Paul Farmer’s compelling new book, “Haiti: After the Earthquake,” suggests that international aid to Haiti, while providing relief from suffering during the worst of times, including in the aftermath of the January 12, 2010, earthquake, has for the most part failed to help Haiti build capacity in its own public institutions, including its public health and education sectors.

A capable, responsive and accountable public sector is essential to helping Haiti become a healthy, productive and ultimately resilient society—one better able to cope with the destructive forces of inevitable natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Moreover, Farmer argues that meddling by the West in Haiti’s internal politics has contributed to the country’s chronic political instability. Periodic withholding by the U.S. of direct assistance to the Haitian governments—including democratically elected but leftist governments—and U.S. vetoes of initiatives by international organizations to channel aid directly through the Haitian government, have steadily eroded the capacity of the Haitian public sector to provide basic social services.

In testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2003, Farmer called for an end to the de facto prohibitions of development aid to the government of Haiti that the US promoted in forums in which it held influence, including the Inter-American Development Bank. “At the time [of the testimony], influential American institutions were effectively blocking four loans to Haiti from the Inter-American Development Bank—for primary health care, education, potable water, and road improvement—because they didn’t condone the outcome of Haiti’s 2000 elections, which brought the left-leaning Aristide back to power.” (p. 97)

U.S. aid did flow to Haiti during times when Washington was displeased with the country’s political leadership, but not to the Haitian government. Instead of aiding Haitian government organizations such as the ministries of health and education, aid was channeled to international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). INGOs set up their own health, water, education and agricultural programs, with little reference to Haitian government oversight, needs or priorities. Funding channeled through international NGOs failed to help build the capacity of Haitian public institutions that must provide health, education and other essential public services to poor Haitians over the long term. “Without real and sustained commitment to strengthening the public sector—including its capacity to monitor and coordinate services offered by NGOs—who would make sure development funds were being used efficiently.” (p. 97.) At the time of the January 2010 earthquake, 80 percent of all aid to Haiti and 90 percent of all U.S. aid was channeled through NGOs and contractors.

Haiti by the time of the earthquake had become known in humanitarian aid circles as “the Republic of NGOs,” with more NGOs per capita than any developing country apart from India, according to Farmer (p. 99). The U.S. reliance on INGO-managed assistance was to a considerable degree a direct consequence of U.S. laws that prohibited direct U.S. aid to Haiti’s public sector. “Post-earthquake Haiti needed many of the foreign contractors and NGOs because its [public sector] implementation capacity has long been weakened.” (p. 99). Ultimately, only 0.3 percent of all Haitian quake relief was channeled through Haiti’s public sector. (p. 102)

Farmer was back at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 27, 2010, less than two weeks after the earthquake. Six months previously he had been appointed UN deputy special envoy for Haiti under the special envoy, President Clinton. Tasked with mobilizing international relief support for Haiti and recognizing that it is poverty that makes people most vulnerable to natural disasters, he argued that greater amounts of aid for reconstruction be channeled through Haiti’s public sector. Better education and public health care systems would over the long term bring greater prosperity, and in turn would reduce the loss of life and destruction of property and livelihoods in the aftermath of natural disasters.

There is an opportunity not only to build Haiti back better, but to build a more functional and ultimately beneficial arrangement for aid delivery. Over the past two decades, U.S. aid policies have seesawed between embargoes and efforts to bypass governments, including elected ones not to Washington’s taste. Neither the international community nor the United States provided credible, long-term, financial investment in Haiti. Restructuring foreign aid and forgiving Haiti’s crippling debts are essential to helping the country recover. U.S. laws, including the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and its later revisions, prevent direct investment in the public sector; we will need to revisit these policies.

Jehane Sedsky, a colleague of Farmer’s at the UN special envoy’s office, in a concluding chapter entitled “Building Back Better, provides a thoughtful discussion of why the efforts of not-for-profit community in Haiti before the earthquake often did not contribute to lasting change in Haiti or, in many cases, to even help Haitians.

