Why is education and awareness raising so important?

Well, first and foremost, consider the issue of family planning: there is no doubt developing countries need to lower their birth rates dramatically to reduce the social, environmental and economic burden of providing education, healthcare, food, water and jobs amongst other things, to so many people. For sure, some of the poor in those countries understand this and want to have less children but cannot, for reasons including sexual pressure from males, lack of access to (or awareness of) contraceptives and reproductive health knowledge. 

But, for many they are not aware of the impacts their children will have: the impacts on the child, on the parents, on the wider family, on the country, or on the environment. They have not done the calculations: if they have they probably still believe that having more children helps provide for the family in the medium-term, and for their parents in the long-term. Overlooked is the real short-term needs as well as a sophisticated understanding of longer-term impacts from splitting land up between children for example. Of course it is on the larger-scale where most of the problems lie, and this falls to the government to deal with (i.e. in providing social services, employment, food etc).

Thus it is hugely important for governments to take the lead, for their own self-interest, in in-expensive education and awareness campaigns for their citizens to better understand the impacts their children might have. Without creating this desire, through role-models, peer pressure, media, peer-to-peer education and so forth (varied and thought-out campaigns utilising all available channels), the poor may never even want to limit their family size.

Once such a desire is created, then specific education on family planning and contraception can be provided along with increased access to a variety of contraceptions and other longer-term social activities to address larger issues such as coerced sex, female empowerment, poverty etc.

The limits of strategic community programs

In Asia businesses are starting to focus their community programs, make them 'strategic', leverage their limited resources as much as possible, instigate lasting and large-scale change, increase their community investments as the region's importance to their business grows and explore ways of distinguishing their programs from the rest as well as a number of other trends. This article aims to identify the limits of such trends in order to guide businesses as they develop their programs.

Best practise for an NGO: Identify the problem, identify the best solution, get the resources required to implement solution, use resources when needed (i.e. may vary depending on implementation progress).

Best practise for a business: Identify a problem related to the business (i.e. in the business's local community, related to business's line of work etc), identify what the benefit is to the business to adressing the problem, identify what resources the business has that can be used to address the problem (and that bring the desired benefits), provide said resources. Attach strings to ensure resources are used as benefits the business (i.e. location of implementation), as convenient for the business (i.e. volunteers) and to ensure appropriate use of resources.

Though the above statements are very brief, they describe the dilemna that exists whereby the way an NGO and the way a business addresses problems are very different, and can even be come incompatible in some cases.

Businesses should benefit from their community programs and they should seek to utilise their specific resources as best they can, but this may only be part of the solution. It is rare a business has all the resources to meet the NGO's needs -or the willingness to provide all of those resources.

The result is an imperfect provision of resources to the NGO, restricting an NGO's ability to tackle the problem as it would wish -but this is accepted as a sacrifice in order to get neccesary resources. In some cases NGOs can seek multiple resource providers and combine them, but in many cases this does not work due to business's requirements for 'exclusivity', location specificity, different financial and impact reporting requirements and so on.

Now this situation might only occur for so-called 'strategic' community programs, and not every program need be strategic as every program will vary by business type, location, sector, size etc.

Additionally it musy be recognised that though business can be the solution to many social and environmental problems (as well as economic ones), they cannot solve all of them. Though strategic community engagement is a good thing, as are other programs engaging with the environment and other issues, it must be recognised that there are other limits as to what business should or is willing to support.

There are other resource providers out there -each with different roles to play, resources that can be provided and interests including governmental funding, aid funding, individual charitable donations, foundation funding and so on. Some issues business will not touch, either becuase the link to the business is too weak, the issue is too sensitive or business does not have the required resources.

One benfit of a corporate foundation, especially for US companies, is that the foundation can have a wider remit and address issues the business might not want to. In fact the more strategic businesses become with their community programs, the more there seems to be the need, in Asia especially, to keep some money and other resources aside for non-strategic purposes.

Increasingly businesses are recognising the importance of actually engaging the community through employees as volunteers and this is a welcome move to adding value to communities and educating employees, providing them extra skills and so on. Unfortunately the side effect of this is that, in Asia, most businesses are therefore more willing to support programs in major cities close to where their customers, employees and target markets are. Indeed, in this case, a strategic community program can be crafted, and this should be encouraged.

The problem with this is that most of the social and environmental problems, in China, and other parts of Asia (though not all), are not in the major cities but in rural areas, away from the major cities. In these circumstances resources are not going where they are most needed and instead are going where is most suitable for businesses. Again, this is just good CSR, but is not good for development and this is the conflict.

