Canadian International Relief & Development Sector: Ripe for Disruption?

In wake of merger of big cancer charities, what would happen if Canadian NGOs dreamed up a new way to serve the poor?

Earlier this year the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation announced they were merging.

The reason for the merger? Rising fundraising costs and falling donations.

In an interview in the Globe and Mail, Cancer Society chairman Robert Lawrie said  the merger, which is designed to cut costs and promote efficiencies, might be a model for other charities struggling with growing costs and falling donations.

One person who would like to see that happen in Canada’s international relief and development sector is Nicolas Moyer, formerly director of the Humanitarian Coalition.

During his time at the Coalition, which brings together seven Canadian NGOs to collaborate on fundraising efforts during disasters in the developing world, Moyer was a persistent—and often lone—voice promoting increased cooperation in the sector.

Looking at the sector today, with its many competing organizations, he wonders what would happen if the leaders of Canada’s major relief and development NGOs acted like the two cancer charities, setting aside their organizational interests to dream up a new model to serve the poorest and most vulnerable people around the globe.

If they did that, “they would never come up with the system we have today,” Moyer says.

“NGO leaders wouldn’t, in good conscience, choose to set up competing organizations, vying for brand recognition and competing for market share of donor dollars.”

Instead, he says, "they’d find a way to work together, minimize wasteful duplication and maximize our collective impact for the good of the people we want to help.”

One thing that would help spur merger talk would be if the federal government, which provides millions of dollars in grant funding, “stopped feeding sector competition and instead tried to incentivize collaboration.”

The government could, “at little to no cost,” he says, only make grants available to NGOs that work together, providing “dedicated funding streams for joint approaches, or even refuse to consider single-agency programs.”

But even if the government doesn’t force groups to collaborate more, he thinks other forces will compel them to do so.

“The sector is incredibly ripe for disruption,” he states—like what happened through Uber to taxis, AirBnB to hotels, and the Internet to the news media.

Among the disruptions he sees for NGOs include how “developing world governments are getting better at what we do."

And although not every poor country is treating its citizens the way they should, “as more of them attend to the needs of their citizens, what will be the role for foreign NGOs?” he asks.

Then there’s the arrival of groups like Give Directly, which cut out the NGO “broker” and enable Canadians to give directly to poor people in the developing world.

“At some point, an enterprising person or group in the developing world is going to figure that out they no longer need western NGOs to mediate between donors and the poor,” he says. “When that happens, what will our role be?”

And even if the current model isn’t disrupted, there’s the challenge of raising funds to keep all these agencies going.

“Despite all the money that goes into competing NGO fundraising and marketing campaigns, as a whole the sector is not raising more money for relief and development,” he says. 

And even though agencies are spending more to fundraise, “overall giving for relief and development in Canada hasn’t grown,” he adds. “All we are doing is winning or losing market share from each other.”

For Moyer, the big question is: “Can we work together to be more efficient?” He isn’t optimistic.

“While a few NGOs are looking at the big challenges ahead, most in the sector are ignoring the serious structural issues underlying their future,” he says.

NGOs, he states, should be asking themselves: “Where do we want to be 20-30 years from now? If the current way we are operating isn’t sustainable, what would we replace it with? If we worked together more, what could we collectively achieve?”

Disruption is a fact of life today. Is merger an answer? Not everyone will agree with Moyer's view that it is. But at least he is asking important questions.

A version of this post was originally published in the May 10, 2017 Hill Times.

The Media and International Disasters, or Don't Hold Your Famine During the Olympics

When it comes to the media, 45 times more Africans have to die than Europeans to get the same kind of coverage.

Children line up for food in South Sudan.

Some black humour from the world of relief and development: “If you are planning a famine, don’t hold it in summer—we’re on vacation then. Also, avoid U.S. election years.”

That old and sad “joke” we used to tell ourselves years ago to explain why some disasters got covered, and others didn't, came back to me as I thought about the lack of attention being paid to the terrible hunger crisis today in parts of Africa and Yemen.

An estimated 20 million people face starvation in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and parts of Kenya and Nigeria—the largest humanitarian crisis since 1945 according to the UN.

And yet, although the world has known about the situation for months, there has been hardly any news about it in the media.

Sure, there’s been a bit of coverage here and there—the CBC did a fine job in early May. But in general, there has been mostly silence in newspapers, radio or TV.

Why is this the case? I can think of a number of reasons.

First, it’s hard for journalists to get into the most-devastated areas—even NGOs have trouble getting food to those who need it most.

Second, media outlets also have fewer resources and staff to cover stories. Even if they wanted to cover it, it would be hard to find the funds.

Third, it’s hard to tell the story of a famine, which takes months to develop. Unlike a hurricane or earthquake, there are no great pictures to show as the tragedy slowly unfolds.

Fourth there’s the Trump effect; the new President, and his unpredictable ways, has sucked up much of the media oxygen. Throw in all the other news competing for attention, and time for the famine can be hard to find.

Finally, there’s the general fatigue everyone feels over the extended Syria crisis. We hardly have space in our hearts for another disaster. And the media isn’t stupid; they can count the clicks on their websites. They know what people are reading—or not.

What disasters get covered by the media and which don’t was the subject of a 2007 study of major U.S. TV network news by Thomas Eisensee and David Stromberg.

Titled “News, Droughts, Floods, and U.S. Disaster Relief,” and published in the May, 2007 issue Quarterly Journal of Economics, the study looked at 5,000 natural disasters between 1968 and 2002 that affected 125 million people—and how they were covered by ABC, CBC, NBC and CNN.

The study found that coverage was affected by whether the disaster occurs at the same time as other newsworthy events, such as the Olympic Games, along with where it happened and how many people died.

(This certainly was true during the 2012 Sahel food crisis, which took place at the same time as the London Olympics; the media dedicated most of its reporters to the games, and the events took up most of the space and time.)

The authors found that while the media cover around 30 percent of the earthquakes and volcanic disasters, less than five percent of droughts and food shortages are covered—despite many more people dying due to droughts and food shortages.

They even came up with a numerical comparison: For every one or two people who dies in an earthquake or volcano, 32,920 people must die of food shortage to receive the same media coverage.

The study also revealed geographical bias, showing that it 45 times more Africans have to die in a disaster than Europeans to get the same kind of media coverage.

(These findings echo the old 1960s “Racial Equivalence Scale” created by American reporters to show the minimum number of people who had to die in plane crashes in different countries, compared to the U.S., before there was coverage. According to the scale, “one hundred Czechs were equal to 43 Frenchmen, and the Paraguayans were at the bottom.”)

While media coverage of disasters in the developing world is sporadic, one thing it can do is spur government action: “We conclude that media coverage induces extra U.S. relief to victims in Europe and on the American continent, at the expense of victims elsewhere,” the authors state.

This makes the role of the media doubly important; depending on what they choose to focus on, people may live or die as governments respond by providing aid.

But what does this mean for today, when the media is greatly diminished by falling circulation and fewer viewers and listeners?

Unlike during the period of the study, the media has less impact. It may reach fewer of the public, but the government still pays attention.

If elected officials see something in the news often enough, they will conclude that their constituents also care about it—otherwise, why so much coverage? 

Media reports can then spur the government to action, by doing things like offering to match donations by Canadians who want to respond to the disaster.

At a time when the media is trying to convince people about its importance, helping to save the lives of millions of people dying of hunger is a pretty good case to make.

For more on this topic, and the role media consumers play in the amount of media coverage we get, see When it Comes to Media Coverage of Drowned Refugees or Dead Gorillas, We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us.