Debt cancellation that worked

I feel compelled to quickly make up for the earlier glum news from Sri Lanka.

I recently caught sight of an Oxfam press release which has a concrete example of debt cancellation working - one to throw at cynics of Make Poverty History.

As a direct result of debt cancellation and aid increases agreed at G8 last year, Zambia has made health care free to everyone living in rural areas, scrapping all fees. On the back of their G8 windfall of $4 billion, the government is also investing heavily in education.

It means thousands of people will get medical treatment for the first time in their lives.

Have a nice Bank Holiday.

Sorry stories from Sri Lanka

Two friends recently returned from Sri Lanka, travelling independently of each other. Neither work in disaster relief but both are smart and aware and made a point of asking people about their experiences. They told me similar things, among which:

• 16 months later, many people are still living in tents.
• In a rush to hit spending budgets within the first 12 months, several Western charities reverted to the culturally insensitive ways which they all claim to have left behind. So when fishermen from one village were presented with a fleet of modern fishing boats they pointedly ignored it and built their own traditional boats from local materials. The new ones glint in the sun on the beach. No-one asked them if they wanted them.
• Ironically an alarming proportion of the disaster relief money still hasn't been spent (hence the tents).
• Western hotel chains are greasing official palms so they can stick their hotels where the fishing villages were, pushing the locals inland (away from their fishing boats).
• Homegrown local charities appear to be doing the most useful work.
• Sri Lanka is on the verge of a three-way civil war.

The inside track from Sri Lanka here.

Sorry.

70 charities that count

What a wonderful idea: a list of British charities which an emphatically independent evaluation organisation has decided, after painstaking research and soul-searching, that everyone should know and support.

The list is here and growing by the week. Register on the site and you'll be able to read the two-page report on each of the 70+ entries. I suspect it's the first list of its type in the world.

Hats off, again, to New Philanthropy Capital.

Why small charities suffer #2

Added to the bizarre fundraising treadmill that makes life hard for small charities, more issues:

• Many government contracts for local services, allegedly the saviour of small charities, are being snapped up by private companies. The relevant article is here somewhere.


• Because they don't have the time, contacts or name, small charities can't easily find affordable office space (particularly in London).
  
• Larger charities used to give grants to smaller specialist charities. But now the trend is for them to do the work themselves - arguably to the detriment of the beneficiaries, not to mention the charities that know every ridge and mark of the coal face.


• Because they don't have the time, contacts or name, they also can't easily find trustees with influence or experience.

So, thoughtful donors might ask themselves, what can I do to help the outfits that still have the passion, the grassroots connections and the low costs that larger charities might have lost?

A good first stop is the Community Foundation Network which connects donors with small charities in their area. Happy hunting.

PS Still no word back yet from Cancer Research UK about the alleged employee's comment attached to the Admin costs entry

Why we give to disasters

It doesn't make sense. We are happy to give £6000 to each person affected by the London bombings, but reluctant to cough up £4 for a sleeping net for someone living in a malarial country (see previous post: The Value of an African) - when it's likely that the £4 will make more of a difference.

But at last pyschologists have worked out why. It's apparently all down to System 1 and System 2. System 1 is our kneejerk reaction, derived from hunter-gatherer days when we jumped to attention at the first hint of danger. System 2 is slow, analytical and involves, say, working out that your money will go a long way if you give to an anti-malarial campaign.

You might argue that Heart vs Head isn't a dissimilar concept. But there's more to it. It's also about numbers. Our hunter-gatherer brain is inclined to calculate in tens, not hundreds, and it blanks out completely when presented with (threats to) millions (of people). This PDF by Paul Slovic gives the detail.

The answer, charities are advised, is to tell the story of one individual who represents what 999,999 other people are going through. We primitive donors can identify with that. And I suppose if the charities aren't doing their job, we should search out those individual stories, override our caveman brains with System 2, and give.

There's more like this at the surprisingly readable Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Tabloid scandal!

I read The Sun once a fortnight, partly because I think it’s important to know what three million British people think, but also because a copy is always lying around at my local greasy spoon, and I like my omelette and chips.

I've discovered that it’s not as predictable as the people who never read it think. Today for example it carried no fewer than three charity-related stories:

1. The CEO of Cancer Research UK in a full-page spread railing at the government about delayed provisions for early detection of bowel cancer.
2. The CEO of Refuge taking up half the lead editorial page discussing a new law allowing apparently contrite wife-batterers less harsh sentencing.
3. Not in the same league but nonetheless: an independent survey revealing that 15% of Sun readers are aware of all the ways to contract HIV/AIDS as opposed to 10% of Daily Mail readers *sigh*, and then listing those ways.
   

So Sun readers may know more than you think. In fact when it comes to the charity world, they may know more than you know.

The donor's philosopher

I recently finished The More You Give: a thought-provoking book about how and why to give to others. It's an agreeable concoction of philosophy and anecdote aimed at the general public.

Author Mike Dickson is a wise man with a lifetime’s stash of stories and experiences, and a pleasing turn of phrase.

Mike presents the book as a self-help guide, and the first half of it is indeed a lightly philosophical tract, based heavily on his own experiences of nurturing his Whizz-Kidz charity, with a few reader exercises thrown in.

His religious and faintly dogmatic tone might raise the odd hackle – but I suggest you trust his direction and let him carry you through to the second half of the book which offers original thinking and information about the charity world.

The book is sprinkled with challenging opinions. For example: “Whether it’s two per cent or 10 per cent [that you give away], you will almost certainly not miss it… It will not be noticed and life will go on.”

So true. He's self-published so if you want to buy, sidestep Amazon; buy direct.

Smart women don't work in charity?

The quality of charitable work may have declined since the 1950s when men allowed women to move into their areas of work.

Alison Wolf explains: "The period from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century was a golden age for the "caring" sector in one major respect. It had the pick of the country's most brilliant, energetic and ambitious women, who worked in it as paid employees, but who also gave enormous amounts of time for free. Now, increasingly, they do neither."

"So," my fiancée asked, "Are you saying it's just laggard females left working in charities, while the smart ones boss men around in the City?"

You could interpret that from Ms Wolf's Prospect magazine article, which may stir your thinking on the future of society generally.

Bono "is wrong"

That is, he's the wrong person with the wrong messages to front international development causes. Why? Because he's..

• White
• Irish
• Rich
• Powerful
• Isn't saying anything new (poor Africans blah blah blah)

A rising marketing guru reckons Bono fails several historical prerequisites of successful changemakers, namely that he isn't..

• From the area
• Affected by the problem
• Making sacrifices to aid the cause (eg Rosa Parks)
• Telling a powerful new story (eg Martin Luther King)

Discuss.

I heard this (highly simplified) theory last week from Douglas Holt at a conference for influential, brainy people, and a blogger, who say they want to help the world.