How out-of-date perceptions and expectations of NGOs and Companies are preventing progress
The title for this blog comes courtesy of Dan Pallotta and his thought-provoking Ted talk The way we think about charity is dead wrong from earlier this year. I finally got round to watching it the other week and it didn’t disappoint. Dan presents a very compelling argument, highlighting the fundamental contradiction between what we expect NGOs to achieve and what we allow them to achieve.
In the same sitting, I watched Michael Porter’s recent Ted
talk Why business can be good at solving social problems. This is a great introduction to the key principles and
arguments of ‘Shared Valued’ and, again, it is a very compelling argument for
changing our preconceptions of what companies are here to do.
The word that comes up again and again in these talks is scale, both in terms of the enormity of the social and environmental
challenges we face, and the resources and capabilities required to solve them.
The problems we face in the world today, such as climate
change, poverty, disease, are huge. Some of these challenges have been around
for a number of years – in fact, as Michael Porter points out in his talk, it’s
a bit embarrassing how little progress has been made considering how long we
have been ‘tackling’ the problems.
And this is not going to change unless we rethink our
approach.
Now you’ll have to forgive me, but to make my point, I’m
going to turn to the wonders of PowerPoint shapes. In its simplest form
(disclaimer), this is what is needed to get to transformative change:
When we think about solving social challenges, we commonly
turn to NGOs but, in the way that they are set up today, they will struggle to move
beyond incremental change:
As Dan Pallotta points out, whilst NGOs have specialist
knowledge, expertise and a huge amount of passion, they lack resources – charitable
giving has remained stuck at 2% of the GDP since the U.S. started measuring it
in the 1970s (and, remember, this is the U.S. where philanthropy is big!). They
also struggle to attract the best talent because they can’t compete with the
remuneration packages offered by the corporate world, and the result is that
they are unable to achieve the scale or reach that they really need to
successfully tackle the social problems.
Think about the last time you gave money to charity? I
imagine that you wanted every penny to go towards the beneficiaries, not to cover
overheads. This is a real issue for NGOs – the expectation is that they are
there to solve the world’s problems but without, God forbid, spending money on marketing,
fundraising or salaries. Would you expect the same of a business?
The answer to that last question is no, however our expectation
of companies is equally strange. A company has resources, talent, scale and
reach but, in the majority of cases, these inputs are focused on generating
profits rather than, and in some cases to the detriment of, solving social and
environmental problems.
What if…
·
Companies focused their energy on finding ways
to sustain growth and profits through playing a role in helping solve some of
the world’s big problems?
·
NGOs could invest in talent, fundraising and
marketing and scale to the size where they could really make a different to the
world’s big problems?
·
Companies and NGOs collaborated – bringing together
different strengths and skills – to tackle the world’s big problems?
None of these ‘what ifs’ are impossible, in fact, some of them are starting to happen already. Look at the Gates Foundation, which is investing
in talent, research and innovation. What is crucial is that we rethink our
age-old perceptions and expectations of companies and NGOs. As a society, we
need to allow these institutions the permission to evolve and change to meet
the challenges of our world today. That is when we will see transformative
change.