In fact, in 1 example, businesses are falling over themselves to support migrant children because, as an issue, it is a hot issue, it is no longer politically sensitive, it is an urban issue and it is a ‘children’ and an ‘education’ issue. This is not a criticism for businesses who are supporting this issue and it is still worthy (though, increasingly less so as the government policy changes and government allocates more resources towards it, such as in Shanghai). It is especially a large issue in the smaller cities, though these are often places businesses are only just starting to touch with their community programs.

At the end of the day a little money can make a big difference and any difference a business can make is good for society and good for the business -inspiring employees, generating good PR and generating goodwill. So as businesses grapple with this issue of focussing their community programs but at the same time wanting to do what is best for development, they need to:

• Recognise the limits of what they can do
• Recognise the NGO perspective and needs
• Be flexible and explore different options and partners
• Recognise how important small grants (or volunteers, in-kind product etc) can be, especially in stimulating smaller NGOs' development (even if these small grants are not ‘strategic’)
• Explore partnerships with other businesses with complementary resources and aligned interests (i.e. pool resources)
• Explore supporting joint initiatives (e.g. Chambers of commerce, World Bank etc) in order to reduce transaction costs in developing suitable programs and to contribute to programs that otherwise are too big to do alone
• Continue to support employee driven local initiatives, even if not strategically aligned with the business
• Develop a coherent plan within different business units and within corporate foundations, so that where foundations are more separate from businesses, there is less overlap and foundations can focus on those areas business units might not be interested in
• Explore ways to support programs and projects that might not be such an obvious strategic fit, but can still be a good fit with a bit of thought making the partnership mutually beneficial.

.....For example, this could involve supporting programs in rural areas and sending volunteers there (and covering these costs and time off) for a number of days. Such volunteering activities can be used as team building activities as well as providing real eye opening experiences to employees and fully immersing them in communities for a longer time.
.....For example, looking at longer term secondments that can bring tangible benefits to the secondee, as well as the NGO.

This article is not a criticism of strategic community programs; it is an attempt to help explain the limits of such programs and to explore options for overcoming some of these limits. It is, though, intended to sow some ideas for readers to contemplate how businesses can be a part of the solution for those issues that many businesses are not yet part of –but that definitely still need solutions to come from somewhere. There are other resource providers for many of these solutions, but as we all recognise, there are some resources foundations, government etc just cannot provide that businesses can: be it brand awareness, staff expertise, technological expertise or a multitude of other useful resources businesses can apply to make the World a better place –for those in habiting it, and for the businesses that depend on it.

Making a difference to education

Always a hot topic and ultimately the bedrock of creating a sustainable society, for without quality and accessible education there can be no government officials, judges, teachers, doctors, engineers, journalists etc and it will be harder to reduce corruption and inequality or increase participation.

It is common to focus on helping those who really need it, and making a massive difference to those who are disadvantaged and lack the opportunities that others have. This is not a bad thing, especially if the school or students have (or will have) a relationship to the company, i.e. by being in the company's 'local community'. Scholarships can be great especially if they are motivating others as well as those who get the scholarship, and if they are really helping the needy.

But, for these initiatives, a holistic perspective must be taken. The most needy might not apply for the scholarship or be able to take advantage if they have to care for their family or must work to earn income for their family (so does one provide a scholarship to the student and also cover the opportunity cost of that student not generating income?). A school might look great, but what is the quality of the teaching? In many poor areas, even with trained teachers and good facilities, is there ongoing support for the teachers and are the children actually healthy enough to attend school and concentrate?

A school is not just teachers and students, it is also head-teachers, local education officials, parents and even sisters/brothers. All of these (and more) are stakeholders in the school to varying extents and through participation ideas and efforts from all can be generated and then implemented. But participation does not come naturally and must be facilitated to ensure those who do not want to participate, who are afraid to participate, who are unable to participate -do participate.

Support also must take a long-term and wider perspective in order to understand any side-effects from the program. An extreme case could be that the government has money for the school, but because of a corporation's contribution, that money ends up in someone's pockets, but to all affective purposes, what the money was earmarked for was achieved and thus the books can easily be amended! And what about the other schools, or the other students, that do not get the support of the company -how do they feel? How can the support in one location rub-off onto others? Anything is possible as long as such an approach is taken.

This kind of effort is not easy, and this is why companies rarely do this themselves and instead partner with another organisation, but a company needs to understand the issues to thus select a suitable partner and help that partner (whose capacity may well be weak, if they operate in an area that needs help). Reducing poverty is not easy and as with the case in China, the poor are often stuck in a rut. A certain proportion can get out of poverty relatively easily, but for the rest, it takes a long time and a lot of effort.

Is being a charity, charitable?

