Humanitarian and International Development NGOs

I’ve been silent on the blog for a few weeks due to paternity leave.

In my absence, events continued to raise questions about the capability of the U.S. disaster response system. There were criticisms of the response to Hurricane Ike, a report from the GAO that the American Red Cross and other leading nonprofits lack the capacity for a major emergency, and the American Red Cross just received $100 million from Congress to replenish funds for disaster relief.

U.S. disaster response is officially a public-private partnership.  It is one of the few instances in which the government officially designates nonprofits to provide support (see the National Response Framework).  The lead governmental agency - FEMA - is given authority to coordinate non-governmental groups.

Some major weaknesses that I perceive:

(1) I do not believe there is clarity between what our government views as its responsibility and what it considers the purview of private donations to nonprofits and faith-based groups. The Stafford Act gives permission for the federal government to fund everything from temporary shelter and cash grants to legal aid, food supplies, and home repair.  But to whom and to what point?   Is the government primarily focused on helping those who have the least resources to support their own recovery, or on everyone - rich or poor - who was affected?  Is it their goal to support survivors until they’re able to return to their homes and start clean-up, or get them back to their level of pre-storm living?

The way the Act is structured, federal funding is negotiated on a case-by-case basis with the affected state after each emergency.  The government clearly sees itself as the primary supporter of the repair of damaged infrastructure.  “People” issues, however, seem to get revisited each time.  The danger is that those decisions can become politicized, especially since the funding is budgeted outside the annual appropriations process.  Mississippi sustained only half as much damage as Louisiana from hurricane Katrina, but Congress mandated they share almost equally the initial $11.6 billion in CDBG funds for “citizen” long-term recovery (after several more months, Louisiana was successful in advocating for more).  Mississippi had a Republican governor and a strong Congressional delegation at the time, with one of its senators (Thad Cochran) chairing the Appropriations Committee.

(2) The nature of fundraising for emergencies is episodic.  Nonprofit responders like the American Red Cross reach out to private donors and the general public after each disaster.  States and the federal government also negotiate federal grants after each emergency.  As emergencies occur more frequently, the ability to rely upon the necessary level of funds through such methods becomes questionable.  It also makes very few resources available for disaster preparedness.

(3) FEMA has limited understanding and ability to coordinate the many local nonprofits that will provide  extremely important services in any major catastrophe (another GAO finding).  As the recent GAO report suggests, and as our Katrina experience demonstrated, a major event will outstrip the capacity of the national nonprofit responders. Local groups will fill the gaps, and since they have local trust and expertise, they can be extremely effective providers.  While FEMA assumed the responsibility to coordinate the efforts of these groups after squabbling about it with the American Red Cross during Katrina, the agency has little capacity to do so successfully.

(4) Local groups have very limited capacity and profile to access contributions by donors from outside the affected area.  The bulk of disaster donations go to large, high-profile national responders like the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross, while in a major catastrophe, local groups are often first on the scene.  During Katrina, for example, many local groups jumped in when they saw the need in their  communities, and they did so without worrying whether they had the funds for it.  But they don’t have the fund raising capacity to provide such services and make themselves known to a completely new public, and they often struggle to find the funds to pay for their courage.

Improvements since Katrina imply that we simply needed to enhance the efficiency and operations of the system already in place.  It’s a centralized approach that is built around a few institutions - FEMA, the American Red Cross, and the national VOAD agencies.  This works well for the size of most emergencies, but continues to crack when tasked at a large scale.  We seem to think that improving the system means building these institutions big enough and efficient enough to respond to anything.

I find this underlying assumption questionable.  I think we need to develop an approach that is decentralized and supple enough to integrate the strengths of hundreds of nonprofits if necessary.  I have some ideas for this that I’ll share in a following post.  I’d also appreciate comments from those of you who are experienced in providing disaster relief internationally.

As Hurricane Gustav approached this weekend, the president and both would-be presidents engaged in a bit of fund raising, mostly for the American Red Cross (ARC).  Barack Obama directly asked all those in his fund raising network to send funds to the ARC; John McCain made mention of the ARC in his remarks and the RNC made a direct plea for delegates at the convention to make a donation; and President Bush asked for support for both the ARC and the Salvation Army.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that our political leaders now style themselves as philanthropic advisers when disaster hits?

(1) Instead of telling me where to make my charitable contributions, I would have hoped to hear more about what we can expect from the government’s response. FEMA still does not have a thoroughly vetted strategy for housing after an emergency (and why FEMA was ultimately given this responsibility rather than HUD still mystifies me).  I’m also unclear as to how FEMA has increased their capacity to coordinate all the local nonprofits that might respond, a role to which they agreed after both the agency and the ARC said it was the other’s responsibility during Katrina - so neither did it.

OK, perhaps these are too technical for a general audience.  But I also haven’t heard any present or future president articulate a vision for government’s role in disaster response.  President Bush, in his remarks, noted that it’s the job of the federal government to assist the states.  To what level?  What will public funds - both state and federal - pay for?

