There’s a tricky gray area in the non-profit world around “mission creep” and funding when it comes to human rights. Non-profit organizations (and charitable foundations) obviously want to maximize their funding. And most NGOs, or people working for or supporting NGOs, care about more than one issue, even if they have a narrow focus: generally, if you’re working for an organization that supports child nutrition, for example, you’re also going to care about child soldiers or gender equality. You’ll probably also care about education. And malaria. But what happens when your organization is offered funding from a less-than-reputable source, or when a country in which an organization is working has a poor human rights record? When should (if ever) an organization speak out against human rights abuses if it is not in the mission of the organization to address such issues? Obviously activist and advocacy orgs are a different matter, so when I’m talking about NGOs in the examples below, I’m not talking about these ones. And when should an organization turn down funding from a questionable donor? Where do we draw the line?
One main concern for NGOs is “mission creep” (apologies for the Wikipedia entry, but, well, sometimes it’s the best source). While most NGOs would agree that there are a multitude of problems that must be addressed in the world, it doesn’t help for one org to try to solve all of them at once. It would not be in the best interests of an organization that supports clean water initiatives to begin working on literacy. Though a leap to water-borne parasites or child nutrition would possibly make sense–which is how it becomes difficult, sometimes, to define when an organization has overstretched itself. When it comes to working in a location where human rights are restricted or abused, it becomes similarly difficult to know when or if to speak out, especially if it comes at the price of the org being thrown out of the country. Should this clean water NGO denounce the Nigerian government for allowing environmental degradation of drinking water in the Niger Delta? Probably. Water.org does. What if an org working on pediatric HIV/AIDS in Uganda decided to speak out against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently before the Ugandan Parliament? There’s always been a strong link between LGBT organizations and HIV/AIDS organizations, but would such an action go beyond this org’s mission, which is about children? And would it do more harm than good if the organization found it difficult or impossible to work in Uganda following such an action?
Then we get into the question of funding. Many health-related implementing NGOs would accept funding from pharmaceutical companies that have been accused of artificially inflating drug prices and thereby denying the poor in low-income countries access to treatment. Having cheap and accessible drugs is vital to a number of health interventions, and expensive, inaccessible drugs have exacerbated many health issues: check out Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines for the specific case of pharmaceutical companies and access to antiretrovirals for HIV/AIDS (MSF has tons of funding and does plenty of advocacy/activism along with its implementation, so I’m not using them as an example here). NGOs rely on funding to keep running. And in many cases, big pharma companies are supporting NGOs as part of their corporate responsibility, and we certainly don’t want to discourage that. But Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) probably wouldn’t accept funding from American beer giant Anheuser-Busch. Would an organization that works to end domestic and/or gender-based violence?
Foundations and donor orgs/agencies have the same problems. UNESCO recently suspended a $3-million prize for research in life sciences that Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the “president” of Equatorial Guinea (great piece in The New York Times on Monday about Equatorial Guinea and its horrible human rights record) offered to bankroll in exchange for having his name on the prize. That was a lot of money to give up–but UNESCO’s mission is to use education, science, and culture to further social justice and human rights. That one makes sense. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found itself in hot water in 2007 after The Los Angeles Times published an exposé showing that “the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.” One damning example tied the foundation’s investment in oil companies that operate in the Niger Delta to the health problems caused by the oil companies in the Delta. The Gates Foundation now says on its website that it does not invest its endowment in corporations with “egregious” activity (they cite tobacco companies) and has divested from Sudan. But I doubt (and don’t have the energy to check Gates’ audited financials/annual reports) that the foundation has divested from every single corporation that might have a dubious record–it has a bottom line to maintain, after all. Most likely, the foundation is still investing in companies that might undermine its efforts.
I’m unsure where I stand, and I suspect anyone reading my posts knows that I’m not exactly opinion-less. There’s a slippery slope, but it stands in shades of gray. When it comes down to it, there are few (if any) places in the world where no human rights abuse exists. And upon entering into a financial agreement, especially when an organization is strapped for cash or dependent upon others for all of its funding, there’s always going to be a greater difficulty in speaking truth to power. It’s hard, when an organization is doing good, to try to compare whether that good mitigates a bad thing, or if, further, that good can help change the bad: for example, promoting education and literacy could also democratize a country with a dictator at its head (as I wrote here about the Dictator’s Dilemma). In cases where a (potential) funder or a host government is at direct odds with the org’s mission, it should speak out or reject funding. But beyond that, determining when to do so is unclear. There are no easy answers here.
