Filed under: Jerks
So tonight last night I was biking home from an N-TEN event and I went past the 9th DIstrict Court of Appeals. There were some people hanging out on the steps with signs about salmon and Exxon, so I went over to see what they were up to. They said they were here for the Exxon trial, and then there was this pregnant pause as if I knew all about it. I asked what was up, and they said they were here for the appeal of the Exxon Valdez spill. Wait a minute, wasn’t that like 15 years ago? Oh yeah, it was. 17 years to be exact. Anyway, the fisherman were huddling around on the steps when the marshall came out and told them “Get off of my steps”. Last I recalled it was regular taxpayers who were paying for those steps, while the oil companies continue to get billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks from the Republicans in Washington.
Today the 9th Circuit heard oral arguments in yet another Exxon appeal. Exxon is appealing the ruling from a jury that awarded $9 billion to local Alaskans. After numerous appeals it the amount is now down to $4.5 billion. Seems like a lot to me, but then again, if I was making $45 million per hour in quarterly revenue I might feel sorta bad about spending millions of dollars in legal fees to fight fisherman about punitivie damages. But that’s just me.
Japan has been whaling a lot recently, and Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd have been blogging from the Antarctic hunt. While both groups are basically doing the same thing, there is no love lost between the two, although Sea Shepherd has a pretty extensive page of Christmas wishes for Greenpeace. Paul Watson, the founder of Sea Shepherd, was one of the early pivotal members of Greenpeace.
One of Sea Shepherd’s main beefs with Greenpeace is that they are more concerned with publicity and hanging banners than actually accomplishing real change. Sea Shepherd explains the difference thusly:
“Sea Shepherd is not in the waters of Antarctica to protest whaling. We are there to intervene with the purpose of upholding international laws protecting the whales.”
Their spat is indicative of the NGO world. As groups morph from a small group of committed pioneers to a professional organization, the culture changes and hard-charging personalities may find that they are not as welcome or comfortable with the new buttoned-down, donor-friendly approach.
Both are trying to save the whales, a campaign I greatly respect. I think Japan’s claims of whale-hunting-as-research are tenuous and ridiculous. Different tactics and levels of slickness appeal to different people.
Where do I stand on the big vs. small, change-the-system vs. work-within-the-system debate? I don’t really know yet. Part of why I started this blog is to work it out in my head and out in the public.
I do know this though. Greenpeace definitely has a sense of humor.
But in the category of most impressive reason to back an anti-whaling direct action NGO, I gotta go with Macgyver (See “Ticket Prices”). See, Sea Shepherd? Fame and celebrity are powerful forces for shaping public opinion!
Sea Shepherd / MacGyver: 1
Greenpeace / Japanese Embassy in Berlin: 0
Filed under: Donations
I spend a fair bit of time at work creating, editing and mailing newsletters that are sent out to our entire mailing list. I also spend much less time writing and editing eNews publications which are emailed out to our contacts. I have often wondered which is more effective, and which is the better use of my time. Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog seems to have quite a strong opinion on the effectiveness of snail-mail campaigns to random people. His argument seems to be that the groups that engage him as a real human being build a relationship, while others demonstrate that they apparently have too much time and/or money on their hands.
I think he’s right, I just would love to know the best way to engage people. I feel like a younger donor base appreciates a more personalized and informal approach executed perfectly by Unitus with their holiday appeal post, but I think that older (read: richer) donors dig the heartstrings approach. Quite a delicate balancing act, since NGO communications budgets aren’t huge unless you’re one of the Big Boys.
PS – I’m not a “Big Boy”, so any advice is always appreciated.
The New York Times had an interesting article about NGOs in Cambodia that have taken over large swaths of the health system. Apparently, Cambodia has hired a bunch of NGOs to run health districts to provide more efficient health care for its citizens:
“If childbirth is a miracle of nature, then the thriving, honestly run network of clinics and hospitals here is a human marvel, managed not by the government but by one of the nonprofit groups it has hired to run entire public health districts.
The approach is catching on in a growing number of poor countries around the world, from Bangladesh and Afghanistan to Congo and Rwanda, to Bolivia and Guatemala, reaching tens of millions of people.
These contracted services have allowed international donors and concerned governments to cut through dysfunctional bureaucracies – or work around them, and to improve health care and efficiency at modest cost.”
