American Donors Urged to Learn Lessons From Overseas Charities

While modern philanthropy originated in the United States, other parts of the world have developed their own innovative style of giving and commitment to social causes that rivals America’s, a Ford Foundation official told participants at a conference here last month on international grant making.

“What’s amazing is not that there’s foundations in Singapore, in Thailand, and those places, but when you sit down and talk to them, it’s how sophisticated they can be,” said Barry Gaberman, a senior vice president at Ford, who gave the keynote speech at the event.

In an interview, Mr. Gaberman said that the emerging global philanthropy is a significant shift from 50 years ago. After World War II, U.S. government agencies and foundations usually said that developing nations simply needed to import “Yankee know-how” to help foreigners out of poverty, improve governance, and increase health care.

“That sounds absurd today, but in that period, it seemed like a pretty reasonable thing to do,” he said.

Today, the tables have turned, he said, and Americans could learn lessons from abroad.

As an example, he pointed to the Population & Community Development Association, a Thai charity that has been widely hailed as helping to lower the country’s HIV infection rate and reducing its population growth through a mix of savvy marketing and businesses, such as a restaurant that promotes safe sex.

The three-day gathering — sponsored by Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support, a global network of national or regional associations of philanthropies — included more than 180 participants from 40 countries.

While Mr. Gaberman praised the conference participants for helping to improve nonprofit groups and philanthropy around the world, he warned them to keep their focus on improving social conditions in their homelands.

“The end is not the infrastructure,” he said, “the end is what you use it for.”

In Thailand, individual giving is also starting to resemble Western-style philanthropy as the country’s wealth increases and more Thais are earning a better education, said Juree Vichit-Vadakan, director of the National Institute of Development Administration’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, a research group here.

But the South Asian nation has yet to break out of traditional patterns completely, she added.

Thai donors continue to prefer to support religious causes, provide money to relatives or work subordinates who are less well off, and other giving that has been part of the culture for more than 700 years.

Thais also tend to support charities connected to the country’s royal family. For example, after the Indian Ocean tsunamis hit the Thai coast in 2004, a charity established by King Bhumibol Adulyadej was one of the largest beneficiaries of local donations, she said.

“People still tend to believe things related to the royal family are more trustworthy,” she said.

The “ultimate symbol” of charity is to pay for the construction of a Buddhist temple, an accomplishment that enhances the donor’s social status and is thought to confer a blessing on his or her descendants.

“It is a loss of face to use other people’s temples,” she said. She added that such giving is one of the reasons Bangkok has so many temples — the city is estimated to have some 400.

Ms. Vichit-Vadakan has pushed Thais to reconsider their support for building religious sites, arguing that such giving ignores the country’s social problems and poor. Her efforts, however, are sometimes met with criticism. “People called me and said, ‘Are you not a Buddhist?’”

Several speakers at the event hoped all foundations, not just Thai philanthropists, would diversify their giving.

Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, a California think tank, encouraged liberal grant makers outside America to do more to help shape U.S. public policy. Even though control of Congress is about to shift to the Democrats, left-leaning foundations need to do more to counter the influence of conservative ideas, she said.

“The intellectual force has come from the right, while the liberals and the progressives have relegated themselves to fighting a rearguard battle. Stated bluntly, we have been subjected to what can only be described as a class war from above,” she said.

While non-U.S. nonprofit organizations may be more focused on their own domestic concerns, she argued that other nations are hurt by Republicans because they support unfair trade practices, “xenophobic” immigration laws, and a “mean-spirited foreign policy.”

While Ms. Mittal focused her ire on the Bush administration, she also skewered a sacred cow of philanthropy: microcredit.

She said the benefits of microcredit programs, which provide small loans to poor people so that they can open businesses, have been somewhat exaggerated. They assist only the “moderately poor” and overlook the extremely impoverished people who lack the collateral, such as a house, to access the loans, she said.

The Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, considered the founder of microfinance, deserves the Nobel Peace Prize he won this year, she said, but his ideas are not the cure-all to poverty that many development experts claim. She added: “Microcredit is a great survival strategy.”

While Thailand’s military coup in September was slammed by many observers as undemocratic, the change of power has led to the creation of an unusual government position: minister of social development and human security.

Paiboon Wattanasiritham, the official who has occupied that job for a little more than a month, told conference participants that he may be the only minister in the world charged with making sure that citizens have government “security” that protects them from hunger, poverty, and homelessness — a proclamation that drew applause.

It is a “special task given to us under special circumstances,” he said.

He asked foundations to help the Thai government with his efforts and played down any concerns the conference participants had about their stay in Bangkok, a city technically still under military control during the event.

“You don’t have to worry too much about it,” he said. “It’s a rather friendly martial law.”

During the conference, the Ford Foundation’s Mr. Gaberman was given a special honor.

The Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support established a fund in his name that will raise money to bring other philanthropy experts to speak at its conferences, which are held every four years.

Mr. Gaberman, who is chair emeritus of the association, is retiring from Ford this year after serving at the fund for 35 years in a career that started at the foundation’s office in Indonesia.

While Mr. Gaberman, who turned 65 in August, said he will spend most of his retirement relaxing with his wife, he also plans to help his daughter film a documentary about his family.

The movie will retrace the journey of Mr. Gaberman’s father and grandfather, who fled Odessa, Ukraine, during the pogroms at the start of the 20th century to try and get to the United States.

Hampered by the outbreak of multiple wars, the family eventually reached Shanghai, where Mr. Gaberman was born in 1941. Ten years later, the family reached America.

The documentary will also put Mr. Gaberman in a new role in the foundation world: grant seeker.

“We’ll probably have to go out and try to do some fund raising, but I’m almost certain that Ford will not be one of the places,” he said with a laugh.