I’m the first to admit most charities become so focused on what they are trying to change and who they are trying to help that they forget, as an organization, as a collective of individuals and as individuals, they also have responsibilities to society beyond their core activities, just like every other organization, business, government or otherwise.

Thus the need for social charities to consider their economic and environmental impact, for environmental conservationists to consider their social impact and so on. But, further to this, there is the issue of what is the charity’s contribution to society? Yes, it aims to contribute something by achieving its mission, but can it achieve more?

Without straying from its mission, can it utilize or leverage what it has to help society in other ways? Can it lend its office space, its staff skills, its communication channels etc to other organizations or individuals in society? It is about going beyond the ‘practice what you preach’ debate into the realm of ‘contribute all you can to improve society’

6 practices of high impact nonprofits

From an excellent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review Fall 07 edition:

1. Serve and Advocate in order to achieve large-scale social change. It does not matter which angle you start with but to have a high impact you need both [my note: agree, but advocacy is much harder, costlier, unmeasurable etc than serving as well as less attractive to funders -unfortunately]
2. Make markets work: tap into the power of self-interest and laws of economics. Understand how to influence the market through working with different partners e.g. changing business behaviours, earning income.
3. Inspire supporters to help in whatever ways they can and nurture supporters' groups to maximum benefit.
4. Nurture networks; share ideas and information and harness the power of partnerships.
5. Be adaptive by responding to external changes; make sure you listen to others and understand the changes as well as evaluating activities and incorporating learnings.
6. Share leadership within the organisation and with other organisations by building strong leaders internally, building strong executive teams and powerful boards. This is crucial for sustainability.

Other important management principles:
-diversified, sustainable, financial support
-invest in HR and build reliable infrastructure (even if this means higher admin costs)

One area the article touches upon but I believe is the most crucial practice of all, is the use and leverage of other organsiations and other resources through the use of mutually beneficial (or 'strategic') partnerships. Finally an excellent point is made about the need to focus less on process and more on impact!

Myths of Nonprofit management

From an excellent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review Fall 07 edition:

Myth 1: Adequate management is necessary but perfect management is not and has little improvement on social impact [my note: agree, but it depends how you define this as financial management is crucial as is HR management; the latter terribly neglected in all organisations, especially nonprofits]
Myth 2: Brand name awareness is not always important and does not have to be a critical part of strategy [my note: agree, but it depends on if the brand is also a message/'voice' that is crucial to the organisation's mission]
Myth 3: Breakthrough ideas are not always necessary; what is better is to tweak existing ideas to make them more successful [my note: the problem with nonprofits is most of them do not know what other ideas are out there, working and why and there is little genuine sharing or knowledge transfer in the industry globally -maybe higher staff turnover would be a good thing?]
Myth 4: Missions drive an organisation but there is not much need to specify what it is, fine-tune it and write it down [my note: surely this requires a nonprofit whose mission is already well understood by existing staff, easily understood by new staff and brings staff together rather than causing rifts, which also seems common]
Myth 5: Measuring nonprofits' impacts does not work as something like 'overhead ratio' has little direct bearing on impact [my note: agree, especially as most nonprofits need to spend more on HR to ensure effective programs and more on advocacy to ensure sustainable programs]
Myth 6: Large budgets does not mean high impact; organisations of large and small budgets can have high impact [my note: yes, but larger organisations should be able to better pool resources , partners and knowledge to make a greater impact. Unfortunately they should also be more flexible and innovative and work more with the low budget nonprofits to provide them these capacities]

Speaking Different Languages

In all the literature about cross-sector partnerships there is always two key problems that are identified. The first is the lack of communication and poor expectation setting between different partners, and indeed different people within each organization. The second is the different perspectives the different organizations are coming from. I’d like to focus somewhat on the second problem for a moment.

What do companies think of NGOs? There are some good terms that come to mind, such as ‘dedicated’ and ‘worthwhile’ but more often there are rather less-favorable terms used such as ‘unprofessional’, ‘a nuisance’, ‘money hungry’ and ‘unreasonable’. In return, what would NGOs think of companies? Thinking of the whole range of NGOs here, though in public most are very positive if it helps them get money (except for the combative anti-corporate NGOs), in truth most NGOs do not look too highly upon companies either.

This misunderstanding between both groups leads to a lack of trust and without that no partnership can be a success. 1 way of avoiding a lack of trust developing is to try to bridge the gap between companies and NGOs. If NGOs knew what it was like to have to reach ambitious targets or get fired, what it is like to deal with internal politics, what it is like to deal with finance departments or sales departments, they might understand companies better. Similarly if companies understood the lack of trained staff in NGOs, the lack of consistent funding and how that affects an NGO’s operations; and what an NGO is actually doing, they could recognize the different pressures NGOs come under.

