Canadians and Foreign Aid: What Do They Think?

What do Canadians think about foreign aid?

They think it’s a good idea, but they don’t think Canada should spend more on it.

That is one of the findings from surveys done this year about Canadian attitudes towards foreign aid.

The three surveys were conducted this by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, an umbrellas group for Canadian NGOs; the One Campaign, and CanWach (Canadian Partnership for Women’s and Children’s Health).

Of the three, only the CanWaCH survey is online.

When asked to rank a series of issues facing Canadians, and then asked which ones Canada should spend more on, aid was ranked at the bottom.

In the top four were healthcare, terrorism, unemployment in Canada and poverty in Canada.

Global hunger was near the bottom at #10 and poverty in the developing world was #13.

As one researcher put it: “No good news here with regard to development aid.”

For marketers and communicators, an important finding was that 64% of Canadians could not name a single relief and development organization.

We simply can't assume that most people know who we are, or that we exist, in other words.

Here are some other findings from the three surveys.

A majority of Canadians think foreign aid is a good idea, but support for it is soft. When asked, few agree Canada should spend more.

Most Canadians have no idea how much Canada spends on foreign aid.

One survey noted that the term “foreign aid” is not positive for most Canadians. It led one researcher to suggest that NGOs not use that term when making a case to the public for more spending on relief and development.

How many Canadians are supportive of foreign aid? According to one of the surveys, 23% of Canadians are active supporters, 20% are passive, 20% are swing, 15% are disengaged, 14% are passive opponents, and 9% are actively opposed.

What about those who oppose it—who are they? They tend to be conservative politically, high school educated, blue collar, male, older and rural. Unless they are religious, in which case they are supportive of helping others through aid. (This is something religious NGOs know, but it came as a surprise to one researcher.)

When those who support aid were asked why, the most common response in the surveys was a sense of moral duty and compassion.

When asked who they trust in the NGO sector, respondents indicated they trust the reports of individual relief and development workers above institutions.

When it comes to engagement in this issue, or most other issues and causes, participation is decreasing in the areas of volunteering, donating or participating in fundraisers. Where engagement is rising it is through social media.

When it comes to getting news, 61% of Canadians rely on Facebook. 19% list Twitter, 18% use YouTube.

Your thoughts?

Home Depot, Terrorist Attacks, Logos and Food Aid

It’s a great photo—a Rohingya woman holding a Canadian Foodgrains Bank bag of food.

What’s not to like? Our logo is prominently displayed.

It’s great marketing and public relations.

There’s nothing not to like about it, unless something goes wrong.

And as surely as Murphy of Murphy’s Law lives, something often goes wrong.

One of the most common occurrences for food aid organizations is when food goes astray and ends up in a market for sale.

When that happens, there are many reasonable explanations.

The food might have been stolen—something not unusual in places where people are desperate, the rule of law is lax, there is conflict, or there are too many guns.

Just about every place we send food aid, in other words.

Or a recipient family sold the food—again, not unusual in places where people have many needs, including for food.

Maybe they needed money for medicine to save a child’s life. Who wouldn’t sell food to do that?

It could also have been traded for a cooking pot to a local seller in the market, or for any other much-needed item.

Or the bag might simply have been used and thrown away, only to be used by a seller as a handy item for their shop.

All reasonable answers, but meaningless if a story comes out about our food aid being found to sale in the market. 

When that happens, agencies like the Foodgrains Bank are in a losing race to try to contain the damage.

Before you know it, it's gone viral on social media, causing damage and headaches for communicators and public relations practitioners.

And damaging it can be; when your reputation is staked on making sure donations get to those who need it most, the "loss" of food can set you back in the public's mind.

If we've done our job—if we've been proactive about talking about how challenging it is to do food aid—long-time and regular donors will know this, and not be worried.

But during emergencies, like the terrible situation facing the Rohingya, many donors are first-time givers.

They don't know what it's like to try to deliver food in places where almost everything has broken down, conflict is raging, or people barter food to meet other important needs.

All they know is that food from the Foodgrains Bank was found for sale; suddenly, we look like poor managers, wasting the donations of Canadians.

Thoughts about the opportunities and challenges of food aid came to mind following yesterday’s terrible attack in New York City.

The attacker used a rented Home Depot truck to mow down innocent bicyclists and walkers.

Photos from the aftermath of the attack clearly show the truck with Home Depot’s logo.

Home Depot did nothing wrong, as far as we know, in renting the truck to a legitimate user.

But still, there they are, associated with the attack, their name being used in most every news article about it. 

This is not the kind of publicity they were looking for, that;s for sure.

It will be interesting to see how they respond—how will they deal with this image issue?

An industry that has been proactive in dealing with these kind of public relations challenges is in the world of railways.

Companies that transport oil and other dangerous chemicals in tank cars never make the news unless a train derails. Then they are all over the news.

The oil and chemical companies have dealt with this by painting their tank cars a non-descript black without any company logos or names.

All they have is the required reporting marks, along with other information about the car and its contents.

When an accident happens, we see the cars laying askew off the tracks, but there are no company names.

Of course, the companies will be noted in news coverage, but not in images that can quickly span the Internet.

By keeping their names and logos off the cars, they proactively limit the public relations challenges.

Contrast this with the 1930s-50s, when companies emblazoned their names and logos on the side of tank cars. It was part of their marketing strategy.

But not today, not when everyone has a camera and people are so sensitive to environmental and other damage.

When it comes to marketing through products and services, whether that's on trucks, tanker cars or food aid, it can cut both ways—good and bad.

Those of us who work in communications need to be aware of both.