Archive for the ‘International’ Category
March 3, 2009
For many years, Rotary International has been a leader in raising funds to eradicate polio around the world–and when the Nonprofiteer says “many years,” she’s referring to a campaign now past its 20th birthday. Five years ago there was a piece in the New Yorker about what already seemed like an endless battle to wipe out the disease, which persists in only a few countries but causes disproportionate misery and disability. And this year, when the Rotarians and their worldwide partners announced one last big push to raise funds, the response of The World program on the BBC was a segment asking whether the costs of the eradication effort outweighed the benefits.
Against this backdrop of skepticism and exhaustion, the Rotarians’ work seems all the more heroic. Their challenge is to raise $200 million to match $355 million in grants from the Gates Foundation. Maybe you’d like to help them out. Check out the video and get more information here.
Tags:polio, Rotary
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Disease charities, Fundraising, Health care, International, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Public private partnerships, Volunteers/Volunteerism | Leave a Comment »
February 17, 2009
A note from the World Bible Society advises us of two new affiliates, one dedicated to supplying anti-malarial bednets and one to providing personal water-purifying straws. But the Nonprofiteer isn’t inclined to support either one because the World Bible Society is in the business of conducting Christian ministry and conversion throughout the world, an activity the Nonprofiteer regards as equal parts wasteful and culturally intrusive.
UNICEF supplies bednets and water purification services without those drawbacks; but perhaps people whose interest is in evangelism wouldn’t be moved to assist poor people without exacting a pound of conversion in return.
Which raises another, larger question: when we see that a huge hunk of individual donations goes to religious organizations, should we celebrate because religious organizations provide social services or mourn because they do so inefficiently, that is, only after siphoning off x per cent of what’s given for the operation of the church? Is that any worse than a secular nonprofit’s siphoning off operating expenses from its donations?
Or any better?
Regardless: pure water and bednets are a good idea. If you’d like to supply yours with a side of Bibles, contact the World Bible Society; otherwise, UNICEF will be happy to direct your money so it provides clean water and malaria-free sleep to the maximum number of people worldwide.
Tags:evangelism, faith-based charity
Posted in Health care, International, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Religion, Social Service Agencies | 2 Comments »
January 7, 2009
Nicholas Kristof’s column Bleeding Heart Tightwads purports to reveal that political conservatives are more charitable than political liberals, and that Americans are more charitable than Europeans. These are familiar neocon morsels, and Kristof’s willingness to swallow and regurgitate them casts doubt on his claim to be a liberal–not to mention his claim to be a journalist who analyzes and thinks before he writes.
Self-described conservatives donate more money to charity than self-described liberals ONLY if “charity” is taken to include donations to churches. As many more conservatives than liberals are regular churchgoers–and the most regular and charitable of all are the ultra-conservative Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Days Saints, whose members tithe 10 per cent of their income–any count of charitable contributions which includes church donations will unfairly portray liberals as cheapskates. The Nonprofiteer doesn’t give a dime to her church because she doesn’t belong to or participate in one, but she’ll measure her actual contributions to charity–social services, education, health care and the arts–against the actual contributions to charity of any registered Republican, any time.
Similarly, Europeans give less money to charity than Americans not because they refuse to put their money where their social-justice mouths are but because they’ve already done so in the fields of health care and education to an extent as yet undreamed of by the United States. Of course Europeans, Canadians and Japanese give fewer charitable dollars to health care: most medical care is paid for out of their taxes. Of course they donate less to institutions of higher learning: tuition to those institutions is paid by the state.
The relationship between politics and charity is a complex one, and there are serious people who believe, for instance, that donations to food banks interfere with achieving long-term food security for all Americans because they keep the hunger problem just below the national radar. (And there are certainly serious people who believe that columnists who try to buy young Asian prostitutes to liberate them are merely increasing the profitability of Asian prostitutes and thus the risk to young Asian girls.) These difficult policy analyses are not made simpler or likelier of resolution by facile comparisons and repititions of nonsense on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times.
Tags:bleeding heart tightwads, Kristof, slavery
Posted in Advocacy, Coverage of nonprofits, Disease charities, Education, Fundraising, Health care, Higher education, International, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Religion, Social Service Agencies, Women's Issues | 10 Comments »
July 21, 2008
Here’s an intriguing development in the ongoing process of trying to connect residents of deep-poverty nations with the resources of the Internet and, thus, the world economy: a computing device and software that enables up to 30 people to use a PC at one time, as if each person had a computer of his/her own. While this may sound like the sort of triumph only a gearhead could appreciate, what it really means is computer access costing less than $70 per person–all the world’s knowledge in a form approaching the affordability level of bednets and clean water.
