“Donor Illusion” is a currently a hot debate.
In my work I have had the opportunity to see many of the issues women face in the developing world up close and personal. I realize that many people that want to help women and girls have not had a face to face encounter with those they would like to help.
Fortunately, nonprofits have recently evolved some great techniques to make donors feel engaged with the personal stories of those in need. Along with the desire to feel that person-to-person connection, lenders are becoming savvier and clearly desire an explanation of precisely where their donations are going.
A recent blog post by David Roodman states, ‘In short, the person-to-person donor-to-borrower connections created by Kiva are partly fictional.” This information attracted widespread attention. The “Donor Illusion” debate is outlined well in this article in the NY Times and this is another great source of additional information.
In my opinion the way in which the nonprofit world is evolving is a step in the right direction. The desire to have a direct person-to-person contribution with no intermediary is in itself an illusion. Tim Odgen of Philanthropy Action makes this point well.
Kiva gives you a list of photographs and profiles of individuals you can support with a micro credit loan. Your loan goes to one of Kiva’s worldwide “Field Partners”, (microfinance institutions that service the community where the individual you have chosen lives). The Field Partner approves and disburses a microloan to the entrepreneur you have chosen and gives them a repayment schedule. When the loan gets repaid you can collect it or designate another entrepreneur to lend it to.
The Kiva model of lending is currently being used to help worthy students get educational loans in countries where student loans have heretofore been nonexistent.
Another program for donors (not lenders) administered by CARE that takes off on this idea is Join My Village. Instead of choosing an individual to contribute to you choose a village in Africa and General Mills matches your contribution dollar for dollar. The donations to Join My Village support ‘Village Savings and Loan’ programs that enable small groups of women to form their own micro banks. I visited many of these VSL groups when I was in Malawi last year and was very impressed.
I created a multimedia piece about the program for CARE if you would like to learn more.
As time goes on I’m sure more programs like these will make giving more personal and transparent. I would love to hear of your experiences with organizations like these, as well as, similar organization that you have been impressed by?
Thank you for this thoughtful piece Phil. I admire the work that you do as a photographer to impact social conditions. Your blog got me thinking, in a direction a little away from your topic, but still in the arena of projects to help others. So here goes: In addition to the many fine ngos that are out there, I’m equally drawn to another sector of those working for social change–not organizations and those who thankfully support them; but rather individuals, and in particular, photographers, who self-initiate projects and work closely with a community or circumstance, often over a long term.
As you know, there are a surprisingly large number of photographers who are thus involved. This kind of self-generated and self-funded project stays on a small scale, rather than generating a sizeable organization, overhead, and infrastructure. It’s a vital part of the total community working for all those social, political, environmental, and human rights issues.
Related to this — in 1998– I started a small program, “Not for Profit: Photographers Working for Social Change,” to showcase this kind of work and photographer, through exhibitions, public lectures. and publications. By virtue of the fact that such endeavors are self-financed, public awareness may be limited. I set up the Network to make use of my communication/public relations etc skills to put the spotlight on meaningful work. My premise was that even learning about some of the small but focused efforts of this sort can inspire others — to become supporters in some way, or to possibly start a project of their own that’s close to their own life experience.
My own first photographic project of this nature began in 1968 in Hawaii, when I worked with one of the last ancient Hawaiian fishing communities, whose lifestyle was threatened by resort development. I continue to be involved with the families I photographed then, even though the original settlement was covered by lava flows in the 1990s. And the work has with each year become more important to those native Hawaiians striving to perpetuate Hawaiian ways and traditions and rebuild a community.
Truthfully, I never expected to see a single body of my work attain such importance — to the community and issues involved — during my lifetime.
In terms of the “Not for Profit Network,” my last public effort was a lecture at the National SPE in Denver 2008. I haven’t gotten to any publishing efforts yet — although the two exhibits I curated resulted in mounds of publicity for the various photographers involved. In 2010 I’ll be working on an expanded web presence to showcase of the incredible work I’ve found being done by people all over the world. “One by One” — (as I titled my SPE talk), individual photographers are every day working for social change — not as their job– but as a passionate part of the fabric of their lives. The more that is known about their work, the more likely it is that others may be inspired to undertake the same, something on a doable scale that will become an integral part of their own lives.
So much help, aid, guidance and intervention is needed throughout the world that there can never be enough undertakings, whether small or large, to meet the need.
Mary Ann,
Many thanks for following my blog and informing me about your program “Not for Profit”. I think it is fantastic that you have created an organization that highlights and supports photographer’s personal projects. It is also wonderful that you are going to be dedicating more time to “NFO” in the upcoming year. Social documentary is indeed a rewarding field to be in! Have you heard of Blue Earth Alliance? It is similar to NFP in ways and I am actually a founder and still serve on the advisory board.
Best, Phil
Dear Phil,
I am the President of Givology (www.givology.org), mentioned in Half the Sky alongside Kiva and Globalgiving. I would like to explore your opinion on personalized giving. How much transparency and disclosure of the process do you as a donor need? What about if you were the website manager? We trade off data overload considerations and simplicity of message in every major decision on disclosure, however, also do not want to be deemed disingenuous. What do you think is “the illusion”?
Donation that is matched by a company is a great sustainability model, but one that depends on scale. What is your opinion on giving groups and how to better leverage peer/family matched giving?
Would love your thoughts – and what beautiful, touching pictures…thank you.
Best,
Jenn
Hi Jenn,
I’m just beginning to learn about what seems to be the rapidly evolving ‘people to people’ model of giving of which Kiva is one of the most well known. I have no knowledge of programming or what would lead to data management overload. What I wonder about is how do organizations like yours that collect donations for international grass root organizations or micro finance institutions (MFI’s) in the developing world assess the efficiency of those organizations? The ‘illusion’ I was speaking of is the illusion as in the case of Kiva that a donor’s contribution is going directly to the person whose picture is on the web site. I believe it would be a big mistake if the donation/loan did go directly to an individual without a reliable local intermediary to supervise the transaction. But who is monitoring the intermediary?
Best, Phil Borges
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