In addition to all this, there is often a real language barrier. Companies talk about sales, profits, margins, adding value, supply chains, distribution, brands and franchises. NGOs tend to talk about communities, vulnerable groups, sustainability, empowerment, IEC (Information, Education and Communication) and more. If it happens to be an International NGO and a Multinational company then there will also be all kinds of internal words and acronyms that add even more to the confusion.

Despite all the literature and examples of how these issues affect partnerships, there are very few proposed solutions. The best solution is for an NGO to recruit staff from a business background and for a business to recruit staff from an NGO background. The former can be tough though, since not too many staff are willing to move to the countryside or take massive salary/benefit cuts (which is often the case in Asia) whilst the latter is just as hard since not too many NGO staff have the relevant experience or skills to cut their teeth in the business world.

Thankfully some certification schemes are being developed (such as that by the IBLF), some masters, MBA or short-term programs exist that can bridge some of these gaps (such as those provided by Ashridge), providing relevant training to either party; yet neither of these solutions are likely to have a massive impact. Hence both parties continue to be communicating and getting increasingly frustrated.

Companies are looking for quick results, but NGOs realize that reducing poverty or solving massive environmental problems will not happen quickly. Companies expect a measurable outcome, yet many development programs require sophisticated assessments or evaluations in order to understand what impact the program had, if any, and these impacts are often spread over a wide group of beneficiaries over a long period of time with other forces playing a part. There is definitely still a need for greater understanding between the NGO and corporate sectors.

Partly this can be solved through recognition and acceptance of this language and experience barrier and then both parties can be more patience, explain themselves and their concepts better. For those involved in partnerships it really helps to try to meet as many staff as possible in the other organisation to find out what they do and how the organization works as well as talking to friends in the same sector and researching the company or NGO endlessly (NGO folk, try going online and downloading a presentation the company gave to investors and trying to understand it!).

Since business is everywhere and generally goes along similar lines it can often be easier for an NGO to understand a business, even if there are still communication problems. In my experience though, the more significant issue is for business to understand development. The ‘base of the pyramid’ area is really just smart marketing –but marketing that requires some understanding of a new market segment and it is clear that business currently lacks any understanding of the ‘poor’ or ‘disadvantaged’ market. Well, apart from needing this to succeed in the BoP world, they need this to develop successful community partnerships.

Companies need to understand how development works, what terms like ‘training of trainers’ or ‘peer education’ might mean and how they fit into program designs. Granted they cannot become experts over night, but an openness to trying to learn this, to visit NGOs, spend some time with them, at their work and taking some time to actually read some of their (often lengthy) reports can work wonders. Of course, for those who do not understand the 3^rd sector, they are just happy to give away some cash based on some simple criteria and get some PR out of it. An actual partnership though can be so much more. Companies can really help NGOs, giving them advice to improve their programs, helping them develop their brand and raise awareness of issues, helping them develop professional budget or accounting procedures and so on.

Yes, true partnerships require much more work than just giving out money and more often than not neither companies nor NGOs have the time, skills or genuine interest in such a partnership. But, it is clear that when these kinds of partnerships develop they really make a difference and often in many unexpected ways. There is no need to go through the ‘benefits to a company from engaging with the community’ here, but this is the time for both sectors to spend more time trying to understand the other and trying to work with the other, rather than against them.

In recognition of these kinds of language problems that exist, Plan China (some shameless self-promotion here) is organizing a study trip for corporate staff involved in working with the community to some of our program areas to understand the bigger picture and rather than just talk about the problems, the focus will be on solutions. The idea being that afterwards, staff can return to their companies better able to understand NGOs, poverty and how their company could play a role.

Spread good ideas

The biggest problem about poverty reduction is a lack of knowlege about how to reduce poverty and a lack of education about aspects of poverty -hence the poor often lack health knowledge or education or ideas to improve their economic efficiency (i.e. knowledge to improve crop yields etc). Many NGOs work in concentrated areas to make a difference through an integrated, long-term approach.

This is great, but maybe it would be more efficient to work in disparate villagers and trust (or facilitate) other villages to learn from the NGO's actions in 1 village, in order to replicate it. This does of course require a visible improvement in poverty and a clear link with the cause; which the nearby villagers can learn from. Peer education on a village/geographic level could be a great way of quickly and efficiently spread education about how to individually act to reduce your own poverty. The Millennium villages concept has adopted this idea.

