I keep bumping into a few attitudes that just make me want to hit my head against the wall:
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“We can’t do anything until we get more grants.” No way! There are plenty of things small, start-up organizations can do without grants! Gain knowledge. Talk with people. Build a network. Become experts in their field. Find out what similar organizations are doing in other places. Develop new strategies.
Plus, one of the worst things a young nonprofit can do is waste all of its time searching for and applying for grants which aren’t likely prospects, or even worse, receive grants while lacking the infrastructure to manage them, and as a result leave a bad taste in the mouths of would-be future funders.
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“Raising money locally is just extorting the poor. All of our funding should come from abroad.” I think there is so much power and pride that comes when a community can come together to meet its own needs, even on the smallest level. Outside funding always comes with strings attached, no matter what. My dream is to help the most marginalized people in this community—the rural poor, the people living with HIV/AIDS, the people suffering from domestic violence—to find their own voice and their own power. Without that key element, African countries will always be at the mercy of the big international donors.
- “People are used to getting handouts (mosquito nets, sugar, etc.) when they come to meetings. Our meeting attendance has been dwindling since we started sending them home empty-handed. We need to find something to give people so they will come and get the psycho-social support they need.” The fact that people won’t come to our meetings without receiving a handout means that our meetings aren’t providing them with the psycho-social support they need, or not enough of it to be worth the trip in from the village. If we can’t revamp the meetings to actually meet the needs of the clients, it would be better to cancel the meetings altogether than to pour resources into incentives for people to come.
1 Comment
June 19, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Great points, Mandy. Again, the folks in Uganda are so lucky to have you.