Humanitarian and International Development NGOs

While both the Homi Kharas/Blum Brookings summary and the Index of Global Philanthropy focus solely on quantity, the Center for Global Development’s Commitment to Development Index (CDI) attempts to incorporate aspects of aid quality.  Since ”aid is about more than money,” the CDI rewards donor selectivity and penalizes tied aid, project proliferation, donor fragmentation, and lack of coordination. 

Trying to integrate measures of quality alongside quantity is - it seems to me - critical, however difficult, and puts the conversation where it needs to be.  It would be interesting to systematically apply similar standards to private funds.  How would NGOs fare?  I often encounter the implicit assumption (and am guilty of it myself) that funds are better deployed by NGOs and private philanthropy than government agencies, but it would be good to use benchmarks to compare. 

Like the Index of Global Philanthropy, CDI also recognizes that “development is about more than aid,” and so it incorporates six other components: trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology.  Since its mission is to compare national governments in their commitment to development, it measures the impact of a country’s public policies on these factors. 

This means that the U.S. scores fairly low on the migration component, since its policies admit legal immigrants and refugees at low rates relative to other countries.  I think this more accurately gauges U.S. involvement than the absolute dollar amount of remittances used by the Index of Global Philanthropy.  But it also means that the CDI only estimates the impact of tax policies in the U.S. in stimulating private giving, nowhere accounting for the recent phenomenal growth in private aid described so well by Kharas, Brookings, and the Index of Global Philanthropy that might have significant long-term implications for the aid endeavor. 

Earlier this year Brookings released Making Poverty History? How Activists, Philanthropists, and the Public are Changing Global Development, a report based on the Brookings Blum Roundtable 2007.  While it contains much of interest, one item immediately catches the eye: in 2005, private philanthropic giving for international causes was roughly equal to official development assistance (ODA) from “traditional” donors (i.e., governments).

Certainly the Gates Foundation, with its enormous asset base and focus on global health and development, has played a role in boosting the private giving numbers.  But as the report so ably highlights, reducing global poverty has become “hot,” capturing the attention of many new philanthropists and celebrities, and igniting a mass of talent eager to “make poverty history.” 

What do all this attention and newly varied capital environment mean for NGOs?  What are the challenges of balancing an ever-varying donor base and the expectations of these new actors?  Might it change the ability of NGOs to give voice to the poor?  Interesting questions.  More to come.