This absolutely fascinates me. Corruption is a huge problem in the global south, and I definitely know how corrupt governments siphon off resources from the intended benficiaries. NGOs can be more efficient by not having to deal with as many layers of intermediaries and bureaucrats taking their cut, but should they be real substitutes?
Cambodia is paying the NGOs as independent contractors. While this seems better for the patients in the short term, doesn’t it just make Cambodia more dependent on aid from the global north in the long term? I’d be interested in hearing about how much interaction the NGOs (such as Health Net International and Save the Children Australia) have with local administrators.
Health Net International has chosen a user fees system to work within the Cambodian Ministry of Health’s health coverage plan:
“The Cambodian Ministry of Health has designed a health coverage plan. The coverage plan describes a minimum package of services and activities (MPA) that should be carried out at health centre level. The MPA consists of basic preventive and curative services such as immunisation, family planning, antenatal care, nutritional support and simple curative treatment for diarrhoea, acute respiratory tract infections and tuberculosis.
The ADB money is a loan to the Ministry of Health to implement the coverage plan. With this loan the effectiveness and efficiency of contracting NGO´s is tested in order to find out which system works best;
Contractors that have complete responsibility for the total health care, contractors that work within the Ministry of Health system and have to strengthen the existing district structure or contractors that depend entirely on the services of the District Health Management Team and the Ministry of Health.
Within this project, HNI has designed and managed a user fees system. This system seems to have the potential to increase utilisation by the poor and decrease their out of pocket expenditures on health care….
The Ministry of Health, with financial support from ADB (Asian Development Bank) will contract in the near future the public health system in Mondulkiri to a private organisation. HNI´s intervention will assist the Provincial health Department to prepare for this change of the public health system. HNI´s partner NOMAD, is planning to turn its organisation into a Cambodian NGO, working with a team of locally based staff. HNI plans to continue the cooperation with NOMAD in the future and support their development.”
From the Save the Children Australia website, it seems like they’re trying two models with varying levels of local collaboration in order to decide which works best:
“No small affair, this project pilots two models for health service provision in Cambodia allowing a comparison of two management styles: contracting out in Memot, where we recruit, manage and train all district health staff and contracting in in Cheung Prey, where we train and manage the district health staff already employed by Cambodia’s Department of Health.”
There is a lot of debate about developing nations privatising public resources (ie water), with the loudest voices doubting the wisdom of moving control to foreign multinational companies. Does that apply to health as well? Does it matter if the contractor is a publicy held company or a nonprofit organization? How much control do local people have over their health now as opposed to before? How has accountability changed?
I am all for finding creative and effective ways to improve health care infrastructure in the global south. This idea is definitely creative, and sounds effective, although I haven’t heard from any Cambodians on the issue.
I am a little cautious about this because the potential for long-term dependency seems high. If Cambodia can snooker NGOs to providing its health care, why should it bother with improving its own system?
Nonetheless, I plan to watch this and try to learn more. If anyone has any opinions on this, I would love to be educated more on the issue, and I plan to invite Health Net, Save the Children, and the NYT author to respond to this post, so we’ll see what they say.
On Tuesday I went to the Netsquared NetTuesday event. I’m not sure about the spaces and capitalization with these, but I’ll just roll with it.
Netsquared in their own words:
“Today, we recognize a turning point in nonprofit technology adoption. Through the immense possibilities of the Internet, nonprofits can turn hundreds of supporters into thousands, access new reserves of volunteerism, and give their constituencies tools to take charge of change.
This site is the online home of our effort to highlight projects around the world that succeed at the intersection of pervasive access, new tools, and new audiences.”
I hope to really dig in and learn how to better utilize tagging, RSS and other web 2.0ish things that I keep hearing about and can only semi-intelligently talk about. But for anyone out there who is interested in how these emerging technologies can help nonprofits expand their message and tap into widespread grassroots networks might want to give them a shot.
At NetTuesday (it happens on the second tuesday of each month) I met some interesting people who have had a lot of experiences at nonprofits, for-profit companies that do cool stuff and just cool people in general. They also had a huge platter of these mini-quiches that weren’t very good but just tractor-beamed me into eating them. Everyone there seemed to already know each other, so it seemed a lot easier to hang out with my trusty friend Food than to mingle. But I left Mr. Food to go hang out, and got a lot more out of the evening.
