Author: Alanna Shaikh

Dear everyone who’s ever thought of starting an NGO

By Alanna Shaikh | | 15 Comments |


Don’t do it. You’re not going to think of a solution no one else has, your approach is not as innovative as you think it is, and raising money is going to be impossible. You will have no economy of scale, your overhead will be disproportionately high, and adding one more tiny NGO to the overburdened international system may well make things worse instead of better.

Now that you’ve ignored me, here’s the rest of my advice:

1) Make your bones. Go work for an existing NGO that addresses the same problem, or one like it. Learn from the existing knowledge in the system so you don’t waste time re-inventing the wheel. If you’re not qualified to work for an existing organization, you’re probably not qualified to run your own.

2) Identify a new funding source. If you’re just going to compete for the same donor RFPs and RFAs that everyone else does, you’re not bringing anything new to the world. If you didn’t get that grant to reduce child mortality in Liberia, another organization would. The children of Liberia benefit equally either way. If you can bring new money in, then you’re having a genuine additional impact.

3) Hire experienced people to work with you. There is a certain charm to a bunch of inexperienced people trying to change the world together, but a group that combines new ideas and actual experience can produce genuine innovation.

4) Your finances are probably the most important part of your NGO. Your donors will want to see your financials before they give. Your projects will require a steady stream of reliable funding to succeed. You can’t do good if you can’t pay your bills.

(photo credit Mosieur J.)

Five mistakes international organizations make when using Twitter

By Alanna Shaikh | | 3 Comments |


1. Using it just for press releases. People don’t follow you on Twitter for generic organizational announcements. They follow because they want to feel a personal connection with what you do. They want to become friends and allies. Write your Twitter updates in less formal language, and tweet little things, too. Not just press releases. Welcome new employees, for example, or tell them a little bit about one specific project.

2. Only asking for money. Constant calls for funds will bore people and cause them to unsubscribe from your Twitter feed. Ask for money no more than once a week, and when you do, tie it to something you mentioned that week.

3. Not following back or replying to others. As an organization, you should automatically follow back anyone who follows you on Twitter. People don’t want to be broadcast to; they want to be part of a conversation. Following people is the first step; the second step is paying attention. Use Twitter search to monitor mentions of your organization. Reply to those mentions. Periodically read the postings of people you follow. You don’t have to read every post, but check in from time to time, and reply if you have something interesting to say.

4. Forgetting the global audience. Twitter has a worldwide user base. This includes people in the countries where you work. It may include potential donors and beneficiaries in other countries. It will definitely include your own staff. When you write about events in, say, Rwanda, assume Rwandans will be reading. Are you still comfortable with your post?

5. Not having a Twitter strategy. There are things to think about before you post your first tweet. Do you want to encourage all your staff to have organization-linked Twitter accounts, or just a single account to represent the whole organization? What aspects of your organization do you want to highlight? What kind of expertise do you possess and can showcase? Who will update the Twitter account, and will all postings need to be approved first? These are issues that can be resolved with some planning, and can go very wrong on you without some advance thought.

Links: jargon, politics, humanitarian relief, and a contest

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

This glossary is a resource for deciphering development jargon.

The Huffington Post asks if Republicans are better at foreign assistance.

Statistics on humanitarian relief from the excellent new Change.org humanitarian relief blog. I have been very impressed by the blog so far; it’s a great combination of information, editorial, and links to useful resources.

Lastly, I’ll hop on the bandwagon and link to the USAID Development 2.0 Challenge. USAID will award a $10,000 prize for a high-impact use of mobile technology for development. I think this contest will be very interesting to watch – the small prize level should bring out fresh ideas and not just proposals from all the same USAID grantees.

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

Everything that matters in international development comes back to poverty. Poverty saps your ability to affect the path of your life, stay (or start out) healthy, find a job, or invest in education or a small business.

Information on global poverty:

Dani Rodrik talks about international poverty.

A nice Foreign Affairs article on reducing global poverty.

The World Bank’s most recent numbers on global poverty.

Oxfam’s take on reducing global poverty.

