I just start, everyone will hand me money, computers, a building and their expertise for free and it will all work out, because I’m such a nice person and I have a nice goal…”) is one of the most common mistakes I’ve seen. Failure to plan also includes lack of plans for how to successfully hand over the project from the founding CEO, in a reasonable time frame. (Considering starting a new NGO? Start at the end with your planning: Do you have a viable plan to hand the org to a new CEO in 10-15 years?)

On a related note, failure to seriously support other existing orgs that are already working in the same space (before starting a new org), is one of the biggest failures that I have come across.

For those of you in the non-profit world, do you have anything to add? Any adjustments you would make to the list?

I saw a quote on social media few days ago, and am sharing it here. While I was searching for that one, I came across a couple of others, that I am sharing as well. Happy Monday!

These quotes are relevant in all of the areas that we talk about here – development, food, sustainability and others. As we all deal with this pandemic, and the climate crisis, our collective failure to listen to experts – who have been calling for massive changes to prevent a climate crisis for decades – can not be ignored. Changes to our choices – individually and collectively – need to be radically rethought, so that we come out of this pandemic with a Green New Deal (in various forms, locally and globally), with related changes to how we live, work, eat, use energy, get from place to place and support each other collectively, among others.

And a couple more…

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Based on wide-ranging interviews with former employees, board members, and others who have intimate knowledge of Mortenson and his charity, the Central Asia Institute, Three Cups of Deceit uncovers multiple layers of deception behind Mortenson’s public image. Was his crusade really inspired by a desire to repay the kindness of villagers who nursed him back to health when he became lost on his descent down K2? Was he abducted and held for eight days by the Taliban? Has his charity built all of the schools that he has claimed? This book is a passionately argued plea for the truth, and a tragic tale of good intentions gone very wrong.

100% of Jon Krakauer’s proceeds from the sale of Three Cups of Deceit will be donated to the “Stop Girl Trafficking” project at the American Himalayan Foundation (www.himalayan-foundation.org/live/project/stopgirltrafficking).

Jon Krakauer

When Three Cups of Tea was first released, the book suddenly became frequently talked about – at least in some development circles. In my circles, responses seemed to fall (very roughly and unscientifically) down two lines – those who thought it was an inspiring and fact-filled story, proving that all you need to be an excellent NGO worker is to be a nice person with a nice story and, on the other hand, those of us (mainly people in the NGO world in some way), who saw countless red flags, both in his story and in the development model he was advocating for. Full disclosure: From the beginning, I have been firmly in the second camp.

Having heard bits and pieces over the years about the follow up from the original book, and then his second book, I hadn’t thought about it for a long time, until an unrelated discussion happened to bring it to my attention. A quick search, and some reading, got me at least partly caught up on what has happened in recent years.

Many of my concerns with the original book, and the work that followed, are covered in detail in Three Cups of Deceit. Without writing a full dissertation on everything that is wrong with Three Cups of Tea, I will summarize a few primary concerns here. These are my points (ie not quoted directly from Three Cups of Deceit), but they are generally shared among various critiques that have been written of Three Cups of Tea:

1) It promotes the idea (long ago disproven) that work in development requires only that someone “be a nice person who wants to help”. As with countless other jobs, being a nice person is obviously required, but is in no way a substitute for professional expertise or knowing what you are doing/how to do it well. And, ultimately, the damage done by poorly managed development projects is so destructive (to communities and to other organizations), that being “naive but well-intentioned and nice” results in impacts that are actually not a very nice for others at all.

2) It is overwhelmingly, factually inaccurate. It is fiction posing as non-fiction.

3) It is extremely disrespectful of communities that he claims to want to serve and help. The focus is on him and his imaginary hero-story – where he is the knight in shining armour saving helpless communities from themselves. He sees himself as Santa Claus, dropping in from the outside to deliver gifts, then leaving again. That is not development – it is the epitomy of White Saviour Complex.