• The work of not-for profits was uncoordinated and did little to reinforce the priorities of the Haitian government.

• International NGOs expended great effort determining ways to address problems they saw, but often they did not include Haitians in meaningful ways as they developed their plans.

• International NGOs are accountable to their international donors—not to the disenfranchised communities they are trying to serve.

• Often they deliver goods and services but less often pay local salaries; creating a culture of dependency rather than self-sufficiency.

• Many years of effort by NGOs has served to only weaken the already weak government, which did not, even before the earthquake, have the resources to pay its employees.

• As a result, public health and education officials are paid intermittently, hospitals lack basic medicines and supplies, and schools are 90 percent privately owned and unregulated. (p. 357)

International humanitarian NGOs do not deploy their resources or staff to work within national institutional frameworks as partners—as part of the fabric of Haitian health and education organizations. Many find it inconvenient to do so, but many of their objections to working as authentic partners, dedicated to rebuilding Haitian capacity at its core, must be answered and overcome.

Farmer and his co-authors offer a persuasive critique of the failures of international aid to engage with Haitian public sector institutions in ways that would better serve Haiti over the long term. But they don’t in my view offer enough in the way of concrete proposals for forging a new kind of relationship between donors, international NGOs, and the Haitian government. I want to offer below a few ideas, principles really, for a new kind of aid relationship.

• A considerable portion of international development and humanitarian funding should be directed to building the capacity of the public health, public education and water sectors, sectors essential to poverty alleviation and economic growth. What’s an appropriate portion of all aid? I don’t know, but for purposes of discussion, let’s consider what it would take to get 50 percent of all aid disbursements channeled through the Haitian government as general budgetary support or through projects that are administered jointly by the Haitian government and INGOs and/or contractors by 2015.

• International technical advisors and professionals—health care workers, teachers, health and education administrators, civil engineers—should in much greater number than is currently the case be seconded from aid agencies, including from the staffs of International NGOs, to Haitian ministries and agencies, filling established posts. This would mean, for instance, that Haitian health care not be augmented by building new non-profit hospitals, staffed at the top by foreigners, and drawing talented Haitian away from public institutions with better, but ultimately uncompetitive salaries. Rather, funds should be directed to building better Haitian public hospitals, and international medical staff would take up positions at the side of their Haitian colleagues.

• In addition to providing technical assistance in their respective fields, international staff will be expected to provide management expertise, including skills in financial management, reporting and program auditing. (I’ve written in a previous blog about how Botswana’s insistence that all international advisors hold established Botswana government positions left a template of good management practice that endures long after the departure of expatriates).

• Effective public service delivery in Haiti will ultimately be provided by a growing Haitian economy, capable of financing to a much greater degree than is the case today its own public services. Considerable financial aid and technical assistance should be directed toward sectors of the government and the economy responsible for promoting joint public-private investment projects, generating employment growth, and better managing public finances. Partnerships between U.S. and Haitian universities and the Haitian ministry of finance supporting training in public finance and administration of top Haitian graduates should be designed and generously funded.

• The US should consider Haiti as a partner for Millennium Challenge Corporation funding for key sectors, such as health, education and agriculture, and provide aggressive support for USAID management development projects that would help Haiti meet the pre-conditions for MCC sector funding (as is currently being done for Liberia).

Haitians deserve a better deal from their own government and from international aid organizations. The current aid system does not help deliver the kind of systemic improvements in Haiti’s public service sectors for which it is capable. It’s past time to leave behind the litany of excuses that stand in the way of helping Haiti build back better.

Steven Lawry is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Oganizations at Harvard University.

Some quick reflections:

Duncan’s thesis is that development is best achieved through (1) active citizenship and (2) effective states.  While instinctively we might place these two in opposition to each other, they can be compatible and complementary.  To be successful in alleviating poverty, the two must combine to redistribute power within markets so that poor people benefit:

The impact of markets on poverty and inequality depends on whether poor people can exert influence over the way they operate.

