Opinion: Global Aid ‘Business’ Serves Charities, Not the Poor

By spreading themselves globally and failing to measure what their poor “customers” want, international aid organizations waste government and donor funds and fail to serve the communities in which they operate, the founder of an African education charity argues in a Wall Street Journal commentary.

Jonathan Starr, a former financial executive who now runs the Somali charity Abaarso Tech, says international charities works on “perverse incentives” in which executives work to expand groups’ reach rather than produce demonstrable results and don’t hold managers and staff members accountable for whether local populations actually use their services.

“With low accountability, highly compensated individuals will choose the path of longest-term funding over good solutions,” Mr. Starr writes.

He contrasts big aid groups with his organization, which focuses on a single geographic area, recruits mission-minded staff members willing to work for low pay, and offers a “product”—secondary boarding schools and adult classes in business, English, and other subjects–for which Somalis are willing to pay what little they can afford.