Posted by Kenneth Anderson:
MDLF and Lite-Blogging:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_06_28-2009_07_04.shtml#1246336782
I've been away on a trip to Prague for the past few days, board
meeting for a nonprofit whose board I chair, the Media Development
Loan Fund. [1]MDLF is a nonprofit, mission driven private equity fund;
here's the description from our new, cool [2]Facebook page, which you
too can join:
Media Development Loan Fund is a mission-driven investment fund for
independent news outlets in countries with a history of media
oppression. It provides low-cost capital, solutions and know-how to
help journalists in emerging democracies build sustainable
businesses around professional, responsible, quality journalism.
For many years, MDLF kept a low profile, even though it has emerged
over its fifteen years of existence as the leading media assistance
organization that works primarily on the financing and business end of
things. To be blunt, since the early 1990s there have been a lot of
media assistance organizations that provide journalistic help and
training, often of very high quality. MDLF is the only one that
provides financial investment, and the technical skills that come with
making the investment pay off. It has gone from a portfolio of zero to
somewhere around $50 million currently. It primarily makes loans, but
also makes equity investments - some of which have paid off
spectacularly, and allowed MDLF to be doing okay in an environment in
which other NGOs and nonprofits are struggling - or anyway struggling
a lot more than MDLF.
I've been chair for a very long time - closing on fifteen years -
which is not only a really long time, but also frankly too long a
time. It's not the best practices for an NGO to have a chair or board
that doesn't turn over. But it's not an easy organization for which to
find the right combination of board members - you want people with
experience in journalism, media management, business and finance and
preferably private equity, and nonprofit management and governance.
Since the organization not only makes investments into private media
companies in often dicey-places in the world at subsidized rates, but
also borrows a substantial portion of its funds (rather than receiving
them as grants), its finances are way more complicated than the usual
grant-receiving, grant-making NGO.
A number of its financing arrangements have been cutting edge. It was,
so far as I know, the first international NGO to launch a publicly
traded derivative, a swap note on the Zurich stock exchange, handled
by a leading Swiss private bank and with a partial guarantee from the
Swiss government. It has used innovative financing techniques to
structure mechanisms by which it can protect its financial position
while still ensuring the editorial independence of its portfolio
companies. MDLF was very lucky in managing to sell its stake in a
Belgrade TV and radio station - the famous anti-Milosevic B92 station
- just ahead of the financial crisis.
But that's the technical side. Supporting B92 over many struggling
years was a great thing to do. But supporting Trevor Ncube and the
South African Mail & Guardian was also really important (see the video
interview with him on the front page currently at MDLF.org), likewise
internet news operations in Indonesia, many newspaper and newspaper
printing presses in the Russian provinces, in Guatemala, and many
other places besides. This is an organization that does good and
important work, but it is work whose value is hard to explain to a
public that wants to see baby seals, warm puppies, and hungry children
- hard to explain that in struggling societies, transparency,
accountability, good governance, free transmission of information,
functioning information markets - all that matters along with the
primary social service goods. But it's hard to explain to people that
these apparently secondary functions are crucial to making the other
stuff happen, at least if you want the other things to happen as more
than merely a Red Cross humanitarian relief operation.
Anyway, I will be stepping down from the chair and the board at the
end of the year. Good for the organization to get a rotation of board
members, and good for me, in that there are things related to media
business, NGOs, governance, nonprofit finance, etc., that I've wanted
to write about but haven't felt comfortable doing while the chair of
the board of an organization in those fields. But this is a terrific
organization, and we had an excellent meeting in Prague. But that's
why I've been on lite-blogging status.
References
1. http://www.mdlf.org/
2. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=46410542335
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