The Nonprofiteer is rarely enthusiastic about e-this or cyber-that; but making information commonly available to people who have been deprived of it is an unalloyed Good Thing, and even she’s not churlish enough to withhold her thanks and praise from people who’ve figured out how to accomplish it while making a profit at the same time. Excerpts from the company’s press release appear below.
REDWOOD CITY, CALIF., July 15, 2008– NComputing, the leading provider of desktop virtualization software and hardware, today announced it is working with leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide to help reduce the digital divide between developed and developing countries. The company has already deployed successful partnerships with such leading NGOs as U.S.-based Save the Children, France-based Ateliers Sans Frontieres (ASF), Bangladesh-based BRAC, Latin America-based Organization for American States (OAS), UNESCO, and India-based Azim Premji Foundation to name just a few. NComputing further announced special discounts and programs to help NGOs on every continent reach their goals for digital inclusion in emerging markets.
[snip]
The NComputing solution is based on a simple fact: today’s PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of applications only use a small fraction of the computer’s capacity. NComputing’s virtualization software and hardware tap this unused capacity so that it can be simultaneously shared by multiple users. Each user’s monitor, keyboard, and mouse connect to the shared PC through a small and very durable NComputing access device. The access device itself has no CPU, memory or moving parts so it is rugged, durable, and easy to deploy and maintain – especially critical in developing nations. The NComputing software and hardware costs as little as $70 per seat. With NComputing, people and organizations around the world are maximizing their investments in PCs.
[snip]
No other attempts at bridging the digital divide have been as successful. Low-priced laptop solutions, such as the $188 OLPC XO, carry very high hidden costs—like maintenance and support—that far outweigh their benefits.
[snip]
[S]aid Medhy Davary, director of DSF[,] “The virtual desktops are extremely affordable and durable, require very little maintenance, and use only one watt of electricity. This allows users in even the world’s poorest countries to benefit from computer access and the Internet.”
“Almost one billion users around the world who would benefit from access to computing have been unable to afford it—until now,” said Stephen Dukker, chairman and CEO of NComputing. “It is only by fundamentally changing the economics of computing that our industry can bridge the digital divide. We are going to deploy more than a million virtual desktops in the coming year and are honored to work with such prestigious NGOs to improve the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.”
“In response to increasing interest from NGOs, NComputing is developing programs to help them better leverage their skills and funds,” said Ms. Lindsay Petrillose, Government Liaison for NComputing. “We offer seed units and special NGO discounts that multiply the impact of an NGO’s limited funds.” Interested NGOs and governmental institutions seeking NGO assistance can contact Ms. Petrillose at lpetrillose@ncomputing.com, (650) 454-4991.
————-
*of computer access
+as in “the digital divide”
Tags:charity, computers, computing, corporate giving, International, Internet access, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, Poverty
Posted in Current Affairs, Education, International, Investment, Marketing, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
July 1, 2008
Here’s the latest idea for “sustainable” funding for AIDS services in Africa: a subscription music service whose proceeds will be divided between music producers and AIDS charities. Presumably the notion is that people who are downloading music for free instead of buying it will think twice about stealing from African AIDS victims. Still, the Nonprofiteer wonders how this is more “sustainable” than encouraging regular contributions by regular people to UNICEF or CARE or any of the AIDS research charities.
At the risk of redundancy, she’ll say it again: if there were money to be made from curing poverty and disease and inequality, they would already be cured. Let’s stop appealing to people’s cupidity and try appealing to their sense of justice instead.
Tags:(RED), AIDS, charity, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, social venture
Posted in Disease charities, Earned income, Fundraising, Health care, International, Marketing, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 16, 2008
The Gates Foundation has named a Microsoft Executive as its new CEO. Does this mean that personal loyalty to the donor is the most important quality to be sought in a foundation executive?
Tags:charity, foundations, Gates Foundation, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy
Posted in Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, International, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
May 12, 2008
Nicholas Kristof highlighted some very impressive young philanthropists in his New York Times column yesterday; but one of his observations made the Nonprofiteer cringe.
The humanitarian prodigies like Ana and Nick are laudable for going beyond simple protesting to help their causes. Today’s young social entrepreneurs come across as more constructive than my generation of student activists, and more savvy about how to accomplish their goals cost-effectively.
“Simple protesting”–another term for that is “political action.” And as committed to the service-providing nonprofit sector as she is, the Nonprofiteer doesn’t imagine–and doesn’t want others to imagine–that it’s a substitute for monitoring, and where necessary changing, government policies toward those in need. Nor is it clear that organizing a nation’s worth of benefit dances to pay for anti-malarial bednets is more “cost-effective” than organizing a nationwide letter-writing campaign urging Congress to spend money on bednets instead of the Iraq war.
