My thoughts on Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute...
Having spent the last couple of years working at a non-profit, I am a bit conflicted about the Greg Mortenson story.
Yes, there are certainly inexcusable mistakes that were made. Yes, he was not accountable enough. Yes, he is responsible for anything he did to intentionally mislead donors.
That being said, I believe there is some grey area when we are focused on international development and aid. Not grey area when it comes to "stealing" but let's talk about some of the practices, even of faith based organizations, and how there can easily be some questionable practices.
I know of many organizations that use very "flexible" language when they talk about ACTUAL aid dollars that hit the field. What is allowed to be considered programming or "field" dollars may suprise you. In almost every organization a portion of their budget, things like salaries for U.S. based support staff from executive level down to administrative level, qualifies as "field" dollars. This may come as a suprise to you. So, an organization can "legally" say that 85 cents of every dollar goes to the field when, in fact, a much lower amount actually goes to the field. Most people hear that and think that 85 cents actually gets to my sponsoree or the program I am supporting. In reality, in some cases it is less than 50 cents on the dollar that actually goes to the benefit of the sponsoree or the program. This is not only technically legal - it is very common. It is common practice for many organizations to be, minimally, vague and in some cases out right deceptive about their actual accounting. I think it would be surprising to many to truly understand how non-profit account is done (or communicated).
As for field work, we were frequently balancing the expectations of western donors against the reality of third world progress. There is a chance here to go off on a tangeant about western motives but I will not go there now. From a western mindset, we give a dollar and we want to see a dollar's worth of progress now. This is not pratical in most contexts and it is necessary for us to do a much better job in setting expectations and goals on the front end.
Are ethics the same across the board? I want you to truly think about that question. If you are an African pastor or leader, holding another dying baby in the countless hundreds of dying babies you've held, and you have dollars that could provide medicines to save the child - yet those dollars are designated for the goat project or the micro-finance campaign, what do you do in that moment? What is the RIGHT thing to do?
I believe there is a morality of JUSTICE that may or may not align with a western mindset of what is just. True justice needs to protect the innocent and preserve life (there are many examples in scripture in which lying and questionable behavior was "acceptable" to protect life).
Non-profits are in a position where they have to "sell" their constituents on success. If you are not achieving success, then why should I give you any more money. The problem with that is that our view of success is not contextualized. We are measuring success on a completely different scale than what we should be. However, if we don't do that, people won't give. So, what is the right thing to do? Embelish success? Should we try to communicate stories in such a way that they sell to the public when the "on the ground" reality may be a bit more underwhelming? This is tension of many non-profits. Actual progress in a third world context may appear to the western eye as no progress at all.
This leaves us in a difficult scenario.
None of this is to defend Greg Mortenson. My hope is that it will create more open communication and clarity around what we are doing and why. In the west, we love a good story. We want a white horse and a hero. We want to find the Greg Mortenson's of the world and cling to them. But, unfortunately, in sex trafficking and orphan care and working with the disenfranchised poor, there isn't always a happy ending.
Are you comfortable supporting causes when the outcomes don't look like we "need" them to look? Are you comfortable funding programs that are designed to create true sustainability in which you are no longer needed? True development in the third world context has to be about the people we are helping and not about us. Until it is, we will always be serving the wrong purpose and creating solutions to the wrong end.
This may be difficult to for some to accept - but that doesn't make it any less true.
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