4) It promotes a model of development that is not grounded at all in modern best practices, and is actively harmful in many ways – far more than can all be identified in one post. His model promotes a world-view that is highly colonialist, disrespectful of others, and not effective at achieving his stated goals. For example, putting funds towards teacher training or other things would have had a greater positive impact on education than putting it towards construction. That said, given that he seems to have kept most of the funds for himself, it can’t even be said that he put the money towards construction – but that was the theoretical aim, it seems.

5) The active mismanagement of funds and other problems risks decreased trust, by the general public, of the work that really good NGOs are doing. Hopefully, the reverse is true, and people will learn from this, and really appreciate the excellent, transparent and accountable work that countless good NGOs are doing. 🙂

I am grateful to the author of Three Cups of Deceit (and others), for doing the hard work to fact check an organization that has been unaccountable for far too long. Based on what I was able to find currently, I was not able to (in a fairly brief search), definitively determine the current status of the organization. That said, I can say definitively that it is not an organization I would donate to, or recommend that others donate to. If you have a copy of Three Cups of Tea on your shelf, consider replacing it with Krakauer’s well-written critique, instead.

Want to read more about this? Here are a few more resources, with a few key quotes. All are well worth reading.

(Note that some of the resources on this topic are a number of years old, from when some of the more significant allegations of corruption and misuse of funds came to light publicly).

How the U.S. military fell in love with ‘Three Cups of Tea’ – Washington Post

“No amount of tea with Afghans will persuade them that we are like them, that our war is their war or that our interests are their interests,” said Michael Miklaucic, a longtime official with the U.S. Agency for International Development who is currently serving at the Pentagon’s National Defense University. “The war in Afghanistan isn’t about persuasion or tea. It is about power.” (Italics mine).

WP

What Mortenson Got Wrong – The New Yorker

Another reason I’ve always had trouble talking about Mortenson’s books is that it’s hard to give an alternative for people who feel the need to act. Even before the reports of C.A.I.’s mismanagement, I saw little value in this model of development. It’s centered around a foreigner, and the foreigner has no special expertise in either education or Central Asia. Even a balanced and reasonable individual is likely to fail in this situation. 

The New Yorker

Three Cups of BS – Foreign Policy

Over the last 50 years of studying international development, scholars have built a large body of research and theory on how to improve education in the developing world. None of it has recommended providing more school buildings, because according to decades of research, buildings aren’t what matter. Teachers matter. Curriculum matters. Funding for education matters. Where classes actually take place? Not really. (Italics mine).

Foreign Policy

Here are a few more:

CharityWatch Hall of Shame: The Personalities Behind Charity Scandals and

3000 Cups of Deceit by Jon Krakauer.

Here is what I am listening to today – Here and here . (Just finished part 1) Well worth listening to. There are, unfortunately, still strong currents, in some development circles, that promote dynamics that are misguided, and really harmful. To set the record straight, Africa is not a country, it is a continent. Unless you are going on a trip to the whole continent, you are not “going on a trip to Africa”. You are going to (or were in) a specific country or countries. Listen to the podcasts for further discussion of this and other dynamics. 🙂

Coming up next: “Called, Not Qualified” (here). One of my biggest, most long-standing issue with how some projects are still run. Wanting to do a job, and being qualified to do it, are two very different things. Hopping on a plane (or driving somewhere else), doesn’t change that. If you are not trained or qualified to teach in a school or as a social worker or to run a poverty reduction program or something else, you are not doing any favours by “volunteering” to teach in someone’s school or work in an orphanage or distribute goods and services in a community – especially if you live somewhere else and simply drop in for a short time before leaving again.

Making yourself the star of someone else’s life (or using their kids in your pictures, without a long-standing relationship, especially if you are using those pictures for fundraising) takes agency away from others, which is the opposite of what true development projects aim to do. We can, and must, do better. 🙂