Posts categorized under NGOs

28 October 2009 ~ 0 Comments

Better World Books and the role of social ventures

In a post by my friend Paco, who works for Better World Books, he questions what BWB’s role can be as a social venture working to improve literacy globally. I added some thoughts here as well. http://donniya.blogspot.com/2009/10/books-for-africa-literacy-in-africa-and.html I recently went to the BWB office in South Bend, IN and was SO impressed with the team […]

Continue Reading

05 October 2009 ~ 6 Comments

The Social Venture “Scalability” Model

Are there any “scalable” & profitable social ventures?  There is talk of “social ventures” being our saviors from the likes of the non-profit world.  Do they REALLY exist?  Or are they mostly hybrid models which still rely heavily on their non-profit arms in order to succeed at scale? It is VERY hard to find examples […]

Continue Reading

30 September 2009 ~ 0 Comments

Are PEPY Programs “Sustainable”? Part 1 of 2

What is this “sustainability” thing all about?  It is a word that gets thrown around so often by NGOs, donors, and most people working in development, yet what is means in the reality of our day to day decisions is less often understood.  I wrote part one of a two part look at PEPY and […]

Continue Reading

29 August 2009 ~ 3 Comments

Why won’t programs work in Cambodia?

I put up my thoughts on voluntourism on the World Pulse site and had received some thoughts and feedback.  One of the questions came from someone struggling with how to give back with her skills when her skills lay in math and physics. I interpreted her question as saying something like “If there are people […]

Continue Reading

26 August 2009 ~ 2 Comments

Lesson Learned: Why we shouldn’t give things away (or sell them for cheaper than they really are!)

I just read this post “9 Reasons Not To Give Things Away” and I agree with it. It relates back to my earlier post discussing how a group working in the same area as us in Cambodia subsidized water filters and thereby destroyed the market for the product (and negatively effected water filter use/health). I […]

Continue Reading

21 August 2009 ~ 2 Comments

NGOs, show me your failures!

Another post inspired from the Tales from the Hood blog, this one about honesty and NGO propaganda. A comment from Mo-ha-med (below) is something I really agree with: I’m particularly curious about a remark of yours about how the PR dept needs to communicate things in a certain way and that we shouldn’t “believe our […]

Continue Reading

20 August 2009 ~ 0 Comments

Dependency

One of the few blogs I check on a semi-regular basis is Tales from the Hood which recently had a post about dependency.  I added these thoughts: This reminds me a bit of the World Food Program.  Last year, during the food crisis, rather than cut back on what food was delivered, stop programs which […]

Continue Reading