NGOs obviously do a lot of good. Take for instance AMREF, which has the endorsement of the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation and has a 4 star charity rating from "Charity Navigator" (whoever that is). There is no way to get the endorsements that AMREF has without doing MANY good things.
I wonder if they really need my money though... Take the following situation as an example:
There is a Peace Corps Volunteer living in desert Masai-land somewhere south of Nairobi. Shortly after he arrived at his site AMREF showed up with four computers. They explained that the computers were loaded with all sorts of health-related education software and that the students should be instructed to use the software to raise their awareness of health issues and how to protect themselves. Sounds great, right? Well, this school's electricity comes from a few small solar panels. The electricity is powerful enough to charge cell phones and power approximately one laptop at a time, but NOT powerful enough to run even one desktop, let alone four.
Okay, so AMREF made a single mistake... they did not confirm whether or not the computers could function before they took off in their shining luxury Land Rover, but thankfully they came back some time later to check how things were coming. Only one of the computers had been taken out of the box until the morning when AMREF was to arrive, at which point the other computers were hurriedly set up and dusted off. The officials arrived, were shown around, and were told by the school that things were going great: THANKS FOR THE FREE COMPUTERS, we are making excellent use of them (as receptors for passing dust)!!! At the end of the visit the volunteer took the officials aside and informed them of the charades they had just been put through. The official looked concerned and instructed the volunteer to begin sending AMREF reports on the subject. The volunteer acquiesced at first, but never received a reply and eventually quit.
Some months later along comes AMREF again, this time with a 72" thin screen, state-of-the-art, impress-your-neighbors TV in tow (Okay, I don't know the exact size of the TV, but the box was more than 4 ft. long and about 2.5ft tall). They told the school the TV was for the school's HIV/AIDS resource center. The problem? The school has no resource center and has no plans of constructing one. Additionally, again, the school's electricity is almost definitely not sufficient to power an electricity sucking vampire like this one. When I visited my friend some months after the TV arrived I found it in the corner of a storage room, still in its box.
As I said, in other situations AMREF does probably do useful things to improve community health. I wonder though, how many other schools and communities are targeted in such ridiculous ways.
This story is meant to highlight the dissonance between what people hear about from NGOs about the need for more money and the NGOs ability to wantonly spend money.
This state can be attributed to a few factors, among them: (1) NGOs usually do not have people on the ground to assess potential methods of conveying information and (2) in order to increase the scope and reach of their organization they must continue to show donors they need more money, which can become a vicious cycle.
Additionally, NGOs (and groups like Peace Corps) really want to brag about how many people they are reaching per money they are spending. A one-time investment such as a TV and a few computers allows them to say that they are initially reaching around 350 students and around another 70 each year, which if true would be great. Therefore, they have some incentive to ignore the finer details of their projects and focus on the report numbers.
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