Perhaps the hardest thing I have experienced in life is raising funds for a good cause. The UN is lucky with getting assessed contributions tied to the wealth of nations. Many UN agencies are also lucky that industrialized governments are their major source of revenue (rather than individual donors). However, the potential to extract donations from rich private individuals could be more fully explored by UN agencies. The other difficulty is to track the many stealth givers who are united in their utter distaste for publicity and a rejection of life as an acquisition spree.
On the American scene, Bill Gates III and his wife Melinda are the reigning royalty of superphilanthrophists giving away almost $25b over their lifetime (representing 54% of wealth donated). Individual donors are mixed up with the contention: is it better to give now as opposed to later. Billionaire Warren Buffet says he would rather defer giving his wealth away because he can make more money when he has a handle on it. So, make more now to give more later is his equation.
A story was told to me (how authentic, I am not sure) how a tourist in India saw right in front of his eyes, how an Indian mother chopped off here child’s right hand with a chopper. The helplessness in the mother's eyes, the scream of pain from the innocent 4-year-old haunted the young tourist. You may ask why did the mother do so; had the child been naughty, had the child's hand been infected? No, it was done for two simple words- TO BEG! The desperate mother deliberately caused the child to be handicapped so that the child could go out to the streets to beg. Taken aback by the scene, the tourist dropped a piece of bread he was eating and almost instantly, a flock of 5 or 6 children swamped towards this small piece of bread which was covered with sand, robbing bits from one another. Such behavior was the natural reaction of hunger.
Stricken by the happenings, the tourist instructed his guide to drive him to the nearest bakery. He arrived at two bakeries and bought every single loaf of bread he found in the bakeries. The owner was amazed but willingly sold everything. He spent less than $100 to obtain about 400 loaves of bread (this is less than $0.25 per loaf) and spent another $100 to get daily necessities.
Off he went in the truck full of bread into the streets. As he distributed the bread and necessities to the children (mostly handicapped) and a few adults, he received cheers and bows from these unfortunate people. For the first time in his life, he wondered how people could give up their dignity for a loaf of bread, which cost less than $0.25.
The above story sends a strong message to donors for “giving” and to aid agencies for “doing.” Much concern has been made of reaching the target group. Sadly, though, much money spent is lost in conferences, discussions, meetings, and training of government counterparts who then carry their skills to more developed nations. Also when much aid money in a country flows through government’s monopolistic hands, people organize into groups to get a share, and this is often accompanied by rising envy from the poorest of the poor. Purity in the use of aid funds is a worry for much of the donor community. It is a challenge for UN agencies to say how much of each dollar spent goes directly to the target group, meaning the poorest of the poor. Hunger (from poverty) is the driving force making young girls turn to prostitution in developing countries. This in turn leads to the spread of Aids.
Private sector organizations can measure their outputs easily; number of units sold and profit per unit sale is the impact. On the other hand, international organizations such as the UN and other non-profits find it hard to put an economic value on social programs. The other challenge for UN aid agencies is to show donors that an investment in the development goals can be greater than postponing a grant, especially the future investment returns of the individual donor that postpones giving in the hope of making bigger returns from market investments.
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