Are citizens expecting one thing and the government set up to deliver another?   My sense is that there is a  mismatch between what the Stafford Act offers (that’s the law that gives structure to FEMA and disaster funds), and what disaster survivors - and perhaps even the unaffected general public - expect.  To hear about the role of our government after disaster and how legal structures, public budgets, and leading agencies will successfully meet those obligations - that’s what I expect from political leaders.

(2) I expect a charitable adviser to have done some vetting.  I’m making an assumption here, but my guess is that there was not a great deal of analysis or comparison of the ARC and other responding organizations done by the administration or either campaign.

Even if there was, it’s a poor use of the bully pulpit.  The American Red Cross is one of the most recognizable brands in the sector (though technically it’s not a nonprofit, but a government-chartered institution).  The Salvation Army regularly ranks among the top three of nonprofits receiving the most revenue annually.  People don’t need a great deal of direction for them to come to mind.

Immediate response to a disaster is inherently local. Grassroots organizations have significant trouble accessing the funds they need, since they don’t have a national profile.  Local foundations like the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation* (which was formed after hurricane Katrina to support relief efforts), the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Acadiana (which covers southwest Louisiana) all created Gustav funds and know how to identify local groups doing excellent work.  It would not have taken much to find and mention such organizations in addition to the ARC and other national organizations.

Maybe each made his plea on behalf of the ARC because its current financial position is precarious and they want to keep it healthy.  The organization does play a role in the National Response Plan, after all.  But any donor will tell you: that’s usually the wrong reason to ask for her money.

In a report for the Aspen Institute about the nonprofit response to Katrina, I recommended mandating that the American Red Cross give 5% of its disaster fund raising to local funders after an exceptional catastrophe. With the American Red Cross such a strong and recognizable brand, I didn’t think it wise to try to create a national fund (with all the risk and start-up costs) that would support grassroots organizations on the local level.  But if would-be presidents are going to give their personal imprimatur, perhaps a private national fund that distributes funds on a competitive basis to the American Red Cross AND local groups - i.e., to whichever organizations are doing the best work - is the next great innovation.

Let’s keep in mind: Private, voluntary action is both necessary and welcome after emergencies hit, but it is not sufficient nor fully capable of doing all that’s needed.**  Rather than try to score political points and look caring by asking people to donate time and money, I call on President Bush and Senators Obama and McCain to make clear what government will do.  And then make it work.

* Disclaimer: I am a founder of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation and continue to provide strategic advice to the foundation.

**In all the media frenzy over Gustav, they missed a huge opportunity to highlight the incomplete nature of the recovery from Katrina.  Local folks, faith-based groups, and nonprofits have done heroic things in the past three years - yet all of it amounts to a small percentage of what’s needed.  This recent report by Oxfam does an excellent job of laying that out.

While working through a backlog of reading I came across this post by Lucy Bernholz* on Philanthropy 2173, in which she characterizes “foreign aid” as “international philanthropy” while referencing Reinventing Foreign Aid, a new volume edited by William Easterly.

Private philanthropy is part of “foreign aid,” and as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, arguably its fastest growing segment.  Yet for folks in the NGO field, the term generally connotes funding made available to developing countries by Western governments and multi-lateral institutions like the World Bank and UN (and, from a cursory skim, this is the general sense in which the book uses it).  They have traditionally set the intellectual framework for how and where aid is deployed.

That one of our leading commentators on philanthropy uses the two terms interchangeably might be another example of the growing influence of private dollars within aid.  Yet most of us would not equate government funds and philanthropy and would be careful to draw a distinction between the two when examining domestic nonprofit and public services.  However innocent Lucy’s characterization (the point of her post was something else entirely), it surfaced for me the challenges of perception faced by the international NGO community.

No matter how strong the humanitarian values of the U.S. general public, they misunderstand or are uncertain about our government’s role and aspirations in providing development assistance.  According to data collected by Public Agenda, half of the country believes that we spend more on international aid than Social Security and Medicare.

They also remain pretty skeptical about its value.  As Joe Lockhart (the former White House press secretary) said at InterAction’s 2008 National Forum, “foreign assistance” are two words sure to create strong negative reactions in the American public.  Most view U.S. foreign aid as “charity” — i.e., something based on a moral impulse rather than a strategic imperative — and worry that the money is being wasted.

Major U.S. NGOs are part of a push to modernize and reform U.S. foreign assistance, an issue that they hope will get serious attention from the next presidential administration.  Convincing the public that this should be a priority will be a challenge.  And helping them understand that focusing on the reduction of global poverty as an important goal in and of itself, rather than making it subordinate to our national security or foreign policy strategies - helping them realize that this focus may ultimately have the most benefit for our security will require significant education.

“Foreign aid” may not be the same as “international philanthropy,” but it should aim to be “philanthropic” - strategically invested, with a focus on maximizing its impact on poverty.  Doing so successfully will increase human security worldwide - and increase our national security at home.

Full disclosure: I have taught seminars with Lucy Bernholz and consider her a personal friend, as well as one of the field’s leading thinkers about the future of private philanthropy.

