Social Impact Disillusion
There
is no quicker or more effective way to get disillusioned than to work
for a social-impact organisation. Organisations which presumptuously
claim to change lives have been known to take no prisoners in ensuring
that we are assured that we are a broken people.
1. You engage in tons of activities which are all flash and no substance. You engage in report after validation after stakeholders meeting after conference after sensitization after luncheon after dinner after report launch after research after report... You thought you were going to be a world changer. Ha. The organisations organise marches,press conferences,benchmarking,consultative dialogues and the list continue. When you do question the efficacy, you shall be educated to NGO precision on why all these things are needed before an effective intervention. The elephants in the room hire you for your creative youth and out-of-the-box ideas until you DARE suggest change. That's when you're taught about the importance of learning from more experienced staff.
2. Financial mismanagement
Many impact organisations lack control systems and operate in a way that would essentially kill a for-profit. Organisations started by charismatic leaders suffer even more. These are leaders who inspire but don't listen much to anyone. They unilaterally decide how money is spent. Organisations like these have either a)a high turnover of Finance Managers b)one steady one who knows how to play his cards right to keep his job. Organisations like these call their corruption financial mismanagement /overspending/lack of financial oversight and controls but they should essentially be behind bars. Most people wouldn't believe that such visible organisations run their accounts like a kiosk. There's a lot of management financial spending that's imprudent or completely unnecessary but there are no checks and balances. Any honest finance professional would quit but the high unemployment rate has people doing the wrong things just to put a roof over their heads.The management is fully aware of what's going on. When you're working inside the organisation you an see the financial discrepancies but each time auditors come,their books of accounts are certified as clean. Randomly mentioning PKF auditors, here,as a purely coincidental end to a sentence.
3. Lack of structures for the smaller ones and gargantuan ones for the bigger ones. Have you worked at an organisation that takes 3 months to procure a flash-disc. This is after 4 quotations, the tail of an elephant and 1 ounce of KaLaNdSinga integrity. You can't get anything done. You have to go through the head office in a different country for approval for anything. The smaller ones are the ones where Job Descriptions change depending on the weather. There is usually a lack of HR completely or the HR role is amalgamated with a completely unrelated role or it's done by management, which makes it biased.
4. Board members are respectable names in society but they have no idea about what actually happens in their own organisations. They are C.E.O's in different organisations,religious leaders and opinions shaker. They are clueless about the actual running of the organisation. The board's composition is usually important in instilling confidence in the control mechanisms of the organisation but most times, ir really doesn't make a difference. The board listens to management reports about the organisation and doesn't bother to do more research on their own. For people who are liable on behalf of the organisation, they are pretty lackadaisical about details.
5. High turnover. In organisations that lack structures,staff leave as soon as they can because there's always financial instability. The bosses can also hire and fire as they please. I know one finance guy who came to his workplace one morning to find his passwords changed and he was told to leave immediately because he was no longer needed. This followed months of disagreements over disregard of basic financial procedures. They were making personal decisions on how to use donor money. There's lack of a HR policy which leads to staff needs being ignored or minimalised and you're working under constant threat of being fired. You and your colleagues start planning an exit leaving space for the next bunch of 'fools who are coming to change the world'
6. Words stop meaning things- youth empowerment, women empowerment, facilitating, sustainable impact, FGD’s, MDG’s, community mobilization, stakeholders, engagement, collaboration, multi-pronged approach and 3,543 more industry-related jargon you can use sounds to start empty. You start to wonder exactly what youth empowerment means. Put these words together and you have half a report in any organization and you don’t even know what they are doing. You regurgitate them over and over until they’re second nature.
7.Lack of accountability from similar organisations. The American Red Cross Fiasco in Haiti was one of the biggest humanitarian aid debacles in the past century. They got over half a billion dollars in funding and built just 6 houses in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that brought the country to its knees. They went mum about the whole affair and Haitians requested the international community to specifically NOT give money to them. Not a single word was said by other humanitarian organisations. The same concept applies to different organisations. Have we all not read about World Vision and the different corruption probes against them? They never speak out against each other and thus you find situations where everyone in the industry knows what’s going on but nothing is said about it- cue civil society. You can’t hold the government accountable if you cannot hold yourselves accountable. We have developed a culture of silence especially when it involves international organisations. We talk about corruption as a general concept with broad strokes but are too scared to mention names and organisations. That's not unity, it's complicity.
This doesn't apply to all social change organisations but it does apply to a great number of them. This is not an attack, just honest observations made by myself and people around me about what we thought the scene looked like vis a vis what it does look like.