One of the things that struck me most was how the folks I talked to there admitted that they didn’t know any of the answers. They just seem to be trying like all the rest of us to make sense of it all. I think that the geek world makes a habit of using intimidating and confusing language that scares off normal folks who don’t inherently know what “CMS” stands for. Netsquared attempts to make complex concepts like Web 2.0 and RSS (simple my ass) understandable for the people who are actively working to change the world. We need more groups like them, and I highly encourage anyone to poke around their site.
Filed under: Imagination
So, I must admit, it’s a little ironic that a week after starting a blog about nonprofits, NGOs and how they can do a much better helping the world, I hit a homeless guy while biking to work.
I know you’re already thinking that I’m a big jerk. How could you hit a homeless guy! Jerk.
Well, he walked right out in the middle of the street without looking to his left, and while I was swerving around him he sped up to get past oncoming cars and ran right into me. Or maybe I ran into him. Whoever hit who, we both fell down.
He immediately asked me if I was ok, and he apologized profusely. I wasn’t hurt, but I didn’t know what to say. He kept apologizing for a couple of seconds and eventually I asked if he was ok, told him that I was fine and I apologized for hitting him. I asked him if he was ok, he assured me that he was, we shook hands and went on our merry ways.
What occurred to me as I continued biking (without further incident) to work was how I didn’t expect him to be polite. I had this image in my head that anything done to homeless people is mean-spirited, and would be taken as such. But the first thing out of his mouth was an apology and a statement of concern for me. I didn’t really give him credit for being a good guy, but he genuinely felt bad for hurting me. We all make mistakes, and the biggest among us recognize them.
A few months ago I was biking to work and I saw a car hit a homeless guy (my commute is always interesting); knocking him and his cart down. I dropped my bike to go help the guy out, but the dude in the car just stayed put. The homeless guy needed help righting his bottle-laden cart, and didn’t seem to be hurt. The driver was very reluctant to get out of the car, and when he finally did, he responded to the events by wiping the broken glass off his hood. Meanwhile, other homeless guys came out of the woodwork, leaving their carts unguarded to help this guy pick up his bottles.
Every person and group makes mistakes. NGOs make plenty of mistakes (there’s no shortage of examples, stay tuned) but they rarely admit them. It’s really unfortunate, because by admitting mistakes and talking about them, everyone could learn how to do things better. The best employees are honest ones, and honesty means recognizing mistakes.
In the non-profit world, there tends to be a distance between those in the climate-controlled cubicles of the head office and the people/species that they are supposed to be helping. Sometimes the biggest screw-ups really wake people up and make them pay attention, thereby causing real change.
So here’s to you, homeless guy. You’re really nice, and I profusely apologize for hitting you and initially thinking that you were a jerk If you were in charge of things there might be some real reform. Not that I’m advocating hitting homeless people on your way to work.
Note: check out The Homeless Guy, he offers a perspective into homelessness that most people never get.
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy rocks out again. They called Frist out on his pseudo-charity back when no one cared, and they are doing it again now:
“At the time, NCRP alone among the national nonprofits challenged Frist, though we hadn’t had even a peep of support from the supposed nonprofit leadership groups when we took on DeLay, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Senator Saxby Chambliss, or even Jack Abramoff for that matter. We suggested that Frist’s fundraiser, whether he intended it or not, would serve as a venue for donors to buy invaluable “face timeâ€? with senior Republican lawmakers, some 10 or so from the Senate to be the featured attractions at the World of Hope fundraiser. We criticized Frist’s pledge not to accept lobbyists’ donations as meaningless, since the corporations that hired lobbyists would be able to make the donations directly to buy access. We raised questions about the AIDS charities that Frist had preselected for support, noting one’s leadership by a pastor known for his high-profile support of President Bush’s faith-based initiatives, another run by the son of Rev. Billy Graham. And we noted that the Senator’s charity was run not by AIDS services professionals, but by Frist campaign operatives.”
Way to go, NCRP. Keeping an eye on the industry and calling it like you see it. You were absolutely right, and have thus earned a place in the hallowed halls of my blogroll. Keep going, and don’t back down.
Arianna Huffington claims that all charities are tainted by Sen. Bill Frist’s pseudo-charity World of Hope:
“One of the worst aspects of this abuse of charity is the trashing of one of the best things in our culture, the charitable instinct. When people hear that Abramoff’s Capital Athletic foundation took in millions but spent less than 1 percent of its revenue on its purported purpose (with the rest funneled to Trader Jack’s pet projects, like overseas golfing trips with DeLay), or that a sizable chunk of the $4.4 million World of Hope took in went to Frist’s political cronies, it can’t help but cast a pall over the whole concept of charitable giving.”
