Today the Hauser Center hosted Duncan Green, head of research at Oxfam GB, to discuss his new book, From Poverty to Power.  Lant Pritchett, professor of the practice of international development, offered a response. Some quick reflections: Duncan’s thesis is that development is best achieved through (1) active citizenship and (2) effective states.  While instinctively [...]

So, questions still remain about the ability of the U.S. disaster relief system to handle a large-scale catastrophe.  What can we do? (1) Develop a national disaster relief fund With such a fund, private contributions for relief and recovery would be collected and distributed by an independent entity, with independent oversight, whose sole purpose is [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The American Red Cross announced recently that their disaster relief fund was depleted, meaning the organization will have to borrow significant sums to fund relief operations for the Midwest floods.  This is not a good situation, especially with hurricane season about to arrive. Peter Dobkin Hall, a Hauser Center principal who has done exceptional work on the [...]

On Monday, the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy Program at the Aspen Institute released Mobilizing Change: 10 Nonprofit Policy Proposals to Strengthen U.S. Communities.  Full disclosure: I helped edit the paper and wrote much of the introduction, and its recommendation for FEMA to create a high-level coordinating body to better integrate community-based nonprofits in disaster relief [...]

Regarding mechanisms to raise and distribute funds in the wake of emergencies, it might be productive to revisit lessons from my experience with hurricane Katrina.  I arrived in Louisiana 10 days after the storm and helped found the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation.   As documented in reports like my Weathering the Storm: the Role of [...]

The effort to provide relief to survivors of the Myanmar cyclone and the Chinese earthquake resurfaces questions of how to effectively mobilize and deploy charitable contributions in an international emergency. People across the U.S. interested in making contributions want to know that their gifts, large or small, are being put to good use. And as [...]

Mike Van Rooyen, director of Harvard’s Humanitarian Initiative and an emergency room physician with experience in international disasters, recently outlined 12 Myths and Misconceptions in Humanitarian Response. He criticizes the humanitarian aid “industry” for making incorrect assumptions about the vulnerabilities of disaster victims and for propagating incorrect public perceptions about international emergencies. The list neatly [...]