The most improtant stakeholder cannot speak

The natural environment is what all of us rely on for our existence, so it is quite important to know what it thinks, what it is up to, what's affecting it, how it relates to us. But, it cannot speak, and environmental NGOs/Charities may be able to stand up for the environment, but they do not really know what it needs, what its state is and what it wants to say. Of course, they should continue to try to communicate with the environment through research as much as possible, and to try to listen to the signals the environment gives off. This way, they can do their job as best as possible -and they need to, we are really not listening to the environment; instead we are suffocating it!

Business's convening power

A NGO with x million approaches the government for a partnership and is rebuked, but if they partner with a company who foots the x million they will be accepted, due to the clout that the company has. Why? Well it is not just brand or connections, but because governments recognise how important companies are through their FDI investments, job creations, technology transfers and so on.

It is clear business has this important convening role and this should be utilised as much as possible.

Has Development failed?

This article questions whether the theory of 'development' as proposed by the UN, World Bank and IMF mostly, has failed. The article makes sense but has a ridiculous notion of development, only focusing on those 3 organisations who though shoot above their weight in some developing countries regarding their influence on policies, really have very little impact at all because they only worked at the governmental level until recently.

Development in its modern sense is about government -yes, in theory good governments lead to their citizens creating their own development by operating in a peaceful society which respects rights and gives the freedom to make the most of the market. Unfortunately most governments in impoverished countries are not like this, and trying to change those governments has (as history has shown) only made things worse. Stability and peace is the most important requirement for development. It would be nice to have functioning education, healthcare etc.. or even a functioning market, but without these, it is necessary to help create them.

If governments cannot create them, then other actors must and this is whether civil society comes in: NGOs, trade unions, co-operatives and of course, individuals. Of course there is a role for business/entrepreneurship too. Development is about all of these actors, and it is not failing; it is struggling to be efficient in overcoming the government deficiencies, the market deficiencies and the instability most developing countries are in.

Secondly development as seen by grass-roots organsiations, individuals themselves, and now even by the UN/IMF/WB is now seen as the opposite of what the article describes: it is about bottom-up, empowerment, skill provision, access to markets and so on. It is about partnership between different societal actors and it is about, eventually, reforming those limiting factors -especially government, through a gradual process. It takes time to educate citizens, train teachers or health workers, or create distribution channels for medicines, credit etc.

Once countries have skilled empowered citizens, they will inevitably be able to enter government or create new (capable) governments. If the WB/UN/IMF model has failed, that is really of little significance to development now, as those actors are now so minor. Much more important are civil society actors, entrepreneurs and 'foundations'. Development has barely even started yet... but in the last decade or more, it is sure that there are enough cases of it working in different ways in different countries to prove it can work. Just give all those actors the chance to do their bit and it will work, from the bottom-up.

Unfortunately development takes a long-time. That must be accepted. Unfortunately there are bad people doing bad things which is continually restricting development's potential. That must be accepted and worked around. There are many exciting examples of development taking off -explore the nextbillion.net, ashoka.org and hundreds more organisations that are connecting technology, people and organisations to create more success and scale-up successes to create greater impact.

Mission Creep

Corporations face a choice of whether to diversify or to specialise. There are numerous advantages and disadvantages to both. However the decision on what to do is normally driven by the need to make the company as successful (i.e profitable) as it can be, in the long-term. Thus if the objective is already decided it can be easy to list the pros and cons and see whether to diversify or specialise.

For NGOs, it is not as simple: NGOs are driven by a vision: to make the World better, and each NGO has it own mission: how it will make the World better. Though it is rare, once an NGO achieves 1 mission (i.e. campaigning for better environmental protection), it can then move onto another mission towards this overall vision. Most large NGOs do this within the context of restricting themselves to what kind of missions they will undertake: normally based on their expertise and their beliefs -so they may concentrate on the environment, or poverty, or education etc.

Larger NGOs are quite well funded, however they still face potential mission creep, though for smaller NGOs it is a much greater concern, for NGOs all require funding (from just a few dollars a week to millions) and that funding must come from something and be directed towards something else. Often the 2 are connected, sometimes they are not. Faced with the opportunity to get money, most NGOs will try to get it, changing their programs or approach accordingly (which may no longer best address the needs of who/what they want to help). Is this good or bad? Every NGO must make decisions on a case-by-case basis, but it is very tough to reject funding.

Additionally many NGOs have their own little 'cash cow' which they use to raise money, and they spend resources on generating income -how much should they spend? Well, the international standard is no more than 20% of expenditure should be for admin or for fundraising. A 'cash cow' could be money from the government, from a business, from the public, from selling a product or service etc. But what 'cash cows' to pursue that support the mission; and which to reject? Again a case-by-case decision must be made considering various factors. One thing is for sure, Mission Creep in an NGO is a tricky issue and an issue most companies don't face. They have to worry more about strategies and less about objectives. NGOs often worry about objectives because theirs are more fluid and less defined.

