no strings attached

You Can Have This Money, Just One (Thousand) Condition(s)

You must give it all away.

Despite my best efforts to be lazy, November turned out to be a very productive month. I began the month by taking the GRE in the capital city, a necessary step in applying to graduate schools. Finally welcomed the new group of volunteers to the Oblast. Conducted a week long training for youth committee leaders from several villages on best practices, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases. Worked individually with youth leaders on business plans and project proposals. A string of movie theaters in the capital started offering movies without Russian dubbing, so I enjoyed a cinematic experience for the first time in a while. I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Peace Corps (PC) country director’s house with many PCVs and PC staff. Had my annual review at work, which seemed to go well. And lastly, and what this post will focus on, I worked with my organization on securing funding for the next six months.

Standing with two trainers and a participant from the Youth Committee Training

Funding an NGO is not easy. Funders, when you can find them, prefer to fund projects - not organizations themselves. Of course, in order for the project to work, it needs to be carried out by an organization that can keep its ducks in a row, but funders do not enjoy the idea of contributing to overhead costs. Most grant openings I’ve come across specifically stipulate that exactly none of the grant can be used for overhead costs. I’ll even admit, when I was back in the states and was struck by a feeling of generosity, I’d look up organizations and choose to donate based on how low the percentage of funds used toward overhead were.  The lower the percentage, the higher the likelihood I would donate.

There is this mentality when giving money- we want the money to go toward the project, not into the pockets of those running the project.

I think it’s time we take a second to pause and think about whose pockets those are. The pockets we refuse to pad with our dollars. People like my counterparts, Bubumairam and Guljash. Two women who have dedicated the past two decades to improving the local economy by empowering women through education and access to opportunities. These women were never rich and decided to give back, no. They were not privileged and felt guilty, not that either. These women were victims of a failing system that promoted male chauvinism and cronyism, and decided they were not satisfied by the status quo. They decided to make a change in their own generation, so that future generations would not suffer the same. Slowly, over the past twenty years, these women have been attending any training they can find and afford, acquiring skills they can pass on to other women, building resources for their members, and eking by on limited grant money so that their more than one thousand members can continue to grow in abilities and empowerment.

We don’t want our money going into the pockets of Bubumairam and Guljash…right?

In my opinion? Wrong. Of course I do! Those are exactly the people I want my money going toward. If you’re not comfortable with your money going to Bubumairam and Guljash, then who in the world are you comfortable giving to?

Bubumairam on the right, giving a certificate of completion to Ruskul, a budding activist in a small village nearby my host village.

What does overhead costs mean, anyway? Obvious things like the electric bill for the office, maybe even the water bill (not the case for my organization, since we don’t have a water line to the office), heating, paper, pens, maybe computers and printers, ink cartridges. Less obvious things, like advertisements, auditing, new employee training, application fees for certain certificates. And most importantly: employee wages. If a grant does give in on some overhead costs it will often allow for the first two categories, but almost never will it allow any percentage of the money to go toward employee wages.

Why not?

Why do we not want to pay the people doing good things for the world?

Taking a moral perspective, we are a lousy society to refuse to pay people for doing things that are beneficial to society, like empowering women in the rural areas of Kyrgyzstan, while promoting a system (implicit or not) that allows chief executives of fast food companies and soft drinks to become billionaires.

Taking an economic perspective, we have to ask what will happen when these good people are given a wage. I don’t have statistics to back this up, but I would feel confident in saying paying people like Bubumairam and Guljash would increase the chances of them staying in this line of work. Meaning the people who have taken the time to learn how to empower rural women, will continue to empower rural women. Meaning the people doing good things will be increasingly better at what they do, more qualified and effective.

So, do not buy another bottle of CocaCola, instead give money to an organization that does good, no strings attached.