Thinking Wider Than the Agency

On this week, I found some different issue than the regular issues in advertising-trade publication. An agency should be aware of any Government policies or services that relate to its activities. In particular it should consult other Government agencies that also may contract with the same NGOs, or whose activities are important to the effectiveness of the NGO’s services. This is important in terms of achieving objectives, minimizing, compliance costs, and avoiding the risk of either unplanned gaps in services or the Government paying twice for the same service. As part of the process of selecting a provider, agencies should require an NGO to disclose whether or not it has applications to or is receiving funding from other Government agencies for the same or a similar purpose. Verifying the information provided should be part of the normal contract management and monitoring activities Agencies should consider in advance how they will deal with any “double funding” and build this into their contracts such as, halting or altering any further payments for the service in question, or requiring the NGO to repay any funding received for that service. It may also be important to know about relationships between local Government and NGOs.

Government agencies may wish to jointly explore the scope for having consistent documentation, or relying on vetting or accreditation of an NGO by another Government agency, taking into account any requirements specific to a particular purchaser. This may be useful, in particular, where the Government agencies are dealing with the same or similar non-Government organizations.Government agencies should consider the options to deal with situations where multiple Government agencies contract with one NGO for a set of related services. These can be formal arrangements such as integrated contracts, “joined-up” and pooled funding arrangements or informal arrangements such as networks and alliances. Such arrangements can be costly to all of the parties involved.

In my thought, agencies should consider, prior to participating in these types of arrangements, if the arrangement, it will produce benefits that outweigh the costs for all of the parties involved. It Also, they should provide clear accountability for services or actions, have an agreed and understood rationale that justifies the inclusion of all participants. They should demonstrate that the outcomes for people (clients) and communities can be improved by joint action.

After recognizing about this fact, I found one from An NGO Advertising Campaign. There is currently a massive advertising campaign across Tanzania. Everywhere you look the billboards are depicting happy Tanzanians with the accompanying texts:
“NGO's: The voice of the voiceless”
“NGO's: Caring for your community”
And my favourite: “NGOs are creative and innovative"
Being a rather cynical man when it comes to NGOs, I cannot stop my curiosity when the aid community launches such a massive information campaign. I was thinking in depth about What is the purpose of the campaign, who funds it, and who are the target.

A closer look at the posters reveals the text “Celebrate/Shangalia”. A quick search on the internet further reveals that the campaign is launched by USAID Tanzania’s largest democracy and governance program, Tanzania Advocacy Partnership Programme (TAPP). So this is in other words a donor funded campaign and not an attempt by the NGOs themselves to further their cause. In the words of TAPP: “The Shangalia/Celebrate NGOs campaign promotes the positive work and messages of Tanzanian NGOs, and was also developed after conducting focus groups to discern the public’s opinion about NGOs”. So there we have the purpose. The donor community is worried about the receiving public’s opinions about NGOs and feels that a good old-fashioned information campaign should solve the problem.

This matter is really starting to stink in my opinion. Instead of looking into the causes of the bad reputation of NGOs among the public, the donor community assumes that it is a problem of perception. No inquiries into the output of NGOs and no long-term assessments of the effects created by NGOs. The reason for this is perhaps easy enough to figure out anyway.Shangalia means to “receive with joy and enthusiasm”. Humanitarian and civil society organizations are non-profit, and their purpose is to make life better for people. If you need to launch a massive advertising campaign to get this message across to the receiving public, you are doing something seriously wrong. But damned are those who question the good heart of the humanitarians.