Participation

Levels of Participation is what possibly used to be 1 aspect separating businesses from NGOs from governments -but the recent trend has been for everyone to take-up participation in different ways which is now another example of the blurring of the line between the 3.

Governments all try different models of participation as democracies or even as autocracies too various degrees; with citizens able to vote on certain people or decisions as well as have access to information and the ability to input into ideas, processes etc through consultations.

NGOs have long had to use participation to find volunteers and raise funds and utilise some sort of research to start an idea and then to affect real change engage people in their activities as much as possible.

Businesses used to only use participation for market research and employee unions, but now involve employees much more, customers and their ideas much more and stakeholder engagement is the buzz word around to identify new opportunities and understand potential risks.

Though all kinds of participation are different within sectors and within organisations there still is a trend for all 3 sectors to increase their participation: for government it is a way to increase their legitimacy (which is getting lower), for businesses it is a way to increase trust and hopefully increase profits and for NGOs it helps increase their impact.

Participation for me is a great thing as it helps create mutual accountability between groups, increases communication, gains greater agreement, inspires confidence and generates ideas amongst other things. Of course there are limits to how much participation is useful -however I believe these limits should be decided by the 'participants' rather than those deciding. If it requires too much time for too little benefit, let the 'participants' say! If 'participants' are not qualified for certain discussions, let them realise so!

Power to the people, greater participation and greater involvement can unite this world slowly and surely to achieving better things for more people in better ways. After all, who will complain if an idea they contribute to fails? Though they might not take responsibility, they will still be happy about the process of decision making -and this is the key point for participation. The process is more important than the result and if 'successful' will often achieve better results in the wider sense.

What is the role of NGOs?

NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) is a very loose term covering all kinds of organisations: normally anything that is not a government or for-profit enterprise. It could include churches, chambers of commerce, business association, lobby groups, trade unions, charities and more.. However the way it is generally used is to describe an organisation that is organised like a business in order to serve a social purpose and without focusing on profits.

Thus typically there are 'grass-roots' NGOs often formed from a few volunteers campaigning for a local issue or providing care for some disadvantaged section of society; there are larger charities that provide welfare to those in need and there are the bigger Development NGOs that aim to influence government and business and effectively use resources to e.g. reduce poverty on a large scale.

Moving quickly past such a brief summary, in recent times there has been a blurring between business and NGOs into the so-called world of 'social enterprises' whose primary goal is to serve society but who wish to make profits at the same time. Many think that these are more effective at solving societal problems as it is more sustainable, more competitive and more efficient. It is noted that the best way to solve problems requires large-scale solutions and these kinds of scales or innovations are often only achieved through a profit incentive and a functioning market to make organisations more effective.

NGOs are often profitable in some sense: selling a service to make money (e.g. running a home for disabled people) or providing benefits to a corporate partner (e.g. advise on reducing their environmental footprint or training their suppliers) -they just pay less tax and promise to spend any profit on further programs. They do not have owners as such, and this is normally seen as their advantage: no money to stock-holders or to rich private owners. However it is also seen as a disadvantage: who are they accountable to?

Interestingly NGOs and businesses alike seem to be converging on a model that governments ar supposed to use -but often fail to do so. The model of being accountable to various stakeholders locally and otherwise. Governments are notoriously slow to change, and rarely due if changes negatively impact those in power, or those who might get in power. Now that many companies engage with local groups; NGOs engage with local governments and communities it seems like both sectors are listening.

It's pretty clear that NGOs are not changing the World; neither are ineffective governments (which are still too frequent around); and neither are aid agencies. Business, it seems, could be the answer; but it requires a stable environment and infrastructure and this is often lacking. Thus the current trend for NGOs to work with governments and businesses (using Aid) to try to focus on this issue 'sustainable livelihoods'. Is this the future role for NGOs?

As the most trusted type of organisation in the World, will NGOs be able to bring partners and stakeholders together to find solutions to allow business to flourish -to create meaningful jobs? Jobs, is the ultimate issue here -and this is really only something that a business (whether it is for-profit or not; including collaboratives) can provide. This week the good news is that more people have jobs now than ever before, but more people do not have jobs too (as the population constantly grows).

I am excited by some of the work that Plan is doing in China: trialling new methods and schemes that government (especially in developing countries) is unable to try (too slow, too corrupt, too cumbersome, too political, too hierarchical, too poorly trained); raising issues that otherwise have no-one to raise them and so on. The end result should be either government, business, or individuals doing something different that is better than what they were doing before.