Working from his thesis, Duncan offered the following pressing issues for NGOs (this is my interpretation):

• Inequality vs. poverty.  NGOs should focus on inequality, which puts their focus on the imbalance of power that leads to poverty, and forces them out of the mindset that poverty is just about lack of income or assets.
• Religious blind spot.  Whereas most NGOs focus on secular policy, much development takes place through faith communities and the influence they hold on people’s lives.
• Focus on urban areas.  NGOs suffer from “peasant romanticism,” focusing efforts on rural villages and communities, when most poor people are now found in urban areas.
• Making states effective.  NGOs may be too small to have much influence on states and make them effective (which begs the question – then who?).
• Migration.  The NGO community is mostly missing on the question of making migration a humane, dignified experience.  They have yet to take a stand in the hot political environment.
• Accountability.  NGOs are often less accountable then the actors and institutions that they accuse of suffering from a lack of accountability.
• Emergencies vs. long-term development.  Emergencies – whether complex political emergencies or natural disasters – are “shocks” that offer significant opportunity for systemic change.  Yet during the brief opening in the aftermath of crisis, NGOs focus on providing and restoring services – putting on the ground experts in providing relief – rather than bringing in the expertise – the economists, the policy analysts and developers – to effect structural changes that lead to successful long-term development.  Time to turn that on its head.
• New global institutions.  This moment of global financial crisis may be one of the few real opportunities to create new global institutions capable of regulating and redistributing power.  Otherwise such processes typically experience enormous resistance and are agonizingly slow.
• Overselling globalization.  Most development remains at the national level.  NGOs may be focusing too much energy and advocacy on international campaigns.
• Understanding change.  NGOs need better models for understanding how change occurs and being able to track progress.

Much food for thought.  I was especially struck by the point that the aftermath of emergencies is an  opportunity to advance social change.  It rang true – the social and government structures are so often unsettled, and those in charge more willing to incorporate new ideas and policies, especially if such policies reduce the vulnerability that the crisis has brought into such relief.   NGOs might make relatively easy changes to their approach and have great impact doing so.

I’m sorry we didn’t get to explore the question of accountability more deeply.  How are NGOs less accountable than they purport?

What jumps out at you?

(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 to find and support the organizations – local or national, small or large – that are responding most effectively in a specific disaster.  My preference would be to have all response agencies, including the American Red Cross and the national VOAD agencies, commit to and benefit from such a fund.  This means that the national agencies would throw their support behind a collective fund raising effort after a disaster, similar to the joint appeals by international NGOs that are so successful in other countries, rather than undertaking their own individual campaigns.  This could:

• Improve response by allowing organizations during the height of the crisis to focus on providing services rather than raising funds
• Reduce administrative costs significantly within the field by streamlining fund raising
• Create a single, recognizable brand that simplifies donor decisions and offers an attractive partnership opportunity for media outlets, celebrities, and corporations while acknowledging that effective response requires supporting a diversity of nonprofits and faith-based groups.

Let’s be real – the bulk of the money from such a fund would likely still go to large, national organizations.  However, it would improve immeasurably the access that local organizations have to small private contributions, and if done correctly, should also significantly improve accountability.  If such a fund built a successful track record, I can envision it developing the reach and credibility to raise funds successfully between disasters to ensure an adequate reserve and fund preparedness programs (see #2…).

(2) Stimulate and support local, integrated disaster preparedness programs

Federal funding for disaster preparedness has been in steady decline at a time when we need it most.  Such programs should be expanded; should be focused at the local level; and should ensure that local nonprofits, faith-based groups, and the private sector are at the table when plans are created.

It’s time to resurrect  programs like Project Impact, which brought local nonprofits and businesses alongside government to develop and implement mitigation strategies.  Project Impact was widely credited with keeping damage and casualties to a minimum after the Seattle earthquake in 2001 that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale, yet was cut the same exact day by the president to save $25 million, a tiny percentage of FEMA’s base budget.

