priorities

Donors:  you can’t live without them, but you sure can struggle with their choice of priorities. It’s no secret that the money funneled to NGOs in developing countries come with certain obligations. And it’s also no secret that what donors require from their beneficiaries year to year can be temperamental, contradictory and just plain baffling. 

Kivulini was recently evaluated at the behest of a fairly important and long-time donor. It’s been especially interesting for me to witness the evaluation process and aftermath, both as a committed volunteer who wholeheartedly supports their mission and a foreigner, who understands, at least to a greater extent, the worldview that drives the kinds of requirements donors make of NGOs like Kivulini. 

There’s one issue in particular, that will likely cause distress and conflict for some time to come. To put it simply, this particular donor believes that LGBT rights (i.e. lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender rights), sex-worker rights and the right for males to have sex with males should be more central in Kivulini’s work in the Lake Victoria Region. One publication from this donor deemed these issues “An Emergency” in the developing world. 

The staff find this troubling on both religious and, in their words, “cultural” grounds; most of them profess to be Catholic, Christian or Muslim, and believe such issues are “not the African/Tanzanian way”. They also struggle with the “Emergency” designation, as they are stretched thin enough trying to fight the sky-high rates of domestic violence, maternal mortality and the general subordinate status of women in the region. 

For their part, the donor believes that Kivulini must let go of “conservative religious and traditional views”, since these views compromise the organization’s integrity and commitment to justice. 

What should Kivulini do? Is this truly "an emergency"? Will more and more donors require Kivulini to adopt these issues as their own? How can Kivulini respectfully work with their donors, while staying focused on their mission, as they see it--which is to empower communities to break cycles of domestic violence, poverty and abuse? 

I have no idea yet, but it will be very interesting to work alongside these men and women as they try to figure it out.