Does your aid agency website inform or misinform donors?

Donors are often not given the information they need to distinguish between professional and unprofessional aid agencies

To the average donor, aid agencies that spend time and money ensuring professional practices are indistinguishable from those that do not. If your organization dedicates the resources to follow good practices then it's important to let donors know what you do and why. If your organization does not educate donors then they are helping to create and perpetuate the mistaken belief by donors that good aid is aid that is fast and cheap.

Professional standards and initiatives

Over the past 15 years numerous aid agencies have invested time and funding to create and support:

• The Code of Conduct in Disaster Relief
• The Sphere Project
• Good Humanitarian Donorship
• Principles of Partnership
• The NGO Impact Initiative
• The Good Enough Guide
• People in Aid

Unfortunately, the average donor searching for information on most aid agency websites would not discover that these initiatives even existed let alone why they are important. Over the past month I have spent quite a bit of time on aid agency websites, and most of them present the same messages to donors.

Common messages on aid agency websites

• Problems are clear, simple and easily identified - no mention of what goes into a good needs assessment, why a needs assessment is important, or how they conducted their own needs assessment
• Solutions are clear and simple - no discussion of the range of possible solutions, the importance of developing the solution with local input, and the reason for choosing that particular solution over other possible solutions
• Determining who should receive aid is clear and simple - No discussion of the fact that not everyone that needs aid will receive aid and how the aid agency chose one project area or population over another equally needy area or population
• The aid agency is the only one in the area doing anything - unless the aid agency is specifically partnering with another aid agency no other local or international aid agencies are mentioned. This hides the problems caused by duplication of aid, the difficulty in discovering gaps in aid, and the importance of coordination.
• The only social programs governments have are those funded by that aid agency - other work by the government is rarely mentioned giving the impression that there is no need to coordinate with or support the government because they aren't doing anything anyway.
• Low administration and fund raising costs are the sign of a good aid agency - even though this is extremely controversial, aid agencies trumpet their percentages and reinforce this misconception in donors. This leads to the continued pressure from donors to implement fast and keep costs low.
• All aid projects are successful - without sharing project evaluations or lessons learned aid agencies create the impression that aid is simple and rarely if ever do things go wrong.
• Donors must donate to that aid agency or things cannot improve...

This formula is extremely easy for any aid agency, regardless of the quality of their work, to imitate. The profusion of websites following this formula are contributing to the current atmosphere where donors believe aid is simple to do and should be fast and cheep. By glossing over the real challenges faced in delivering aid, aid agencies leave donors ill-informed or misinformed, thereby perpetuating the funding problems so endemic in aid. 

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem

All aid agencies need to make it a priority to educate donors and to showcase their own professionalism. Better informed donors will make better funding decisions allowing your aid agency to be even more professional. However, if aid agencies continue to over simplify the issues and focus only on the emotional aspects then donors will continue to fund any aid agency that knows the formula, regardless of the quality of their work. To borrow an expression from the 60's, if your aid agency is not part of the solution, they're part of the problem.
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Related Posts:
Deceptive advertising hurts the entire aid industry

Good examples of information sharing from websites:

Does your aid agency do a good job of educating donors? If so include a link in the comment section to the best page with an explanation of what makes it good and I'll include the best examples in a follow up posting "Great webpages that help donors make informed decisions"

Comments

[John Mary]

Saundra, these are great insights and often neglected. I have always leaned toward emotional connections- why we do what we do and telling stories of beneficiaries. I will keep your ideas in mind as I improve our site. You can find us at http://www.ugandaruralfund.org -we are a grassroots charity empowering AIDS orphans, impoverished youth and women in Uganda's rural communities, through educational and sustainable development opportunities.
John Mary