You will notice that not all of the sources I have listed agree with each other. Poverty is a complex topic, and there are no obvious answers on what to do. If you want to get involved in fighting global poverty, I suggest the ONE campaign. If you’d like to donate money to help alleviate global poverty, give to an NGO you already know and trust. Poverty is part of all our major problems, and fighting it is part of every solution. Donate to a food pantry in your home town, to Feeding America, International Medical Corps, or the Treatment Action Campaign or Oxfam. Every NGO trying to make the world a better place is fighting poverty one way or another; choose one that is credible and give what you can.

Blog Posts I’ve written that touch on poverty:

Briefing: Tuberculosis

Suffering does not make you special

Your money does not make you special

Keep your banana to yourself

Why health matters (if you only read one of my posts, read this one)

Why I hate the word sustainability

By Alanna Shaikh | | 8 Comments |


What happens when your intervention is over? When you stop training the doctors, providing the bags of food, or advising the Ministry of Finance? Will anything remain? If something will remain, your project is sustainable. That quality – being designed to continue once the outsider effort ends – is sustainability.

I hate this word because the grammar makes no sense.

I also hate this word because it means so many things to so many different people. The definition I just gave you was the one that I learned from a former boss, the smartest woman in the world. (Seriously, she is. If you had ever met her, you’d agree with me.) Sheila taught me that sustainability isn’t about your project continuing, or even the institution you support or develop. Sustainability is about the change you help bring about being a lasting change. It doesn’t matter if your child health center closes if children continue to get improved medical care.

Other people think other things. Some people think sustainability is about building organizations and institutions that last. A lot of projects think that sustainability is about having a steady supply of new donors; a project is sustainable if it will be able to find a new donor once you stop funding it. MSF, of course, thinks sustainability is irrelevant.

So, I guess I hate the word sustainability because it has no agreed upon-meaning, and it’s a prime example of the kind of jargon that keeps planners from thinking about the details of what they want to do.

Edited to add: Jeff Trexler reminds me that I left out an entire set of meanings for the word sustainable. One of its most common usages is as part of the phrase “sustainable development.” Sustainable development refers to development which occurs without damage to the environment, culturally appropriate, and continues on its own once begun (according some combination of the criteria I defined above).

Edited again: Owen Barder has his own take on what’s wrong with sustainability.

Innovation Part II

By Alanna Shaikh | | 5 Comments |

We need to get over our obsession with innovation. It’s hurting our ability to do good development work. We get caught up in trendy new ideas – we fondle the hammer – and we exhaust out energies looking for the next big thing instead of supporting interventions which have been proven to work.

Innovation is not a quick fix. It is not a magic bullet that will solve all our problems. Social media is a genuine innovation (as Our Man in Cameroon points out), but it has rules and best practices. It takes time and skill to learn to use it well. Antibiotics were an innovation in their time, but they too had to be perfected and properly used before they could save lives.

When I lived in Cairo, people on the street used to talk about Japanese engineers. Everyone was sure that the Japanese government was about to build a new sewer system, repave the roads, or extend the subway. I lived in Egypt ten years ago. Cairenes are still waiting for their Japanese metro.

Chasing innovation too often leads us astray, when we could be plugging along at the things that have been proven to work. Those things do exist. Girls’ education. Microfinance. Contraception. We need innovation; it’s true. But it’s not all we need.

Innovation

By Alanna Shaikh | | 4 Comments |

Let’s talk about innovation. Innovation ought to be a game-changer. It out to be the insight, the idea, the new way of doing things or the amazing new tech that inverts the way we approach a problem. Positive deviance was an innovation, and it leads to more innovation. Cell phones were an innovation. Vaccines were an innovation. Capitalism, way back way back when, was an innovation.

Doing the same thing in a slightly new way is not innovation. Nor is making up new words for existing techniques.

And it’s okay if you’re not innovative. Innovation is not the answer to all problems. Innovation, in fact, can go horribly wrong. (French revolution, anyone?) If you’re doing things that are not innovative, there are other words you get to use. Research-based. Proven. Evidence-based. Play to your strengths; don’t try to fake something else.

(topic suggested by James Bon Tempo)