By Ben, Cap Corps Midwest volunteer in Nicaragua
When we donate time or money to a cause, we want to know
that what we gave is making a positive difference. We don’t want to
spend time on things that don’t matter, and we don’t want to waste
money. I think that makes a lot of sense, but in the year and a half
that I’ve been in Nicaragua working at a local NGO, I’ve found that this
impulse on the part of foreign donors can have unexpectedly negative
repercussions.
Accountability
When the youth center where I work gets grants to do a
project, say an after-school program to 50 under-served youth with
classes in Spanish, English, Math, and Dance, the grant providers want
to be sure that we are doing what we said we would. They cant follow us
around constantly to see that we are keeping our end of the bargain.
So the most common form of accountability are attendance lists that
every kid has to sign at every event. The lists ask for things like
name, date of birth, ID number, telephone, and signature. The lists
have to match up, so the kids cant make mistakes. The lists cant have
tears or stains. Heaven help you if the kids use a red pen. In a
normal week at my youth center there are around 30 attendance lists that
need to passed around and monitored so the kids don’t draw on them.
Projects also require periodic reports, photos, and testimonials. I
understand why. But I also understand that all the time we spend
obsessing over lists and writing reports to prove that were doing work
reduces the amount of work we can do. All the paperwork draws staff
away from kids who need attention and love and toward mind-numbing
tedium and burnout.
Efficiency
Another thing that donors look at when deciding which
organizations to donate to is their efficiency. I remember a couple
years looking through Guidestar at the percentage of a charity’s budget
allocated to direct service versus administrative costs. I thought, my
money will go farther if it is directly reaching the people. That’s
reasonable if we are giving to a hand-out kind of organization, but if
we look solely at efficiency as a standard it is going to push us away
from donating to organizations seeking to create social change (because
socially oriented work requires more staff, i.e. greater administrative
costs). I’ve seen how my coworkers are underpaid and overworked, in
large part because of requirements by the grant providers that limit how
the money we receive can be spent.
Goals
The trickiest funding issue for me is related to the goals
people fund. The NGO with which I work is based in “Popular
Education.” Popular Education is a method for working for social change
that starts with the needs and dreams of the people, and then works
from there. The realities of non-profit funding stand in complete
contrast. Well meaning donors will fund a particular project. We have
several projects aimed at reducing violence against women. That’s a
great goal. The problem is that it is a goal for Nicaraguans coming
from non-Nicaraguans funding the grants. When goals are set outside of
the community trying to reach them, it undermines their effectiveness.
My Take?
If we are blessed to be able to put a portion of our time
or resources toward a cause, we need to be able to balance personal
responsibility that our gifts are being effectively used with trust that
allows organizations to adapt to and work well with their context.
That’s easier to do when we have relationships with the organizations
we’re involved with, but that’s not always possible. I also fear that
this sort of perspective could push people toward only supporting
domestic causes even though the international community has so many
needs and opportunities. Ultimately, I take my experience as a
challenge to give more freely and trust more deeply.
No comments:
Post a Comment