17 Responses to “Gates to Give”

1. Paul of Par Avion Says: August 15th, 2008 at 1:01 pm Wonderful!!

2. Peter Burgess Says: August 15th, 2008 at 5:47 pm Dear Colleagues There is a big problem … it is the systemic dysfunction of our global society. Worse, there is a widespread lack of understanding about what is wrong, and only support for band aid type fixes that are expensive and do little to build sustainable solutions. I wrote about this issue originally back in the mid 1980s, after more than a decade of international work. Almost 25 years later another generation of misinformed experts are making chronic errors. Why? In the corporate world there is a system of metrics … and the goal is simple. Growing profits and growing stockholder value. The markets respond to these clear metrics. In society as a whole, however, there are no equivalent clear metrics … but this is about to change. Community Accountancy (CA) has been developed and is starting to be deployed. CA is similar to corporate money accountancy … except that the reporting entity is the community rather than the organization … and value is accounted for as well as just the money transactions. A social business creating social value can report just as a profit maximizing business can report … and they are in the same system of metrics. This changes the rules of the game … the capital market is now driven by corporate profit and/or social value adding … but there are equivalent metrics for both. Hopefully this change in rules will change behavior and maybe the world’s development community will start focusing on results rather than merely on movement. Sincerely Peter Burgess

3. GinnyD Says: August 15th, 2008 at 7:20 pm Mr. Burgess, isn’t that what the Millenium Challenge corporation was created for? I certainly agree with you about the need to hold communities and countries accountable.

4. Peter Burgess Says: August 16th, 2008 at 1:57 am Dear Colleagues Thank you, GinnyD … you are right. Or at least you have the appearance of being right. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has the form that makes it look like a new approach, but there is not much real change. If you look hard you will still find very little about performance … though there is quite a lot of easily accessible information about what amounts of money are being committed, and what sector areas these big amounts of money are going to fund. Bottom line … the structures have changed a bit … the PR is quite different … but the people and organizations are still the same old same old … and transparency and accountability in the toilet. It is ironic, however, that one can read the MCC attorney’s statements that the Board information is NOT going to be made public! It really is a shame that so much money gets to do so little. Sincerely Peter Burgess

5. Matthew Says: August 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am Peter those are wild and offensive statements. Over the past few years huge gains have been made in terms of accountability and transparency. In Nigeria alone, former government officials have been sent to jail for corruption. Look at the new fresh democratic governments in Liberia and Rwanda! PEPFAR has over a million people on life saving drugs and is projected to be over 2 million soon. These are facts. This blog has illustrated the facts on the ground. This is not PR - this is proven results. The MCC is a new and fresh partnership between responsible but poor countries and America and it is incentive for reform in many other countries. The world is changing and good people on both sides of the political asile, and both sides of the ocean are taking great steps to fight corruption and ensure that targeted aid is working to save lives. This is indisputable.

6. GinnyD Says: August 16th, 2008 at 10:52 am Mr. Burgess, I have looked closely at the things we are doing to hold third world countries more accountable for the aid that we are offering. I think that Millenium Corporation has taken the right approach. I believe that organizations all over the world have become smarter in how they hold countries accountable. It seems to me that we should follow the approach of Senator Lamar Alexander and “look for the good and praise it.” I truly believe that organizations like One have brought together diverse groups of people (a prime example is the co-chairs of one vote.08) working toward one goal. We may all have different approaches, but as long as we remain positive and work hard, we can accomplish a lot. I am very proud to be a part of One, but more important I am proud of the efforts being put forth by groups such as One and the Millenium Challenge Corporation. I think they have good ideas, and those ideas will work and already are working. One has the idea to eliminated poverty and third world disease, the Millenium Corp has the idea to hold third world countries accountable for how that aid is spent. Both are working, but of course, we have a long way to go.

7. Peter Burgess Says: August 16th, 2008 at 6:41 pm OOPS … sorry if I have offended. This happened all the time when I was doing corporate cost accounting and trying to get value for money from our corporate assets. And this has been even worse when I have tried to “follow the money” in the international relief and development industry. There have been changes over the years … some of the changes have been very good … some have been questionable. Bottom line is that the missing money is still huge … and decisions often disastrous. If you look closely you will find budgets and plans accessible to the public … but it is rare to see spending data accessible by the public … and even less data are accessible about what was achieved. Almost all the feedback about achievement is in the form of stories and photojournalism … which may satisfy the average Joe or Joan Doe, but is not accountability. My guess is that the cost effectiveness of modern development assistance is around 10 times worse than it should be … which is a really sad state of affairs. Yes there has been a very rapid increase in the web stories about development over the past few years … and there has been almost zero increase in the accessible data about cost and value arising from the use of development resources. Nothing wrong with looking for the good and praising it … but every reason also to find the bad and fix it. I wish my observations were wild … sadly they are not. I don’t like being told that my writing is offensive … but the bottom line is that trying to get universal accountability is going to shock almost everyone and I suppose I have to accept it. I will praise as soon as I start to see verifiable cost effectiveness metrics that justify praise … so far all I see is PR. Community Accountancy has a structure that should help … an approach that looks at things from the beneficiary level rather than from the spending organizations perspective. Sincerely Peter Burgess

8. GinnyD Says: August 16th, 2008 at 6:52 pm Mr. Burgess, you have not offended me. I have enjoyed the discussion with you. I just disagree with your conclusions, but certainly respect your opinion.