The problem is so much that NGOs do is not sustainable, not an efficient use of resources -and often fails. Not that it is always their fault: after all most businesses fail too. Interestingly NGOs tend to try much much harder than businesses to make their projects a success. I am still looking for the balance between time/money spent researching, measuring etc vs. actually doing, subsidising, training etc.

In the future I see NGOs having to better define their 'ownership' in order to work out where they fit in society; since their roles overlap with all other sectors (including the media). I see them struggling to keep their 'independence' whilst being involved in so many 'partnerships' (including revenue generating activities). I think accountability will be come a bigger issue: NGOs will have to carefully balance how they spend their money on staff (pay more to get better?) and on research and evaluation. But I hope that NGOs will be given more slack to fail more, learn lessons and so on. International NGOs will need to start incubating ideas, being more innovative, spinning off from themselves to remain flexible and innovative and better define their relationships and purpose to other (grass-roots) NGOs.

In many areas NGOs are in competition with each other for resources: a good thing no doubt; but more partnerships are likely to form to prevent competition ruining funding streams or affecting transparency. NGOs have undoubtedly become more professional; and the next step is to move into the relm of M&A, spin-offs and so on. It excites me to end this post with the concept of taking the real world to NGOs: could venture capitalism have a role with development? How can you define the worth of an NGO? There already exists 'tables' of NGOs which are most effective with their money. It would be great if these very basic methodologies could develop -and who knows what might happen?

Business is having its time turning into an NGO through social enterprises; now NGOs need to do their bit to come towards business by tackling the challenges outlined above. And, who knows maybe a time will come when NGOs and Business will be one and the same -all serving to create jobs and services that society needs, whilst being accountable (and responsible) to society.

partnerships

Reflecting back on a 'Strategic Marketing' course at University reminds me that I did learn something.. and indeed, still remember something of use from University. Namely that though partnerships tend to be seen as a end in themselves, and a very popular concept nowadays, partnerships to really be a mean to an end.. and once the end is achieved (or as close as can be), the partnership should be dissolved (therefore when it is created, such a dissolution point should be planned for).

I also remember that the professor's definition of strategic partnership made for interesting thinking: combining different strengths of organisations together for example, or that a partner often enters a partnership hoping to actually beat its partner -partnerships are rarely equal and partner's unstated goals rarely the same. Of course there was much more to the course, such as the difficulties of creating and integrating joint activities, managing them and so on.

In my work I look at strategic benefits in a philanthropy way: between organisations of different sectors, which explicitly have different objectives from partnerships: a company might hope to improve its reputation whereas a charity might want to help poor people. However these partnerships are often fairly successful.

What about partnerships where all partners' over-riding goal is a philanthropic one? This strikes me as interesting because everything in 'business' is about motivation: if the motivation is so strong and commitment so great, might success be achieved? So the recent trend for all kinds of people to start joining coalitions or partnerships to fight some aspect of poverty. Many are not real partnerships; indeed a coalition is often just a membership of a club where you contribute something and a central secretariat actually does something with it. But for actual partnerships; with each partner contributing something, doing something, having a direct stake in the outcome etc -then are these partnerships more successful (the typical MBA textbook will state how often mergers fail to add value, or how often partnerships do not bring much benefit to either partner!) than traditional business partnerships (which my professor was talking about)?

I hope to find out more over the course of my career; one thing is sure, is that these new partnerships (Cross Sector Partnerships, Corporate Community Engagement and so on) are rarely assessed adequately in the context of how successful the partnership is (if it is actually a partnership, rather than just a 'sponsorship'); and only the outcome of the partnership is assessed (and often badly).

Supply Chain and Development

After a recent conference on Supply Chain Management I came to realise a few things. The most important is how great a lot of the stuff Brands are doing: they are (for various reasons) demonstrating fantastic leadership and I believe had made a big difference in the last 10+ years. There are of course multiple problems still to contend with; especially considering what they are doing is not driven my much local pressure; and most of what they are doing should, to some extent, be done by the government (enforcing Health and Safety laws, working hours laws etc).

There are some fantastic pilots taking place that really bring 'CSR' to local managers in factories and engage with all stakeholders in such programs (including, crucially, the workers) -so that the managers themselves see the business benefits of CSR -and are actually able to understand CSR as a holistic concept, rather than what they see at the moment (compliance, training etc). There is further to go, not least in addressing the scale-up challenges involved.

