Since the beginning of this year, as we started actively approaching aid organizations to present their work on betterplace, I have had many conversations with fundraisers and project managers. In these discussions I am trying to find out how to improve the interface between betterplace.org and organisations of differend sizes, from small grassroots initiatives to large, international aid organisations. We obviously want many organisations to use the plattform, as we offer our services free of cost and enable organisations to lower their fundraising costs. Lower fundraising costs means more money can go to where donors want it to go: to the project.
Projects and needs – an illusionary world?
On betterplace.org donors support specific projects, broken down into even smaller needs. Project managers are asked to keep supporters up to date about the progress of the project and inform them once the financed need has been realized.
This procedure is not without its critics. Organisations, especially large ones, are used to work with global budgets, which they allocate according to their internal dynamics. They tell me: „This is not how we work. The donations we collect in Germany are handed over to our international headquarters and they forward them to the projects. We only hear once a year about what has been done with them in the field.“ Others remark that their budgets are so huge that no way can they give feedback about the realisation of specific needs.
After these discussions I am sometimes asking myself, whether our demand for greater transparency is so much at odds with the workings of large organisations, that we are in danger of creating an illusionary world, whereby organisations post a project in „the betterplace-way“, but can’t honestly deliver what we are asking them to do.
For many (I would say most) organisations and initiatives on betterplace.org our approach is no doubt working fine. A grassroots initiative sich as Cecil Kids Center in Mombasa doesn’t have any funding sources outside of betterplace. The project volume iss mall and tasks such as the building of 2 latrines ort he renovation of a classroom can be broken down nicely. Once the donations have come together, the work can start and a few weeks later, donors receive a message in the form of a blogpost by the project manager, accompanied with photos, that the project has been finished.
Large NGOs on the other hand have many different sources of funding. The fundraisers who present the organisations projects are located far from the field and might themselves get only irregular and indirect information about the progress of the project.
Is betterplace only suitable for small grassroots initiatives?
Is the betterplace way for these latter organisations only a marketing tool, used to get donors to open their pockets, as donors prefer to contribute to specific tasks and needs rather than to large global budgets?
I believe, not. Even a huge social project has a budget and knows what will be needed for its realisation. And there is no reason why a huge transnational NGO shouldn’t be able to inform its donors in word and image, what has been accomplished with their help. (and some large organisations used betterplace wonderfully in this way).
Let’s take a random project on betterplace, A winter proof house for Tadzhikistan (btw, a project I find really worthy of our support).
Of course it would be wrong for donors to assume that once someone has donated 70 Euro for a door, the organisation will go out and use this very money to buy a door. But what I can expect as a donor is that a door will be bought as part of the project realization and that the organisation will sent me proof of this purchase by posting a picture of the houses built.
The difference donors make, should be made visible
That’s what ist all about: people who contribute to a project with money, time, expertise or donations in kind, have a right to know what happens with their money. They have a right to see the difference they help to make. Of course, this is not always possible. A number of poverty alleviation measures and programmes don’t have quick and visible results, their impact can only be measured over a longer period of time. How do you want to measure improved self-esteem? But in many cases visible proof is possible. When I have contributed to the building of a classroom, that classroom can be documented and the success of the project measured.
Too many well-intentioned aid projects fail. Last month, on my trip through Usbekistan, I heard about a number of large projects, financed in the 1990s by the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) which simply evaporated, as the money went into the deep pockets of corrupt politicians and businesspeople.
Transparency and communication fight corruption
Transparency openes up the blackbox „aid“ and fights corruption. Let’s take the case of an organisation in Cambodia which lists on betterplace what will be needed for the construction of a new internet cafe. They break down the project into cement, stones, doors, windows, electric systems, laptops etc.. Now other people on the plattform, with intimate knowledge of the local, cambodian construction scene, can come in and comment on the prices beeing listed and disclose if they are „real“ or include major kickbacks.
Transparency is more often than not a question of communication. Nobody wants projects managers to slavishly stick to once posted needs, which turn out to be counterproductive. The core issue is how you communicate what is happening on the ground.
One more example: Marcus Vetter, project manager from Cinema Jenin, recently told me that he didn’t use the donations received via betterplace for the „renovation of the 1st dozen of cinema chairs“ for the renovation of 12 chairs. This would have been impracticle and expensive. Instead he uses the first funds received to buy the material needed for all 500 chairs. The rest of the work will be done once the money has come together.
I believe the majority of donors doesn’t care in which sequence the work is being done. What matters is whether the chairs will be renovated by the time the cinema opens ist doors.