Aid, Nonprofit, Public: Who Defines the Rules of the Game?

I am a big supporter of the view that nonprofits should be run like businesses. Because aid has to be sustainable. In every sense of the word. However, through my experience in the field I have started to notice that some practices of many aid and international development organizations remind me of the corporate world. But not in a good way.

When nonprofit leaders are striving to streamline day-to-day communications and management within their organizations - it is excellent. When CEOs promote transparency and accountability within their companies, it is great. When nonprofits look for social investors instead of grant-makers to find their way to financial sustainability, it is superb! However, when nonprofits start paying more attention to their PR campaigns and fundraising, forgetting their original goals in the process, it is not aid anymore. A nonprofit is a business with mission. When mission is lost, nonprofit turns into a traditional business with a donate button on its homepage.

One of the articles that really inspired this post was tweeted by the mysterious @TalesFromthHood. AlertNews Can aid agencies afford to be honest? is talking about nonprofits' fundraising & PR practices that too often take general public (a.k.a. potential donors) for simplistic and narrow-minded people, pushing simple messages such as "a starving child" and forgetting to tell the not-so-pretty truth from the ground.

The article quotes OCHA's Mark Turner: "I still get the impression that the simple tale of 'give a pound save a life, here's a child with a begging bowl' is still by far and away the most effective fundraising exercise and I'd be interested see if there's any research to be done in terms of complicated messages and fundraising -- whether this public that supposedly wants a greater, more complex understanding of the situation gives money when you present it in that complicated way."

The question I want to ask is: Who started this myth that the public does not want the "messy truth"? Who defined the rules of the game that the nonprofit world is running by?

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the most educated people - traditionally the biggest donors? Then why do nonprofits need to simplify their messages so much? Why can't they afford to be honest? Since when fundraising and PR are more important than work on the ground? Since when is it acceptable for aid agencies to claim to "do good" without knowing their original mission or end results?

Is it because admitting failure is so hard in practice? Is it because we venerate success so much, but prefer to omit the "dirty details"? Or is it because monitoring & evaluation are legging behind, while PR machine is always on its high horse? When did nonprofit industry switched gears from need-based solutions to corporate-like, huge but unaccountable programs?

Now, I am not saying that fundraising and PR are not important. Many big nonprofits are able to receive grants namely because of the successes of their PR and fundraising departments. Working for more than 2 years for a nonprofit run by volunteers, I KNOW how important they are. However, I take comfort in that my organization is mission-driven, that it exists simply because it truly helps the people in need. THEY are our main focus, their needs is the base of our existence. Because aid is about helping others, not about my professional success, a CEO's self-promotion, or organization's ratings. Aid is about doing good, honestly, effectively, selflessly. A very idealistic view, I agree. But aid itself is by definition idealistic.

I look forward to your comments! Do you agree with me or not? Can nonprofits really combine idealistic and altruistic motives with business operations? Can aid agencies be grassroots-oriented and still financially sustainable?

Does Africa really need no more foreign aid?

Don't get me wrong. I am FOR sustainability, long-term solutions vs. short-term and do realize that foreign aid most of the time falls under the latter category... But hear me out here.

Not long ago I read a great article on Huffington Post Impact, where the author quotes Idris Bello, "a self-proclaimed 'Afropreneur'", who says that

"Africa does not need aid anymore."

Right when I was about to share the article on Twitter along with my own "Amen to this" I found myself thinking: "But what about thousands of Africans that are in desperate need of immediate help, right now, at this moment?" Will the meager needs of people who live in the Horn of Africa - that is experiencing yet another sever drought - be met or will hundreds die abandoned? Will women all around rural Africa have to see their kids die from water borne diseases, because their villages have no source of clean drinking water? Will an African child have to sleep without a malaria net tonight? Because simply giving a net/bottle of water/bag of grain to people in need is not sustainable. Yet this does save lives.

To begin with, let's just say not all aid programs are created equal. Compare TOMS shoes - check out Saundra Schimmelpfennig's article on why it is bad aid - and Water Credit that I consider an example of smart aid. Another thing we shouldn't forget is that Africa is not a country, but a continent of 53 very different countries.

For example, the home country of Mr. Bello, Nigeria, thanks to its rich oil reserves is doing much better economically than some other African states. With all the oil money coming into the country (even though most of them do settle in the pockets of corrupt government officials) standard of living in Nigeria has risen significantly. However, what is even more important for Nigeria is that the country has just had its first truly democratic presidential election. That will ensure even a better investment environment in the country. However, not all the countries in Africa are blessed with oil or a somehow stable political situation. On the other end of spectrum are Somalia, DRC, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi and such. These are some of the poorest states in the world, with a very extensive list of development problems, where populations live in truly despicable conditions. The truth is that governments of these countries are not even just not up for the task, but the bureaucrats there genuinely don't care about their people. From Mobutu Sese Seko and Idi Amin to Omar Al-Bashir and Robert Mugabe, this pattern seems to be unbreakable.

The question is: who will provide all these resources and help people in dire need if not foreign aid agencies?