So while we’re celebrating charitable young people, let’s not devalue those who choose political involvement instead. There’s nothing “more constructive” they–or any of us–could do than holding our own government to account.
Tags:Advocacy, charity, children, generosity, International, philanthropy, political action, protest
Posted in Advocacy, Benefit events, Coverage of nonprofits, Fundraising, International, Private Philanthropy, Uncategorized, Volunteers/Volunteerism | Leave a Comment »
May 9, 2008
Well, this is refreshing: a philanthropist’s response to the question, “What would you do if you had $100 billion to give away?” that gets beyond the self-referential (“Give every person in the world a computer”) and jargon-infected (“I try not to be top-down”) to the ultimately simple: “Give everyone in the world $100. Some people will waste it but most of them won’t.”
There are all kinds of reasons why this isn’t the right answer, either:
- With the world population at 6.8 billion, in fact $100 billion would provide only about $14 a person–enough to sustain the poorest people in the world at their current level for two weeks. That wouldn’t buy people enough time to change their lives.
- In much of the world, the problem is less lack of money than lack of resources; there’s no point in giving people $100 apiece if there’s only $2 apiece worth of product available for their purchase and consumption, unless we want to inflate the costs of everything 50-fold.
But the notion that what’s wrong with poor people is not that they’re lazy or pathetic or misguided or ill-behaved but simply that they’re poor is one that can’t be reiterated often enough–because the more we reiterate it, the more we’ll be inclined to alleviate poverty not with instruction or programs but with money.
Thus endeth this week’s lesson.
Tags:charity, foundations, International, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, Poverty
Posted in Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Fundraising, International, Investment, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 29, 2008
This article in Sunday’s New York Times about the current decline in consumer spending helped crystallize the Nonprofiteer’s longstanding but inchoate objection to embedded giving, the process of substituting charity-related purchases for actual charity: namely, that it creates no bond between the “donor” and the charity, and no sense of responsibility for continuing support of the charity’s work. So when money gets a little tight, “charity” purchases become a luxury to be trimmed: you don’t buy a (red) t-shirt, you stop polluting the landscape with bottled water–even the brand whose proceeds go to provide potable water in the developing world–, you wear the jewelry you have instead of buying this year’s version of the pink ribbon representing support for breast cancer cures.
Our job as fundraisers is to help people see how their lives are intimately intertwined with the lives of people being served by their money. That’s really quite far from showing them the swag they can score–including bragging rights as well as consumer goods–if they purchase this brand rather than that one.
Tags:charity, charity promotion, embedded giving, Fundraising, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, retail donation
Posted in Benefit events, Current Affairs, Environmental, Fundraising, Health care, International, Marketing, Nonprofit management, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
April 24, 2008
It used to be said–may still be said on the fringes of the Right–that foreign aid was a matter of having poor people in rich countries send money to rich people in poor countries. This was a particularly crude way of raising the question whether desperately needed aid actually reached those in desperate need, which was precisely the question that occurred to the Nonprofiteer when she examined the Kivab4b Web page. Kivab4b is a project sponsored by credit-card issuer Advanta and microfinancier Kiva.org, through which American small business owners can:
Select an aspiring business owner through Kiva and make a grant using your Advanta business card. Advanta matches the amount of your grant, dollar for dollar. Kiva distributes the funds. As the funds are repaid, the money is deposited into your Kiva account. You will be able to withdraw those funds or use them to fund another business owner.
A “typical” beneficiary is shown, a Haitian woman with her own cosmetics business–from which one can infer that this foreign aid is a matter of having petty-bourgeois in rich countries send money to petty-bourgeois in poor countries. Is this really the best way to fight global poverty?
Among the reasons why the answer might be ‘no’:
- The site’s language to the contrary notwithstanding, these are not grants; they’re loans. Telling people they can eradicate poverty without actually giving anything to charity is false, and only increases the impatience with which they regard perfectly legitimate claims on their generosity (such as taxation to support foreign aid). Giving people in the developing world a decent life will require some sacrifice on the part of people in the developed world, and the longer we try to conceal that truth from our fellow citizens the harder it’s going to be to separate the said citizens from the necessary money.
- In a country where there are food riots, is a person who starts a business selling luxuries–even small luxuries, like cosmetics–really going to be better off? Is the country as a whole really going to be better off for having an indigenous cosmetics mogul?
If the point is to rally the energy and commitment of American small business in support of its counterparts worldwide, Rotary (among other fraternal organizations) has a range of programs for just this purpose. Simply swiping your credit card isn’t really a substitute for that.
Tags:charity, credit, developing world, foreign aid, microlending, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, Rotary, small business
Posted in International, Investment, Marketing, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Uncategorized, Women's Issues | 4 Comments »