It’s time to perfect and take to scale programs like Operation Brother’s Keeper, a partnership between inner-city African-American churches and the New Orleans chapter of the American Red Cross meant to ensure that vulnerable community members were included in relief efforts during a major disaster.  Unfortunately the partnership  was in the early planning stages when Katrina hit.

We need hundreds of local, self-directed efforts like the promising multi-sector effort in San Francisco -  BayPrep – with the leadership of the mayor’s office behind it, and like the local VOADs – coalitions of local nonprofits and faith groups in dialogue with local emergency officials – that have sprung up in Louisiana through the leadership of the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations, the United Way, and others. Concerted funding and effort by FEMA and key national nonprofits could go a long way toward stimulating robust and essential disaster preparedness at the local level.

(3) Develop a high-tech, quick-strike coordination capability to take in and report out essential information in real time to responding agencies

Current systems of organizing and presenting information are not accessible nor usable by the multitude of nonprofits that might be involved in a large scale response.  The system currently in place does not easily allow a wide array of nonprofits to feed in information about their needs assessments and services, so it’s difficult for other organizations to understand where they may be best used to fill the gaps.  We need to create a system that assumes that many diverse organizations will be involved, and can systematically organize information gathering and sharing of a decentralized response. Responding organizations should be able to get real-time answers to the fundamental question “What is needed by whom where?”

For FEMA to play the primary role in developing and implementing such a system, it will have to radically improve its understanding of the broad nonprofit sector and elevate its senior nonprofit liaisons to a much higher level of authority.

(4) Review and reform the Stafford Act

We need to make sure that our legislation works well to cover and handle the increased amount of emergency events that we are sure to face; that we have a clear sense of the extent of our government’s commitment to supporting people in their relief and recovery; and that budgeting processes are structured in a way that minimizes politicization.

To undertake any or all of these will require the leadership of the dominant players – FEMA, the American Red Cross, and the national VOAD agencies – and the input of local organizations and governments that have experienced some of our recent major disasters.  It will require a shift away from promoting their individual organizations and “becoming fund raising machines” to thinking about what is best for the field and what would make U.S. disaster relief as effective as possible.  Then perhaps we’ll truly learn the lessons that Katrina, Ike, and Gustav have so harshly offered.

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.

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.

Peter Dobkin Hall, a Hauser Center principal who has done exceptional work on the arcane, baffling, and often ineffective arrangements that constitute Red Cross governance, attributes the situation to a decline in Red Cross credibility.

I’m not so sure.  Despite high-profile snafus and a revolving door at the CEO level, the general public still rates the American Red Cross as one of the most trusted and well-known national nonprofit brands.  I think this is more a function of a broken business model for disaster fundraising.

The masterful fundraising machine at the Red Cross knows well what all relief organizations understand – the most profitable time to raise funds for relief occurs in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.  In the past, it was Red Cross practice to put contributions received during one disaster into a general fund that could also be used in future emergencies.

The problem: donors were responding to the crisis at hand, and many weren’t happy when they learned that some of the money was being put aside for another “rainy” day.  Not to mention that affected communities did not take kindly to learning that they might not benefit from all the money raised during their time of need.

Both had a point.  Under pressure, the Red Cross adopted a policy of double-checking with donors who did not earmark their donations, so donors understood their contributions were going to a general fund rather than a specific crisis.  This type of transparency should be (and always should have been) the norm in the sector.

What the Red Cross hasn’t done, however, is adapt.  It’s absolutely necessary to have a robust reserve fund, in order to attend to myriad crises that may occur during a given period.  This is especially true as the response by donors to different disasters becomes increasingly uneven (without clear reasons, no matter how much we talk about “donor fatigue” or man-made vs. natural emergencies or the varying levels of media coverage), and mid-level emergencies promise to occur more often (as climate change becomes more pronounced).   It’s not easy to raise money for such a fund just on its merits.  Educating the public about the true nature of disaster response will help, but I don’t think will ever suffice.