I sure hope not. People are nosy. If they think that a charity is not legitimate, they poke around. Or at least they should. Whenever a scandal blows up about a charity being a front for bribery, terrorism or other nefarious activities, questions get asked about all NGOs. This is exactly the way it should be.
People need to probe NGOs to find out if what they are doing is worthwhile, effective, efficient and optimal. While a few big name organizations make oodles of money, most nonprofits are small and underfunded (at least if you ask them). Organizations get sharper when people ask how they spend their money, why they operate in this arena and not that one, how they are different from other organizations, etc.
Many people write a check to any group that sounds nice and has a touching newsletter or ad. That’s great, but the world is better served if people demand excellence from NGOs. The best, most efficient nonprofit organizations will be able to prove why they are the best, and they only get to answer those questions when people start asking them.
NGOs need money, but they also need involvement. Nonprofits love (or should love) feedback about ways they could improve, what is cool/uncool about the website, opportunities they may be unaware of, etc.
Whenever a bad apple arises, it presents a wonderful opportunity for legitimate nonprofits to prove that what they do is worthwhile.
Filed under: Imagination
Regarding my previous post about goodsearch.com, I wrote them an email about how installing and using the goodsearch searchbar didn’t seem to update a charity’s tally. Within three hours one of the cofounders called me back(!!!) and told me that they don’t have that functionality built in yet.
So basically, when you are at goodsearch.com you can help the NGO of your choice, but not by using the search bar. He also told me that they would have a new version coming out pretty soon that allows IE users to have their searchbar tally count toward their favorite nonprofit, but the firefox version is months away.
I hope they build the functionality in soon. I use my searchbar all the time, and would love to rack up some pennies for my favorite NGO-du-jour. In my opinion Google is a better search engine than Yahoo!, so for me to use an inferior search engine I at least want to have the proceeds go to my favorite nonprofit.
They also said that currently charities get 50% of revenues, which they hope to increase in the future.
I played around and entered some nonprofits into the “I’m supporting” bar and clicked to see how much they’ve raised. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer led the pack with $2.29 when I checked.
Goodsearch seems like a really imaginative idea. They make money, nonprofits make money, individuals don’t have to sacrifice anything; everyone wins. They’ll need lots of users to really make a difference, so they will be interesting to watch develop. I’ll definitely keep an eye on them; we need more businesses like Goodsearch.
Filed under: Imagination
Check out Goodsearch.com, which I found on Beth’s Blog. Goodsearch is basically the Newman’s Own of search engines. It runs a Yahoo! search engine, but you get to pick a nonprofit to donate the revenues to, at $.01 per click.
Goodsearch has this interesting passage in their How It Works section:
GoodSearch is a company with a unique social mission, which involves giving as much money back to charity as possible while remaining a self-sustaining business. Our goal is to direct a minimum of 50 percent of revenues to the designated causes and increasing this percentage as the company matures (typically, socially aware companies donate anywhere from 1 percent to 20 percent).
Their goal is to direct 50 percent? What percentage are they directing now?
I wonder what their business model is. Maybe they expect ordinary people to use this over other search pages, or maybe they expect NGOs to do the legwork for them and promote it through e-newsletters to their constituiency.
I always like ways I can do good without having to go too much out of my way, and I certainly use search engines often enough. Maybe this will catch on, who knows? I searched for Interplast and made them a cool three cents. If anyone is out there, I’d be curious to hear what others think of this nifty little idea.
Everyone I know who works at a NGO often hears “how can I help, besides writing a check?” Sometimes it comes from people with limited financial resources, and for them it is a genuine and reasonable question.
Often, however, it is coming from those who have the resources to give money, but simply don’t want to. People really seem to want to make their presence felt, and have a tangible impact at a nonprofit organization. Giving money that disappears into a nonprofit’s bank account doesn’t seem very personal or impactful, regardless of how necessary it may be. People are always being asked for money from countless corporations and charities, and they are tired of being nagged. They would rather give their time than their money, so they try to find ways to help without giving donations.
