Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Blurring Corporate and NGO Lines
Dear Al, On one side you are perfectly right: large corporations do have resources like technical expertise, logistics and capital, that could and should be leveraged to fight poverty (yet be aware of Halliburton's performance in Iraq or the Water-companies in Bolivia). Yet I'm afraid that your definition of NGOs only comprises that type of organization you yourself are involved with: Northern, mostly philanthropic associations, that make their living from donor money and sponsoring/executing smaller or larger, but never large-scale-projects. The term NGO within developing countries extends far beyond this limited vision, as here NGOs are all types of social organizations of the beneficiaries themselves, when they are not established as commercial or public entities. This means a teachers-organization is an NGO -and most of their programs go way beyond classical trade-unions- as they are student-associations, small farmers associations, women's-associations, health-associations and so on. Many of them are confined to a single location, others have found ways of coordination and collaboration on a larger scale, up to whole countries or even beyond. This framework -almost a natural one and not something crafted- joins more expertise on Development-issues, success and failures and the reasons why, then the whole bunch of experts of large multilateral organizations like Worldbank, UNESCO, UNDP, FAO and (!) the big corporations jointly. For a strikingly simple reason: it's their life that's at stake not only success-reports or quarterly earnings. To get again into numbers: let's assume that you need one person-day to train 25 persons in how to use the Internet (or more generally, some ICT-application) for their benefit. This converts into 160,000 person-days to train 4 million farmers or the equivalent of 667 man-years. (Already almost out of scope to be done by highly-skilled and highly-paid professionals of the corporate world: it wouldn't make sense economically with respect to ROI). If we scale it up to let's say 200 Million farmer-families, we would need about 34 thousand person-years to do the job - completely beyond capacity of even the largest corporate entity. And we didn't even take into account that there at least about 50 or 60 local idioms to be considered, hundreds of different cultural traditions and thousands and thousands of different local social settings, in which each needs a sometimes larger sometimes smaller adjustment of training-materials, strategies and settings. So without close-support of local NGOs the task cannot and hence will not be done. Corollary: the true challenge is not getting the corporate-world involved but to get thousands of local NGOs involved as counterparts. The former is almost simple -convince the CEO and the Board of Directors, maybe some important shareholders. The second is the truly hard task, but unavoidable if you would like to succeed on scale. Yours, Cornelio P.S. For some reason MIT-media-lab left India, ATT Bellsouth sold out completely their ICT-business in Latin-American (i.e., even the best of the corporate-world sometimes doesn't match with local conditions and traditions). This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Is Profitability Essential for Sustainability?
On 11/3/04, Andy Lieberman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While I feel comfortable with the above-stated model at the local level, I am struggling a bit with the ethics and reality of whether a mid-sized local NGO should build its sustainability off end users. For example, some people have suggested that our NGO could create a franchise scheme where our partner centers could pay us a fee for which we would provide ongoing technical and administrative support. It is certainly solid as a business plan, although I wonder about our capacity to provide quality services at a low enough cost. Regarding ethics, I would not feel comfortable knowing that my salary is coming directly from the pockets of the rural poor we are trying to help. Yet, if we are not able to offer those services, the telecenters end up paying private companies for that assistance. So, maybe I am wrong in my thinking and that this scheme would really be a win-win. Our NGO is doing its best to be transparent, so that any profits obtained should truly be channeled back to our target population. I would welcome testimony from anyone or any organization that has gone through these types of growing pains. Andy, I would understand your feeling against feeding from the poor's hands. I think the most important issue here is the service you will offer and how it fits into the larger community aspirations. I have worked with setting up School-Based Telecenters (SBTs) in Uganda and Zimbabwe under the World Bank Institute program. In Uganda alone there are over 15 SBTs. The strength of the SBT is as much in the networking and sharing of resources. They can negotiate fair prices and services etc., as a block. Therefore if you can make your services available to help organise common interests around a need - for instance PC servicing and repairs, training etc, that would be great. They can in turn pay some fees at a price deemed necessary for the service. In case there is a doubt - take it that if you don't help, someone else will, but might require higher fees than what you might be willing to do the same job for. I think its all a WIN-WIN situation if you help and charge less than the market cost - if you can get a good service for that amount. I would be happy to know how you get through on this. Regards, Meddie This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Is Profitability Essential for Sustainability?
Dear Colleagues, This really is a fascinating discussion. So fascinating that I feel compelled to make my first post - so please be gentle.:) One observation to the comment on Branding. I'm not sure I agree with Kevin Jones (or maybe I just missed the context?) that ...the pricing changes coupled to getting externalities to be included in the cost of goods sold is a branding issue... I agree brand is important in terms of increasing the likelihood that consumers will pay a higher price for goods which cost more because of a pricing component which compensates for externalities. In this sense a particular brand is providing some intangible value to consumers who buy into (or can be persuaded to buy into) the approach that Kevin outlined below. Brand is also doubly important in this context if particular organizations are acting in isolation in taking on this additional cost burden while competitive products or services continue to enjoy a free ride. However I'm guessing that regulation/legislation forcing or incentivising (maybe through tax breaks) all producers of a particular product or service to internalize some of the external costs of production - and therefore create a level playing field for all - plays a more important role here. Especially for products and services which are becoming more commoditized and consumers are therefore buying more on price than values or attributes associated with a particular brand. Just my 2 cents. Regards to all, John This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Is Profitability Essential for Sustainability?
Dear GKD Members, It is great to hear all the thoughtful ideas and I am encouraged by them particularly as a nice counterpoint to the recent political setbacks in US. I am working with a start up social enterprise called the oneVillage Foundation http://www.onevillagefoundation.org. We are excited by this conference and the potential of BOP. We currently are in the beginning stages of developing what we call Unity Centers. I hope that our work on this may have some relevance to this discussion. Most telecenters are not profitable or economically self-sustaining. This would not be an issue so much if the telecenters were developing an integrated program of development that incubated social enterprises in the communities they operated out of. It is not so much an issue of whether telecenters are directly profitable but whether they are building economic value in the communities they are operating in. Yet as Meddie Mayanja seems to imply, profit is essential not only for successful ICT Development but for all things done in a civilized society. If one is ideologically downed by the idea of profit then one can use the term resources. To replicate sustainable communities-based economies you need to have a return on the initial investment. Here is one scenario we have looked at as we have worked to develop a comprehensive plan for local community development around ICT centers: ICT centers could be designed as money losers but the businesses and other organizations they incubate or assist could pay a fund to keep the operation going from their profits or surplus revenues. At the same time, the program could be designed to subsidize small groups doing research and organizational work relevant to increasing the momentum of local development. People just wanting to see the Madonna website or find out if Bush won the re-election on CBS.com would have to pay to use the computers, as would be the case in normal cyber-cafes where everyone has to pay. The subsidy towards serious computer usage would discourage frivolous use of what is still a very precious resource in non-affluent countries. I think it is important to not only look at profit but how the profits are spent. This is a real issue in non-affluent nations and also affluent ones (probably more so as they are the 15% of the world's population that unsustainably consumes 85% of the world's resources) as well. More on this later... Jeff This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
