The Secret NGO War and Why it Must Stop

The non-profit world of humanitarian aid is surprisingly competitive. Sometimes it seems like humanitarian organizations are circling each other in a global bar fight as if to say: “my model is better than yours, now let’s fight it out.” It is a cold war of ideas and reporting systems with disastrous results to the communities that humanitarian organizations are accountable to. Ultimately it is a failing to humanity as a whole, to who they are equally accountable.

This is an extremely unhealthy situation. Not only does it result in a duplication of efforts, but it also creates huge blind spots where lessons have been learned. There are major principles that all impactful humanitarian organizations have learned to respect over the years, and they should at least acknowledge them before they spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to rediscover them. Also, non-profits that choose to isolate themselves and their “unique models” should be called out for their anti-social behavior. If an organization has made some revolutionary discovery about how to more efficiently help people, it is criminal for them to keep it a secret.

A food distribution site in rural South Sudan

Sometimes humanitarian organizations do the same activities, in the same places, with the same people. Because they lack the simple courtesy of talking about what they are doing, they end up confusing households and causing unintended harm. For example, during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone it was observed that upwards of four organizations were promoting different hygiene and nutrition campaigns within the same community. One organization would deliver a food basket that touted the primacy of protein and another would bring bags of maize and say: “get those calories down.” One organization would tell people to wash their hands with a special kind of anti-bacterial gel, another would throw bars of soap and jerry cans with holes punched in them and say “no, this is enough.” In rural South Sudan, one agency might do free food distribution while another promotes sustainable agricultural development and self-reliance. The message that households get is not only mixed, but it is paralyzing. “We are told to grow all of our own food by these organizations, but then these other folks come in and give us bags of food for free. We are grateful for both, but we don’t know which way the thing is going to go next year,” a woman in rural South Sudan told me. All that would take to smooth over this confusion is for humanitarian organizations to coordinate, cooperate, and strategize. But all too often they are too protective of their theories of change and sacrifice the sustainability of an intervention at the altar of pride and brand name. This also creates the problem of turning lessons learned into hidden-away classified secrets. Humanitarian organizations don’t want to talk about their problems and challenges. No NGO wants to admit to their failures. So the result is a lot of lessons learned that sit in a closet full of skeletons. Nothing could be more unhelpful to households who are in need then for organizations to be telling miraculous stories while the poor navigate a confusing world of mixed messages and overcooked portrayals of success.

We often see lots of new charismatic churches sprouting up over the developing world, pronouncing that they have made some revolutionary discovery about the Bible. In Ghana, people call these churches “mushroom churches” because they seemingly sprout up by themselves without any real need or effort. Well, the same can be said for humanitarian organizations. Some white male in the developed world has an epiphany about how to solve global poverty and he moves forward boldly, disregarding all of the other people who tried to tackle global poverty in the past. When fundraising occurs or the model is scribbled down and posted on the internet, seasoned humanitarian workers might glance over and say: “now wait a minute, I’ve been in this movie before.” But with great confidence and conviction the leader will go forward and implement his idea anyway, regardless of the lessons learned by people who tried to do the same thing in the past. This kind of anti-social behavior is characterized by organizations that refuse to attend conferences, lambast the United Nations, or accuse every other organization of being a hand-out machine. On top of all this, we read in our contracts that we must carefully protect the “trade secrets” of these organizations. 

Trade secrets? 

If we really care about the communities we are serving and are accountable to, we must stop this kind of isolationism. Humanitarians have (or at least should have) a common goal: to fill in the gaps that governments can’t fill and to simply “love one another” (which is to say, people helping other people because it is the right thing to do).

Let us all admit once and for all that egoism and being the “one truly effective humanitarian organization” are not only unhelpful convictions - they are harmful convictions. Instead of solely writing glowing reports about our progress and impacts, let us write down our failures and lessons learned as well. Let us share these lessons, or at least make them public, so that idealistic young men in the developed world can easily discover that he might be a bit naïve before going out and “saving a village.” Perhaps he can use that passion to contribute to an organization that has already implemented his idea. After all, it is our common goal to serve humanity as effectively and efficiently as possible. We are accountable to the households we serve. This is not a battle over who has the best processor for a mobile phone, or who makes the best smart watch, or which life insurance policy has the highest payout. This is a mission to work in coordination with each other to help people in need. Everything else is just unethical posturing and preening.