One thing about taking in more money and becoming responsible for a larger share of international development assistance: you get noticed.

Foreign policy experts have begun to include NGOs in their analysis.  First comes a mention in Foreign Affairs by Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, in which he analyzes changes in geopolitical power and includes humanitarian and development NGOs among the list of entities wielding influence.

In the latest issue of Foreign Policy, a trio from the New America Foundation - Michael Cohen, Maria Figueroa Kupcu, and Parag Khanna - call NGOs this era’s “new colonialists.” Their thesis is based on the view that NGOs are providing services and assuming responsibilities that governments in many developing countries are unable to perform, a role formerly played by “colonial masters or superpower patrons.”

I suppose equating NGOs with colonialists is meant to be provocative, but it doesn’t work, even if the role has switched hands.  It’s like calling the Prius the new Hummer.  They both get you from here to there, but the goals and values behind the design are completely different.  And goals and values matter when it comes to colonialism, which the Oxford dictionary defines as “acquiring control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.”

The authors have, however, fingered a critical issue for the field:

Seeing jobs that need to be done, the new colonialists simply roll up their sleeves and go to work, with or without the cooperation of states.  That can be good for the family whose house needs rebuilding or the young mother who needs vaccinations for her child.  But it can be a blow to the authority of an already weak government.  And it may do nothing to ensure that a state will be able to provide for its citizens in the future.

This is undeniably a dynamic that most responsible NGOs recognize and strategically try to address.  It can be precariously difficult to provide high-quality, life-saving services while acting as a catalyst for a more responsive and capable government to take over, rather than creating a cycle of dependence.

But the authors conflate different types of situations and actors in the examples they cite (Booz Allen Hamilton and Save the Children have differing priorities, to say the least) and dismiss out of hand the notion that NGOs are truly committed to strengthening and encouraging governments to rise to the responsibility, simply because they find it “difficult to find examples where these groups have pulled up stakes because the needs they seek to address are no more.”

I don’t think examples are hard to find.  In Afghanistan (where one of the article’s case studies is located), CARE set up and ran a water system in Kabul that they successfully lobbied Karzai’s government to pick up.  In India, they began an integrated health and nutrition program in 100,000 villages throughout 10 states for which the state governments ultimately assumed full responsibility.  These are just two examples out of several for one organization.  There are also cases of NGOs leaving significant money on the table because they felt strongly that the project should be government-led or might weaken local governance and capacity.

It’s true that the danger exists of advantaging self-perpetuation or self-interest over a commitment to constituents and mission, and certainly a few NGOs exhibit opportunism above all else.  But the problem is not so much NGOs paying lip service to their pledge of working themselves out of a job - it’s the tricky strategic challenge of getting the balance right of different imperatives. In fact, some portion of the growth of NGOs could well be attributable to whatever halting success they’ve experienced in building local capacity and transitioning out.  It’s an attractive selling point.  It’s not like anybody else has a better track record.

It’s nice to be noticed.  It’s nicer if the nuances could be more fully developed.

PS.  The online version of the Foreign Policy article lists “The World’s Most Powerful Development NGOs.”  No mention of who picked it or the criteria used.  How does it compare to your list?

Recently the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, in partnership with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, hosted a seminar exploring the extent to which international NGOs are influencing world politics.  

As part of the panel, Robert Paarlberg, professor of political science at Wellesley College and an associate at Weatherhead, posed two questions:

Have NGOs been able to make the weak more powerful?

Have they been able to make the poor more wealthy?

These are provocative questions, and ones that those in the NGO community must view somewhat ruefully. The ultimate answer is “no” - or, at least, “only in the most limited way.”  

His point, one well taken, was that world politics is still state-centric, and any state wishing to remain outside the reach of global civil society is able to do so. Witness the Balkans in the 1990s, Rwanda in 1994, and now Darfur, Zimbabwe, even the recent barriers to disaster relief imposed by the regime in Myanmar. NGOs have been mostly powerless to put a stop to situations when governments choose to be oppressive or intransigent; only other states have the power to intervene effectively.  

While this might be true, I wonder whether these are the right questions. NGOs don’t necessarily aspire to the level of influence and power that states wield, nor need to in order to be influential within the international political system.

It’s true that NGOs have been unable to stop what’s happening in Darfur, for example, but would the public and even other governments know as much about it and view it as a crisis without NGOs having worked to bring it to the world’s attention?  And would the affected people be surviving as well without NGO assistance? The counterfactual seems just as easy to answer as Prof. Paarlberg’s questions: those in Darfur are better off due to the humanitarian action of NGOs that are active there.

Interesting questions seem to fall somewhere in between.  What do NGOs bring that states do not?  Do their actions sometimes relieve state responsibility, and inhibit the strengthening of local governance?  And as NGOs partner more often with states, and are increasingly asked to be part of influential fora where international policy is developed - indeed, as their private resources begin to rival that of the official development assistance provided by governments, as discussed earlier - how do they retain their independence, and their credibility with and accountability to the poor?