Measure jobs!
September 18, 2009
This is in brief the background for yesterday’s debate about the future of the ‘aid industry’ in ‘De Rode Hoed’, Amsterdam. The panel was formed by four people with experience with both private sector as well as an NGO: Ton aan de Stegge (ex CEO of Telfort and PCM Media), Bart Hartman (founder of NOTS Foundation, ex-McKinsey), Jeroen Blüm (deputy director Shell Foundation, ex-KPMG and ex-FMO) and Rene Grotenhuis (directeur Cordaid).
The main purpose of the evening was to extract lessons from the private sector in terms of seven habits, inspired by management guru Stephan Covey. Examples are: increase the focus, increase the pressure (by creating crises situations), define more stringent goals, etcetera.
Still, a key issue in the discussion was the problem of showing the added value of aid NGO’s. A lot of them seem to struggle with all kinds of indicators and measurements. Then, why don’t return to the basis?
In the end, most aid organizations have the same objective (despite of the millions of approaches): develop the poor countries. Therefore, they have to be ‘expendable’ in the long run in every aid region. The only way to achieve this is through more and better jobs, so that the people in those regions can pay for their own needs like food, housing, education and health care. Doesn’t this lead us to a logical way of measuring NGO effectiveness? Shouldn’t we measure the creation of jobs?
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