To be fair, this is not an easy problem.   Instinctively, I don’t think the Red Cross will be able to solve it on its own. It will become increasingly untenable to rely upon timely and disaster-specific donations to provide relief.  (I also think it will be increasingly untenable for the Red Cross to be the primary provider of services in all cases – Katrina highlighted that a decentralized, local response is most effective in a large-scale catastrophe.)

It may take a collective partnership – similar to the joint appeal concept I outlined in an earlier post, but perhaps on a permanent basis – to build and develop a fund that collects money in an insurance capacity. The fund would not be Red-Cross specific, but would provide support to any organization (even local) that responds responsibly.  The fund might also become the primary contribution vehicle for the general public during a disaster. For such a fund to be successful, however, the Red Cross would have to be willing to play a lead development role, and in true partnership.   One thing is clear: as the donating public views disasters and relief operations as less than exceptional events, we’ll need to change our fundraising approach to reflect this.

That recommendation stems in part from the experiences shared by international humanitarian organizations like Mercy Corps and IRC.  For many of them, Katrina was the first time they responded to a domestic emergency.  In an international setting, they are accustomed to working with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and were mystified to find that neither FEMA nor any other group was focused on coordinating the multitude of local nonprofits working heroically to provide relief.

This is just one example of how comparative analysis between our domestic response architecture and the international system might result in suggestions and improvements.  What can the U.S. learn about disaster preparedness from Bangladesh, which in 2007 experienced a cyclone as strong and as damaging as a 1991 storm that killed 138,000 people – but in 2007 had fewer than 10,000 deaths?  Still tragic, yes, but a vast improvement in safety and response.   

The Mobilizing Change report also points out the growing reliance on U.S. nonprofits by government at all levels, to provide services and implement programs.  The report calls for a high-level commission to explore this relationship and propose public policies that would help government strengthen nonprofit impact, rather than focus exclusively on oversight.  

I support such a commission, since I sense that most policymakers do not understand the nonprofit sector very well, even while they are turning more and more of their attention toward it. Yet what are the implications for the nonprofit sector of an increasingly intertwined relationship with government? Can nonprofits retain their independence and hang on to the characteristics that make them uniquely successful?  The unintended consequences deserve further exploration.

This is analogous to concerns raised about NGOs in the newly published Can NGOs Make a Difference?  The Challenges of Development Alternatives. As the editors – Anthony Bebbington, Samuel Hickey, and Diana Mitlin – flatly state in their introduction: “There are serious doubts regarding how far NGOs in the North are able to do anything that is especially alternative to their host countries’ bilateral aid programmes.” More on that later.

As documented in reports like my Weathering the Storm: the Role of Local Nonprofits in the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort (Aspen Institute) and the Urban Institute’s Open & Operating? An Assessment of Louisiana Nonprofit Health and Human Services after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, local nonprofits and faith-based groups filled large gaps during the relief phase, yet had great difficulty accessing funds to pay for their efforts.  This despite what was by most measures the largest philanthropic response in U.S. history, ultimately over $3.5 billion, as tracked by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.  

One reason is that many of the responding organizations were never before involved in disaster relief – they were trusted local groups that recognized the need and jumped in.  They had little capacity to make themselves known to a national audience, especially while providing additional services in a fast-evolving and compromised environment.

International relief NGOs were among the most successful in distributing their resources quickly to groups on the ground, even though many of these NGOs were responding to a U.S. emergency for the first time.  They deployed staff to the area and used their experience, earned in international settings, to infiltrate local networks.  Some remained beyond the relief phase: Mercy Corps’s program operated past a couple of years, for example, and Oxfam America has made a long-term commitment, with a robust staff still in the region (disclaimer: I authored a report for Oxfam at the one-year anniversary regarding the recovery status of low-income communities).

It should be noted that the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, which raised the bulk of its almost $130 million in the early days of the disaster, did not distribute its first grants until December 7, 2005, more than three months after Katrina hit.  I would venture that it’s not exactly what many small donors had in mind when they contributed, hoping to relieve the immediate suffering they were witnessing on TV. 