You're stuck at a place where you want to change the world but wonder if anyone is actually doing it.
1. You engage in tons of activities which are all flash and no substance. You engage in report after validation after stakeholders meeting after conference after sensitization after luncheon after dinner after report launch after research after report... You thought you were going to be a world changer. Ha. The organisations organise marches,press conferences,benchmarking,consultative dialogues and the list continue. When you do question the efficacy, you shall be educated to NGO precision on why all these things are needed before an effective intervention. The elephants in the room hire you for your creative youth and out-of-the-box ideas until you DARE suggest change. That's when you're taught about the importance of learning from more experienced staff.
2. Financial mismanagement
Many impact organisations lack control systems and operate in a way that would essentially kill a for-profit. Organisations started by charismatic leaders suffer even more. These are leaders who inspire but don't listen much to anyone. They unilaterally decide how money is spent. Organisations like these have either a)a high turnover of Finance Managers b)one steady one who knows how to play his cards right to keep his job. Organisations like these call their corruption financial mismanagement /overspending/lack of financial oversight and controls but they should essentially be behind bars. Most people wouldn't believe that such visible organisations run their accounts like a kiosk. There's a lot of management financial spending that's imprudent or completely unnecessary but there are no checks and balances. Any honest finance professional would quit but the high unemployment rate has people doing the wrong things just to put a roof over their heads.The management is fully aware of what's going on. When you're working inside the organisation you an see the financial discrepancies but each time auditors come,their books of accounts are certified as clean. Randomly mentioning PKF auditors, here,as a purely coincidental end to a sentence.
3. Lack of structures for the smaller ones and gargantuan ones for the bigger ones. Have you worked at an organisation that takes 3 months to procure a flash-disc. This is after 4 quotations, the tail of an elephant and 1 ounce of KaLaNdSinga integrity. You can't get anything done. You have to go through the head office in a different country for approval for anything. The smaller ones are the ones where Job Descriptions change depending on the weather. There is usually a lack of HR completely or the HR role is amalgamated with a completely unrelated role or it's done by management, which makes it biased.
4. Board members are respectable names in society but they have no idea about what actually happens in their own organisations. They are C.E.O's in different organisations,religious leaders and opinions shaker. They are clueless about the actual running of the organisation. The board's composition is usually important in instilling confidence in the control mechanisms of the organisation but most times, ir really doesn't make a difference. The board listens to management reports about the organisation and doesn't bother to do more research on their own. For people who are liable on behalf of the organisation, they are pretty lackadaisical about details.
5. High turnover. In organisations that lack structures,staff leave as soon as they can because there's always financial instability. The bosses can also hire and fire as they please. I know one finance guy who came to his workplace one morning to find his passwords changed and he was told to leave immediately because he was no longer needed. This followed months of disagreements over disregard of basic financial procedures. They were making personal decisions on how to use donor money. There's lack of a HR policy which leads to staff needs being ignored or minimalised and you're working under constant threat of being fired. You and your colleagues start planning an exit leaving space for the next bunch of 'fools who are coming to change the world'
6. Words stop meaning things- youth empowerment, women empowerment, facilitating, sustainable impact, FGD’s, MDG’s, community mobilization, stakeholders, engagement, collaboration, multi-pronged approach and 3,543 more industry-related jargon you can use sounds to start empty. You start to wonder exactly what youth empowerment means. Put these words together and you have half a report in any organization and you don’t even know what they are doing. You regurgitate them over and over until they’re second nature.
7.Lack of accountability from similar organisations. The American Red Cross Fiasco in Haiti was one of the biggest humanitarian aid debacles in the past century. They got over half a billion dollars in funding and built just 6 houses in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that brought the country to its knees. They went mum about the whole affair and Haitians requested the international community to specifically NOT give money to them. Not a single word was said by other humanitarian organisations. The same concept applies to different organisations. Have we all not read about World Vision and the different corruption probes against them? They never speak out against each other and thus you find situations where everyone in the industry knows what’s going on but nothing is said about it- cue civil society. You can’t hold the government accountable if you cannot hold yourselves accountable. We have developed a culture of silence especially when it involves international organisations. We talk about corruption as a general concept with broad strokes but are too scared to mention names and organisations. That's not unity, it's complicity.
This doesn't apply to all social change organisations but it does apply to a great number of them. This is not an attack, just honest observations made by myself and people around me about what we thought the scene looked like vis a vis what it does look like.
You're stuck at a place where you want to change the world but wonder if anyone is actually doing it.
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