By Carol Ng’ang’a, founder of Msingi Trust and member of the CCF Global Council
Philanthropy is a cure for the symptoms of a disease the world created. It does some good to keep the disease at bay, but it doesn’t really heal it.
The global philanthropy world is a strange one for me! I realize its contradictions every day, and I struggle to make sense of it.
‘Give back’ is a counterintuitive term – what if you never took from people and thus never had to give back?
If business practices were not as extractive as they are today, making ridiculous profits on the backs of labourers and consumers, maybe they would not have as much profit to ‘give back’ to the communities from which they have extracted.
What if we just gave?
What if the world’s economic systems became honest about the sweat labour and time that the working majorities offer it and compensated that equitably eliminating the need for ‘philanthropy’?
Philanthropy is a cure for the symptoms of a disease the world created. It does some good to keep the disease at bay, but it doesn’t really heal it.
One example that comes to mind is how the international non-governmental organization (NGO) industrial complex is a nightmare to navigate. Well-resourced NGOs who want to appear networked with grassroots organizations but hardly deal with the day-to-day realities that these grassroots organizations deal with set the agenda and priorities for these organizations.
Localization efforts by international organizations also inadvertently mean reduced budgets from global offices. This reduces the capacities of the local leaders to impact at the local level, making it seem that things were better when the expatriates (who are almost always mostly white) were there.
Writing proposals drains the souls of local community organizers who have to balance between community organizing and advocacy efforts and negotiating with international corporate NGOs who have hot meals in their offices and access to on-the-go cabs for fieldwork and site visits to places with ever-shrinking administration budgets for the grassroots organizations.
Local community organizers may have had no food the night before and are being invited to a 5-star hotel the next day to discuss ‘poverty in the informal settlements.’ They might have had to navigate complex public transport systems and are then looked down upon when they arrive at the meetings late, sweaty, and with mud on their shoes.
There are industries that depend on the existence of poverty in order to survive. The nonprofit world is one of them.
As I think through these ‘fun’ topics in my head, I wonder about the actual numbers in terms of the money that ‘poor’ countries receive from high-income countries. According to the Charities Aid Foundation’s World Giving Index 2022, ‘The pandemic has altered the landscape of global giving behaviour. In 2018, 7 out of the 10 most generous countries were classed by the United Nations as high-income countries. However, in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, 7 out of the top 10 were low- and middle-income economies. This trend continued in 2021. Only 4 of this year’s top 10 most generous countries are classed as high-income countries, and 6 are low- and middle-income countries.”
These numbers have not changed much in the latest 2024 research findings.
I am writing this from Kenya. We have been consistently ranked amongst the most generous countries in the world. We are also considered part of the Global Majority, Global South, and lower middle-income countries of the world.
I am writing this from Kenya. We have been consistently ranked amongst the most generous countries in the world. We are also considered part of the Global Majority, Global South, and lower middle-income countries of the world.
I am a recipient of Kenyan generosity. As the first in my immediate and extended family to attain a university education, my first air ticket was paid for by my community. People chipped in their KSh 10, 20, 100, 500 to help pay for my studies. They generously gave from their daily wages to give me a chance at life, and every day, I work hard to ensure I do not fail them!
I am also writing this as a member of various self-organized groups that come together to contribute towards emergencies, hospital bills, school fees, weddings, funerals, and any other big life events that need community contribution. In most of these groups, there are ‘skip lunch’ challenges where one chooses to forfeit lunch and contribute to the need at hand.
What I have experienced locally in Kenya also rings true globally. As shared from the data from the World Giving Index research, when a crisis happens, rich nations hoard wealth while poor nations give more of their already strained resources.
The research explores generosity through three prisms a) giving time, b) giving money, and c) helping strangers. Do we in the nonprofit sector appreciate these other kinds of philanthropy? And if so, how do we honour and celebrate it?
These communities never ‘give back’ they just give.
As you can maybe already tell, my brain explores the world and society through questions, and so I leave us with more questions to consider:
1) Would we in the poorer economies be generous if our health, education, and social welfare systems worked, or is this generosity a way of coping with the failing social welfare systems?