A large block of those first grants were channeled to state funds created specifically for Katrina relief, and Mississippi’s state fund had still not used any of its $17 million ($12.4 million from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund) by September 2006, fully one year after Katrina.

Rather than act as a pass-through to organizations already at work, similar to what they did with funds raised for the 2004 tsunami, the former presidents created a new organization – with its own staff – to handle the distribution of the money, much like a traditional foundation.  Part of the motivation stemmed from concerns about accountability and the desire to track the use of the funds more closely.  But even a determined and well-resourced start-up could not get up to speed to be relevant during the relief phase, though it lasted 10 times longer than the norm for a big catastrophe.

The positive side is that those funds were available as relief moved to recovery and reconstruction.  While the bulk of donations by the public invariably occurs immediately after an emergency, a significant portion of resources are needed over a long period of time as communities slowly rebuild.  This is another aspect that recommends the joint appeal model discussed in the previous post.  Such an appeal has the potential not only to collect and deploy donations quickly, but may also have more leeway from the public to meter their uses throughout the different phases of recovery.   

Many European countries and others like Japan, Australia, and Canada have what are termed “joint appeals,” which promote one unified fundraising campaign for a particular emergency and then share the proceeds among a consortium of organizations. A donor makes a contribution to one place, secure in the knowledge that she is supporting organizations with the capacity to respond effectively and that those organizations are cooperating – not competing – for gifts.  The donor can be confident that her gift will be deployed fairly, in accord with pre-agreed criteria.  For the donor, the focus is on efficiency rather than choice.

The Disasters Emergency Committee in the UK is the oldest and arguably most successful of the joint appeals. Through significant partnerships with the BBC, ITV, and British Telecom, the DEC has become a known and trusted brand in the UK. It has raised approximately $750 million since 2004 just for the southeast Asia tsunami.

There have been serious conversations within the NGO community about creating something similar in the U.S., but the challenges are compounded by the larger number of NGOs that provide international relief and our fragmented media market. Most joint appeals consist of no more than a dozen organizations, making it reasonable to manage governance and fund allocations.  The mechanics and politics of who’s in, who’s out, by what standards, and how to share the money get complicated when 30-40 organizations might stake a reasonable claim.

Most joint appeals also have one or two media companies that provide instant access to the majority of their public. In the U.S., four (five?) national networks and myriad cable channels make it difficult to line up enough media support to ensure it would be value-added – and that’s just television.

There is no hard research that shows U.S. donors would give up choice to reward cooperation and efficiency in a crisis situation, though the Bush-Clinton fund raising in the wake of hurricane Katrina (more on that in the next post) seems to support the notion. But it’s an attractive proposition to have a centralized mechanism, with high levels of transparency and accountability for the use of funds and with the capacity to distribute the money quickly to organizations with the capacity and reach to provide relief effectively. This would seem advantageous to having multiple companies like Google choose and promote their own recommendations, which – while providing a bit more direction – doesn’t necessarily make donors’ choices easier, especially if different companies are recommending different organizations.

NGOs have been working to coordinate the delivery of their services on the ground and develop best practices through efforts like the Emergency Capacity-Building Project. Working together on fund raising would bring them together on the other side of the proverbial “coin.”

The list neatly encapsulates general public views about a disaster, and showcases how that perspective diverges from the reality that NGOs face while providing response. And while his encouragement to the field to be self-critical rings true, I’m not sure those public misperceptions can be blamed in total on the humanitarian aid “industry.” It does raise the question of whether NGOs could be educating the public much more vigorously about the realities of disaster relief, and be more honest about its limitations.

This is no small issue. As Sir John Holmes, the UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator continues to emphasize (see his remarks in Helsinki at the Humanitarian Agenda 2015 Seminar), the demand for humanitarian relief will only grow, especially as extreme weather events increase due to climate change. Relief may ultimately require a different system altogether than the current method of injecting resources from the outside to help local communities deal with the aftermath.