For the past few weeks we have been discussing what we believe should be the criteria for choosing the right non-profit to donate to. As of late, we have been looking at resources that aid in the decision making process. Two examples of these are the websites, Charity Navigator, which focuses on financial health, transparency, and accountability, and GiveWell, which focuses on reputation, transparency, and impact. Despite being credible resources to help you decide where to donate, neither of these websites address a question that I believe is extremely critical: Is the organization "top-down" or "bottom-up"?
I believe that differentiating between these two non-profit approaches is vital in my decision making process. For me to support an organization they must be bottom up. Top down approaches often cost more, and seldom achieve as many benefits for the local communities they impact. They are typically identified and defined by an outside public agency, which has no direct investment in the success of the project.The top-down model provides little or no opportunity for local citizen input during the development phase, or even afterward in the caretaking of the project. Usually, this approach yields resentment and lack of alignment between the community and local interest groups, a critical issue that hinders the impact of the organization as a whole.
This article highlights how organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation use a top-down approach that doesn't have positive effects on the cause they are working towards.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/27/philanthropy-enemy-of-justice
The article highlights the "havoc that power without oversight and democratic control can wreak." It exemplifies that it shouldn't just be a "rich man's" choice on how a problem should be solved, and that these large organizations don't consult with the communities they serve enough.
So, I personally believe that differentiating between top-down and bottom-up organizations is critical in our decision making process and any other donation decision that I will face in the future. My questions for you are these:
Do you agree with the importance of this distinction?
and
Can you think of any ways to test the "bottom-up-ness" of an organization?
I had never really thought of organizations in this way but I think that this is a great perspective to look from. I agree with you, Juliette, that there should be a distinction between top-down organizations and bottom-up organizations. Personally, I believe that bottom-up organizations are the better of the two types of organizations and can better meet the needs of the people that they are serving. If the charity is working directly with the people instead of letting resources trickle down from the top, then there is less waste as the resources and services that the charity is doling out make their way down to the bottom. Another benefit of bottom-down organizations is that the people who have the greatest need will be helped first and then those with a less critical need will be helped second.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me that the Guardian article criticizes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation strongly. I always thought that the Gates Foundation was an exceptional organization that was doing a world of good. But when I looked at this article and the organization more closely, it seems that some of the methods that the foundation, and similarly other top-down organizations, uses have a borderline attitude of "we are from the west and we know best," and Bill Gates is often very vocal on what he believes is the best way for philanthropy to be done and how foreign aid works. The Gates are donating billions of dollars and that is great, but this is also the reason we sometimes don't pay attention to how the organizations are spending these billions. With the Gates' views and their aim at solving some of the worst problems that plague the world, we simply assume that their charity is approaching philanthropy in the most efficient was possible. We see the dollar signs, not where the money is going to.
I assumed the very best before I read this blog. And, while I still believe the Gates Foundation is a sound and decently effective charity, I think that if they change their approach from top-down to bottom-up they would be more effective and be able to help an even larger amount of people. However, I am not sure if the Gates Foundation would be able to make that switch because of their sheer size and the way the charity is setup.
To address the question of how to test a charity for its bottom-downness is difficult. Like many other things in philanthropy, there is no one sure answer to this. I believe that the best test is to look at the methods of the organizations and if they are helping people at the bottom or if they are relying on a middle man above them.
The issue of a “top-down” versus “bottom-up” model that Juliette has brought up is quite prevalent in the world of philanthropy. Although the bottom-up model is more widely accepted as the way to get lasting results, I am very hesitant to condemn the top-down strategy fully. Even though there are several drawbacks to the top-down approach that were touched on in this post, I don’t think we are able to say that the bottom-up approach is perfect either. I feel like deciding which of the strategies to implement is not so black and white.
ReplyDeleteOne limitation that I see with the bottom-up approach is that it does not account for the effects poverty and hunger have on the decisions a person makes. Desperation has a profound impact on a person’s ability to see in the long-term versus the short-term. Studies support the claim that a person in a situation of desperation is more apt to think and act in the short term (http://phys.org/news/2012-11-poverty-people-focus-short-term.html). We have seen this phenomenon in the results of GiveDirectly’s philanthropic endeavors in Africa. Though the people affected by GiveDirectly’s program were in dire need of a way to escape poverty, many of them failed to do so in the long-term. Much of this comes from desperation impeding the people’s ability to view their problems in the long-term.
In regards to the top-down model, I see some redeemable qualities that could greatly enhance the effectiveness of a philanthropic endeavor. Using the example of GiveDirectly, by advising people receiving aid on which ways their grants can bring about long-term growth (but not mandating anything), more people would be able to overcome the barrier of thinking in the short-term and would eventually see long term improvements in their lives. This would technically still be a bottom-up approach but it would incorporate aspects of the top-down model in order to increase effectiveness. This is not to say that people on the outside know better than the Africans as to what they need; it is just that when in desperate circumstances, it is much easier and more common to seek short-term relief than to fix the problem in the long-term.
To tie this back in with top-down versus bottom-up philanthropy, I believe that neither approach would be totally effective solely by itself. Rather, some form of a hybrid of the top-down and bottom-up approaches (with a stronger emphasis on the latter) would be most effective in facilitating long-term improvements.
This is an interesting article, and I, like Nick, haven't really thought of organizations as being top-down or bottom-up. This article, however, raises an important question, how can a non-profit be effective if it is not communicating and working directly with the local communities?
ReplyDeleteI think I just assumed that the non-profit's that I thought were the best would be communicating with the communities that they were helping and really making sure that their money was fixing the community need. I've always thought that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was one of those non-profit's that really paid attention to the community (African villages) in which their money was going to, and this is all because of the billions of dollars that they give.
Having said that though, I agree with Kyle in that I think it is a little extreme to say that top-down organizations never have any positive effects on the cause they are working for. Like Robert Newman says in the article, "Am I saying that philanthropy has never done good? No, it has achieved many wonderful things. Would I rather people didn't have polio vaccines than get them from a plutocrat? No, give them the vaccines.", top-down organizations still help the world a lot. The Gates Foundation, with their billions of dollars in donations to disease and poverty, helps the world more than I could ever dream of helping. Even though it is a top-down organization, it is still doing more good and more to help the world issues than most other non-profit organizations.
I think the article is more critiquing the inefficiency of the top-down organization structure as a whole and uses the Gates Foundation as an example of an organization that everyone thinks is doing the most amount of good, which might still be true.
I'm definitely in favor of the bottom-up structure approach because it is more effective in its outreach and impacts the community more efficiently with its money because it can get a more accurate sense of what the community needs are. Maybe it is hard for larger organizations to do this bottom-up structure but I too think that the Gates Foundation could have a bigger impact and affect more lives if it was structured bottom-up instead of top-down.