Scaling-up is the buzz word in the development world (where I work) and it is clear that the CSR world needs to take a leaf from the development world's book -or at least learn the lessons the development world has gained from many years of failures, and some successes attempting such grand initiatives. The Business world may be great at scaling up marketing, but scaling up CSR/development programs is different. For too long pilots have occurred in the supply chain and not expanded, there has been a lack of involvement of government, policy makers and academics, there has been limited attempts at partnership with other sectors (or with competitors) and not enough capacity building.

Maybe Supply Chain Staff should meet Marketing staff and realise that distributing products requires partnerships and adequate distribution channels, as well as effective communications, effective research and so on.

This takes me to the lesson the Supply Chain only seems to have recently learnt: the need to engage with stakeholders and more than this, provide for the stakeholders to make the decisions. In the development world the community is encouraged to make decisions -an example might be an offer of funding for a community to improve the community. Now, the funder might not actually care what the community chooses to do with the money, what they care about is the process the community went through to make the decision. Thus the community has buy-in and is accountable to itself as well as the funder, and the community will learn the lessons. At the conference people were finally talking about the need for a bottom-up approach; an engagement approach and so on.

There is of course a lack of people around who can facilitate this process, inspire the stakeholders to be involved, or trust the stakeholders enough! But, for Supply Chain Improvements to really take off, that is what must happen. The Buyers will need to reach a stage where they trust their suppliers and step back -audit less not more.

A Factory is different to a village community though, so Buyers need to empower the managers to willingly want to empower and engage with their employees and other stakeholders. Not much sustainable benefit to the buyers doing all the 'csr' on behalf of a factory they do not own! When a Factory manager spoke to us, he was not knowledgeable about CSR as a concept -and indeed most auditors are not 'csr experts' -they are auditors, and this is the problem. Most trainers (either from the company, ngos or consultancies) are training bits and pieces as required by whoever pays their services.

Development looks at comprehensive needs of a community, takes into account external factors, spends as much on research before a programme and evaluation after the programme (plus disseminating learning points) as the programme itself. Development requires spending LOTS of money, but aims to do small things well, then identify opportunities to scale-up -often involving government, business and other stakeholders.

The key to development though is that those being 'developed' want to be developed -they see the benefits, and this is not something the supply chain movement started with; and is something it has tried to create -Brands are having to go in and convince the factories of the benefits of CSR. Will this and other lessons be learnt? I suggest a dialogue between development NGOs and the Supply Chain actors; share some lessons, and then lets make sure that what is happening is sustainable. I don't believe much of the supply chain movement is sustainable. There are some fantastic examples, but these are few, and the sample a tiny proportion of all 'supliers' that exist -which is almost any company that sells something to someone!

Though the migrant workers complained at the conference about lack of training and how they wanted innovative training, career development opportunities and so on; they are much better off than in their villages -if not they would not be there. Ambition is a great thing. How about they take some of these lessons back to the factory outside their village, and take some leadership upon themselves? I think there needs to be some re-thinking about scaling-up. Let's hope that future conferences focus on that. Too much good stuff is happening to be wasted on having such low impact.

Is this great stuff bringing the whole field up? Maybe some of the factories in apparel, toys and electronics in a couple of geographical areas are getting better. Is the entire field of factories getting better, no matter where they are based or what product they are making? No, but some leaders need to start re-thinking, re-planning and being more ambitious.

CSR in China -chinese giving

A few things recently happened:

1) I came into contact with a minute chinese NGO -well actually just 2 ladies with an idea for asking some volunteers to help them with something. But they required each volunteer to get 5 hrs training for doing 2 hrs work and after 2 hours of trying to help them with their idea, they said they had no location and no funding -yet the event was in 4 days. This is, unfortunately, typical of Chinese NGOs. Not legal, just run by a few people with no money, but who care a lot abotu society and are doing something about it. Its a shame, but its true. There are a lot of organisations helping with NGO capacity building in China - I wish them luck.

2) ACNielsen (a market research company) produced a report of Chinese consumers' attitudes. Lots of the donate and more want to, if they could trust NGOs more.

3) I spoke to someone else who told me that companies he knows have money to donate to NGOs, but cannot find any worthy to give to -they want to give to local NGOs, but none are professional enough.

4) I met a group of women working in good companies in Beijing who got together to donate money to a school in South China to pay for some children's education. They didn't want to go through some big organisation, but wanted to go directly. So they are doing that. I am inspired that they go to the trouble to organise this.

The conclusion. The chinese like to give, they want to help. But right now the environment in China is not helping them. What is needed are more credible NGOs, easier ways for them to get in touch with the right (corporate or personal) donors and trust in the system.

China has lots of responsible citizens. It needs some responsible leaders to help those citizens exercise their feelings of responsibility. Who else will step up to the plate and help solve these market inbalances?