9. michael castaldo Says: August 18th, 2008 at 9:11 am interesting discussion. mr burgess does seems to care as much about finding a way to make poverty history as the rest of us. in fact with “community accountabilty” as his mantra he has a concrete plan. btw there are new ways of looking at the metrics. and simply repeating that word does not make your argument stronger. the problem is not just in following the money or some big conspiracy. you only need to look at our current cadidates for president to see how complex the challange is - one who voted for the farm bill and big agribiz and one who voted against… not it is not the usual gop on the side of big biz. this time it is the midwestern democrat who has to yield to his local constituancy and not be part of reform of a bill with global impact on the worlds food markets and the poorest and hungriest. if i am hearing them correctly - what responsible african leaders are asking for it is NOT more money (and therefore we can worry less about where it is leaking) it IS a fair trade policey that allows them to trade their way out of poverty. this is real reform. this is what was not being done in the 80’s. there has been real reform in how oour aid is delived and comparing the MCC to any historical aid program is unfair. we do need to address life and death issues of health and extreme poverty this is not a joke. too much money has been wasted in the past but that is not a excuse to do nothing. the world is not perfect but neither am i. i will try harder today and tomorrow to do better.

10. GinnyD Says: August 18th, 2008 at 10:19 am I don’t think there is any doubt that all of the commenters on this site feel deeply about the issue of poverty. I really think the only difference of opinions here is whether the method of accountability is working. I think that the Millenium Challenge Corporation is the right approach. I certainly understand the opinion of Mr. Burgess. I’m not sure that I agree at all with Mr. Castaldo. I have not heard of any African country saying they want less money from the United States. I think what they are saying is we are looking for a helping hand, not a hand out. Give us the aid we need to help our countries, but make sure that aid money is getting to the right people.

11. michael castaldo Says: August 18th, 2008 at 11:29 am sorry ginny - did not mean to imply that the money we are commited to spending is not needed, wanted, or justified; just that no one WANTS to be in such a desparate place. and, that the reality is that a 1% increase in trade would mean a lot more than the dollars it would represent. the downstream results are almost impossible to define. we definatly do need the MCC. it is my hope that the in the long term or even perhaps even short term to see these poor countries not having their hands holding a begging bowl but to be able to hold out goods they have created with their own backs and offer them for sale on the open market at a competitive price… sustainable enterprise… fairness. dignity. pride. they are all any of us want. in lesthoto the garment industry is really taking off thanks to the MCC. there are other rock solid examples as well. we as ONE know how many lives are at stake if we do not meet our mdg’s. we know that there are NEW hiv infections happening every day and that every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria. this is a uphill battle but we are fighting it together and we are trying as hard as we can. never before have so many good smart people put so much effort into helping on such a vast scale. i think the tide of public awareness is turning and the momentum can only lead to better things. thank you all for caring.

12. GinnyD Says: August 18th, 2008 at 1:07 pm Mr. Castaldo, no need to apologize. I love the chance to have a civil discussion. That’s why I stopped visiting political blogs. All the people there want to do is call each other names. I really believe in what One is trying to do, and I appreciate hearing the different points of view.

13. Peter Burgess Says: August 18th, 2008 at 2:37 pm Dear Colleagues About 15 years ago I did some post-conflict planning work in Mozambique … the idea being that this plan would help mobilize resources for critical reconstruction. The logical approach of assessing needs, identifying priorities and figuring out costs was done … and the result was far more than the donors would have ever considered. The next step was to rework the plan so that there was an optimization of development and a rethinking of priorities within the scope of the funding likely to be available. I expected this to be well received by the donors … but was way off base. The next problem turned out to be that each donor had its own priority … none of which had much compatability with any of the Mozambique priorities. It was a mess. In the end quite a lot of money was mobilized … but if you do brutal cost effectiveness analysis it was a disgrace. After this and other experiences my simple rule of thumb is that development resources could be better used by a factor of between 10 and 100 if local commuity priorities were respected. This contrasts with some others with high profile reputations in the development arena who seem to think that all will be well if we would just disburse 10 or 100 times more money! Certainly a lot of people would be happy … but would there be tangible sustainable development for the bottom of the pyramid (BOP)? Sincerely Peter Burgess

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