When I was about 13, I went to a Jimmy Page and Robert Plant concert (with my mom!). In the lobby there was a Greenpeace booth, and I eagerly signed up to become a member, with visions of zodiacs and tree-sits dancing in my head. I was finally going to kick ass and save the world. Unfortuntately, my precious $30 only earned me repeated phone calls and letters asking for more money. I always told the hapless volunteer who was calling me that I was ready and waiting to go to the front lines, but I didn’t want to “just” give money. Well, Greenpeace never brought me onboard, and I never gave them another dime. I came away feeling bitter and dejected.
Well, things sure look different from the NGO side of the fence. The NGOs I have encountered seem to have plenty of professionals onboard, they just need money to do their jobs. Volunteers are always valued if their particular skillset is needed, and such help is invaluable. But often, people without strtegically useful knowledge can become somewhat of a burden to many nonprofits by taking staff time (aka staff salary aka money) to manage and guide the volunteers. Nonprofits seem to want people’s money more than their time.
Certain nonprofits are very well suited to handle volunteers. Groups that run mentoring or literacy programs for youth need many people without a lot of advanced training. Other groups whose missions necessitate some expertise, however, often find themselves trying to politely ask for money from people who don’t want to be viewed as a dollar sign.
Regardless of what I think, this won’t change. People are still going to want to help with their hands, not with their wallets. Crafting projects that are useful to the nonprofit and gratifying for the volunteer will strengthen the bond between the two. Both come out a winner, and when the volunteer does have a few spare bucks, a volunteer-friendly organization will be well-positioned to receive a needed donation. Non-governmental organizations must be ready to meet the demand for volunteers to succeed in a model where hands-on volunteering is often a sure way to build a lasting relationship, financial and otherwise.
Filed under: Media
SF Weekly recently published a petty, vindictive and biased article about Craigslist.org. They note that people are publishing ads on Craigslist for free rather than paying traditional newspapers (such as SF Weekly) to place a classified. As a result, newspapers are losing money and laying off staff, resulting in inferior journalism. That seems reasonable enough to me.
But then they get nasty. Sometimes they portray Craig as naive, while other times they portray him as an evil media baron. These attacks make the paper seem pretty juvenile, and they remind me of the eloquent insults I thought of only after the grade-school playground bully was long gone. It must not have struck SF Weekly as ironic that they subjectively attacked a man who they blame for attacking the objective media. But what really got me was their attempt to discredit the Craigslist Foundation:
“…the Craigslist Foundation, which trains other nonprofits in marketing, technology, and fundraising skills, but makes no grants, has no endowment, and charges for many of its training events.”
The events they are referring to are the Craigslist Nonprofit Boot Camps, one of which I recently attended. It cost Interplast $50 to send me, and I got the opportunity to attend lectures in fundraising, technology, public relations and so on by leaders in the respective fields. The founder of the Webby Awards talked for 90 minutes about what the internet is all about, and afterwards I got to pick her brain. I talked with and learned from some of the brightest minds on the net, all for $50 (not to mention getting three catered meals served on compostable plates followed by a concert). Just as useful as the lectures were the connections I made with other people who also have big ideas and small wallets.
I would have had to spend weeks digging around on the internet to learn as much, or paid hundreds of dollars to go to some fancy conference. Craigslist Foundation does an excellent job, and I can’t seem to think of the last time SF Weekly made a similar contribution to society.
So I must admit that I have been thinking about blogs and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) for awhile now. I work at Interplast, and after volunteering everywhere from Texas to India, I have gained a different perspective of the nonprofit world from my climate-controlled cubicle at an established NGO. I am using this blog to independently express my ideas and engage in discussions about how society creates positive social and environmental change. Nonprofits are bound by a particular set of rules, both legally and culturally. I think that the groups most successful at achieving lasting social change will be adept at changing the rules under which all groups operate.
There are millions of non-governmental organizations out there, and the vast majority are probably under-staffed, over-worked and under-funded. They need some creativity and imagination (hence my cutesy title) to navigate around the whims of their clients, donors and regulators. Such creative groups and people are out there in every sector, and I hope to point out some of the better examples in the hope that people with an interest in efficient, long-term systematic change can find resources and discussions in one nifty little place. So lemme know what you think about NGOs, and I’ll try to keep lots of yummy content streaming your way.
My blogging policy / disclaimer: Although I am paid employee of Interplast, NGI (Non-Governmental Imagination) is not a product of Interplast. I will not blog while on the clock or while using Interplast equipment/resources, and Interplast will have no editorial control over the content. The views expressed here are not necessarily the views of Interplast, and should not be treated as such.
