On Tuesday evening I was invited to an event entitled: “Child sponsorship: How your donations are making a difference” for World Vision (WV) donors here in Montreal. The president and CEO of WV Canada was in attendance and I was looking forward to seeing what they had to say and I had a few questions for them.
It turns out that the event was sparked by an article written in Chatelaine magazine: À la recherche de Karla F. by Jean-Yves Girard. For those of you who don’t read French, the article is about a journalist, who is also a child sponsor, who went to Nicaragua in search of his sponsored child to have a first hand account of how things were going.
A Lack of Efficiency?
Not surprisingly, as an outsider, his reaction was exactly the same as mine when I first saw how large NGOs operated in Sri Lanka. While I feel the article is worded in a way that makes things sound much worse than they are, and the journalist seems misinformed on several accounts, I have to agree with his final question which, I suppose, was the main point of the article. Here’s my rough translation:
“This billion dollar organization makes us an offer we can’t refuse: transform a life, help save a child. But does World Vision approach this in the most efficient way?”
While this particular article picks on WV, the same question applies to all the large NGOs. I’ve never worked for one, so I can’t tell how things are managed on the inside. I can, however, describe what I’ve seen first-hand and I would have to answer “No, things are not being done as efficiently as they could be.”. This is exactly why I want to work in this sector. Anyone who knows me will tell you that if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding the most efficient way to get something done.
Do you or someone you know work for a large NGO? World Vision? UN? Red Cross? What do you think?
I guess any organisation not reporting directly to stakeholders might be run less efficiently.. Or are we in a sense, the shareholders because its our $$ we are talking about? Personally, I’ve checked up on a few of them and I find Compassion quite good.. I attended a lecture by the President Dr Wess Stafford, he is so inspiring (they are still working at starting up in Lanka, so also sponsor a child through World Vision)
Agreed, we need to find ways to keep improving so that we can reach more children and impact more communities.. I’m no expert at this, so am happy to keep sponsoring till they do
Daphne – I agree with you completely. Until I can start my own non-profit firm or until I find an organization doing better work, I’m not going to attack the big ones.
I’ve heard some very negative comments about Compassion, so I’m sticking with WV for now!