Would rich economies and richer organizations entirely stop giving if it affected their profit margins and their buffers?
2) We left home to change home!
This is a common mantra that carries most of us who emigrate in search of greener pastures in the city or abroad. We have a strong desire to see where we come from change and for our siblings and kin to have better options than life gave us. This is done through remittances. ‘Every year on 16 June, the global community observes the International Day of Family Remittances. This day raises awareness of the hard work of millions of migrants who support their families and communities of origin through the money they send back home.’ With about $669 billion USD, ‘Remittances outstrip aid nearly three times over.’
Philanthropy, therefore, has a face, and it is the faces of migrants from poor communities of origin who, because of their familial link and personal connection to the needs at home, have been successful in pulling their families out of poverty. This is money that has no administration and overhead budget, goes directly to the beneficiaries, and meets immediate and long-term needs of communities. In light of this, what lessons can we in the development and philanthropy sector learn from the hard work and the giving of the migrant workers that will better inform our practices in the philanthropy world?
3) Africa is human resource-rich and mineral-rich, yet corporations and imperialists, with the help of self-centered African leaders, have ensured that these resources do not benefit the continent by fuelling wars and unjust trade practices.
What would happen if the continent said “no” to the sedatives given to us in the form of aid (which is mostly a meagre percent of the resources that have been extracted from us) and truly controlled our resources? What would reparations look like for communities that have been impoverished through centuries of continuous exploitation and for those communities and countries that have been enriched from centuries of continuous extraction of others? What we call compounded extraction in our communities is compounded profit in the hands and economies of the imperialists.
4) CCF values sound very African to me!
I am especially drawn to the recognition that “All who engage in strengthening the community are equally valued whether volunteer, staff donor, or board member.” So how, in all our capacities, do we appreciate those who give to us non-monetarily? Do we have databases, CRMs, and retention strategies for them as well? Do we “schmooze” them as we do the cash donors? Do we know their names? Do we also acknowledge that positionality and race affect how we come in community and that we need to sometimes platform the silenced gifts more and deplatform the obvious loud voices?
When poor people give, it is done in community and in what I would call generosity circles. We all benefit from the generosity of the circle and, therefore, are indebted to the community. We also have the knowledge that need is not selective. Today, I might be responding to you in need; tomorrow, I may very well be the one in need. There is neither an eternal giver nor an eternal recipient. Today, it might be you in need; tomorrow, it will be me in need. There is no one eternal giver and one eternal recipient.
I have found that admitting to needing help requires a deep admission that I cannot manage life alone. As community workers and ‘rescuers,’ as people from high-income communities, as independent Black women, as first-born daughters, as men, as cis-hetero people, it is harder for us to admit to the people whom we are serving and are in community with that we are in crisis and need help and support. We have a god complex that we need to break.
I would even carefully suggest that our hesitation to ask for help could be tied to an unhealthy view of what needing help is and thus unconsciously correlates to how we view those whom we work with who come to us needing help.
So, what would a world where we just give look like? Even better, what would a world that doesn’t need systemized philanthropy because there is equity look like? What is the journey that we need to make between the now and then, and is our philanthropy organizing inclusive of that vision?
Carol Ng’ang’a
Carol Ng’ang’a (she/her) is a community development practitioner. She has a Bachelor of Theology (BTh) in Community Development from Cornerstone Institute in Cape Town. She has spent the last 14 years walking alongside various communities towards interventions for their empowerment.
In July 2017, she founded Msingi Trust, whose aim is to ‘Mobilize, Inspire, Equip and Network Christians and community leaders towards Social Justice, Social Activism and Social Transformation.’ Carol is an ardent believer of justice, equality, and empowerment for all and has a special interest in working with faith leaders and grassroots human rights defenders, bridging the gaps, making connections between these two worlds, to create conversation content and connections to help in the fight against injustice within their community contexts.
Follow her on her personal Insta at @ndutahnganga.
Follow her work at www.msingiafrica.org, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Listen to her Podcast, Msingi Talks Podcast, across all mainstream podcast channels.
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