Major Restructuring of U.S. Foreign-Aid Policies Needed, Speakers Say

Many speakers at the annual meeting of InterAction, held here last week, said the United States was in dire need of a fundamental restructuring of how it delivers aid overseas.

“Our top development professionals know that sandals on the ground today can prevent boots on the ground tomorrow,” said Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democratic Congresswoman from Minnesota. “But our Cold War-era tools are not up to the challenge.”

InterAction is a coalition of more than 160 charities devoted to providing humanitarian aid and fighting poverty.

Ms. McCollum described a foreign-aid system badly in need of overhaul. The responsibility for providing foreign assistance is shared among 20 government agencies, while the Foreign Assistance Act — passed in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy — remains the legislation governing foreign aid.

What’s more, the U.S. Agency for International Development is half the size it was during its heyday in the mid-1980s, while the Department of Defense has increasingly taken the lead in providing humanitarian assistance abroad.

But speakers said that the presidential election, combined with a growing understanding that military solutions don’t represent the only — or best — way to promote global security, has created a rare opportunity for new legislation.

“We have a moment that’s ripe for change,” said Steven Radelet, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank. “It’s perhaps the best moment we’ve seen in 15 or 20 years.”

Mr. Radelet said the overhaul should include the creation of a Cabinet-level position to oversee international development and the hiring of more development and relief workers.

Speakers said that charities have a crucial role to play in building political and public support for change.

But to be successful, said Joe Lockhart, a former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton, nonprofit leaders need to think carefully about how they sell their message to the public.

“We need to talk differently,” he said. “In politics, language trumps everything.”

Instead of using the term “foreign-assistance reform,” he said, charity leaders should talk about improving how the United States makes “global investments.”

Speakers also discussed the growing dominance of the Defense Department in delivering humanitarian assistance in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Right now it‚s easy to get a dollar appropriated if it’s for the Department of Defense, and it’s very hard if it’s for almost anywhere else,” said Mr. Lockhart.

Blurred Lines

In a session on the militarization of foreign aid, speakers described efforts the government was making to increase its capacity to respond to humanitarian disasters.

John Herbst, State Department coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization, described how he was pressing for the creation of a corps of civilians that could deploy to countries in the wake of humanitarian crises.

But when asked about the increasingly blurry line between aid workers and military officers — which many nonprofit leaders say has put them at greater risk around the globe — few speakers offered solutions.

“There’s not much we do can do to help you with that,” said Mr. Herbst.

Colonel John Agoglia, director of the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, said there were indeed many cases of the U.S. military encroaching on the work of charities.

But he said the military was taking steps to educate military officers about the role that humanitarian workers play in war zones.

“If we do it, it’s out of ignorance or arrogance,” he said. “It’s not intentional.”

Nonprofit organizations need to work more closely with the U.S. government and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and United Nations to help poor people around the globe, said speakers at the conference.

“We can’t have the old conversation about whether this is the role of the public sector or the private sector, corporations or NGOs,” said Kemal Dervis, administrator of the U.N. Development Programme. “Everyone’s needed.”

With the world growing increasingly interdependent and greater media attention being paid to the plight of the world’s poorest, countries have an unprecedented opportunity to stamp out extreme poverty, said Mr. Dervis.

But he said the goal of reducing poverty had been hampered by recent trends such as rising food prices and the foreclosure crisis. The world needs to develop systems to anticipate such economic crises, just as there are systems in place to warn of natural disasters, he said.

“Let us take lessons from these events to put in place much stronger early-warning systems, much stronger cooperation between north and south,” he said.

Advocacy Grant

At the event, InterAction announced a $7.5-million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The money will help the organization try to persuade policy makers to elevate overseas relief and development work as a foreign-policy priority.

“InterAction has unique potential to build a powerful coalition of action that can help make real, sustainable improvements to the lives of the poor all over the world,” Mark Suzman, director of policy and advocacy for the Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program, said in a statement.

Henrietta Fore, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, called for charities to assist the government in identifying solutions to the global food crisis. “We need your thinking on this, and we need it now,” she said.

She also urged charities, governments, corporations, and the United Nations to communicate more effectively about the results of their programs.

Only by sharing knowledge about what works can organizations develop long-term solutions, she said, and yet “we’re rewarded for excelling as an individual organization.”

Company Giving

In a series of sessions on partnerships between charities and corporations, speakers said that grant making is just one of many ways in which businesses can benefit charities.

“One of the easiest ways to get in a company’s door is through a foundation,” said Sasha Muench, senior program officer for social innovation with Mercy Corps. “But if you want to build a sustainable relationship, you have to get past the foundation to the key decision makers.”

Ms. Muench described how her charity is helping Western Union better serve the migrant families who are its clients ˆ and Mercy Corps‚ beneficiaries.

David McGuire, who directs the Academy for Educational Development‚s partnerships with health companies, said his charity was hiring more people with business backgrounds who can “speak the same language” as corporate leaders.

“I’m on a mission to get some of those business-school types who go work for McKinsey to come work for us,” he said.

In a session on the future of international journalism, speakers said that aid groups have a growing number of opportunities to get their stories heard even as many American newspapers are cutting their foreign bureaus.

“There are still quite a few foreign correspondents out there,” said John Donnelly, a former foreign correspondent with the Boston Globe. But “you have to think more creatively now.”

He said that many foundations are supporting the professional development of African and other journalists, paying for them to get in training in how to cover specific subjects such as public health. Meanwhile, African, Latin American, and Asian newspapers haven‚t been affected by the same economic trends as have U.S. papers, he said.

Mr. Donnelly said that nonprofit groups should think about employing more journalists who‚ve left mainstream news-media organizations. Former journalists can help create content for charities‚ Web sites and publications that can compete with newspapers in quality, he said.

Martyn Broughton, editor of Reuters AlertNet, said that blogs written by aid workers, and other examples of non-journalists creating news content, are “completely complementary” to traditional journalism.

He said that a compelling blog by an aid worker might grab the attention of a newspaper journalist interested in pursuing that same story. And that with the growth of sites that aggregate news, a blog can help to educate and inform as many people as a more-traditional outlet.

“It’s very possible for that to act as a multiplier, or to do what your press releases may not be doing,” he said.