Funding for the international NGO comes from a variety of source from penny drives to multi-million dollar grants mainly from the G7 nations. NGO have broad mandates and very subjective criteria for reporting progress. The greatest amount of innovation to be found in the international NGO is in the area of evaluation. The terminology changes with each new funding cycle because increasingly donors are looking for more objective evaluation models. There is an unnatural strength in the organizations for developing evaluation models for funding proposals. The reality for the international NGO is that funding for emergency projects are generally earned by reputation and proposal candy. In the development phase there is a high requirement for professionalism. The difficulty arises from the lack of objective queues of the transition period. International contractors such as the International Management Group, based in Cleveland, came in direct competition with voluntary international NGOs. A good litmus test for the start of the development phase is the arrival of these international contractors. NGO which have developed large projects and large payrolls (both local and international) find exit strategies lacking. The NGO needs to define a policy for withdrawal before they enter a country in order to obtain initial funding, but these policies tend to mirror the policies develop for peace keeping mission. The original mandates for every international peace keepers that have operated in the former Yugoslavia has been extended. During the transition phase in Bosnia, from the emergency phase to the developmental phase, NGOs need a new funding strategy to justify their continued presence. In the environment in Bosnia it was much more reasonable to seek funding for one more year than to begin to think about dismantling a large organization that the international and local work force had created together. In 1994 the strategy needed was created within the Bosnian international work force: International NGOs were needed to create local NGOs because there was no other organizations qualified. This theory had a dialogical birth in the informal networking of the international NGO workers. The evolution was fueled by a common fear of the international contractors. IMG began implementing large projects in 1995 that where foreshadowed by there initial presence in 1994.
Youth House Zenica
The original UMCOR project was funded by UNHCR to address the integration of displaced persons into the local urban field. The youth house was located in a former kindergarten and offered children from the age of five to eighteen the opportunity to attend various sections. Language, music, art, dance and video are among the sections offered. The enrollment was open to all interested. The project included up to 23% displaced persons and a real amount of integration was accomplished. As a response to these numbers a natural connection was created with the collective centers being maintained by UMCOR mentioned above. Originally an effort was made to provide limited transportation to the Youth House, located in the center city, for displaced children. Once spaces in the collective centers were created for similar activities as offered in the Youth House, this project began a separate “Outreach” project. While being a perfectly reasonable project development in the emergency phase, that decision cut off the Youth House project off from a sizable displaced population within the urban field. In the development phase the low percentage of displaced children became the main hurdle to funding the original goals of the Youth House. Instead of realizing these difficulties it was suggested that the Youth House could be made a sustainable independent organization. Several other international NGOs had been funded to create local NGO. The International Rescue Committee was awarded the UNHCR Umbrella grant that was designed to fund local NGOs through the experience and infrastructure of the international NGOs. The UNHCR funding was reduced for the youth house project and UMCOR was forced to create innovation to overcome the cold hard percentage numbers. The idea developed that the youth house should become a local independent NGO and this is what UMCOR received continued funding to achieve. The specific plan outlined for sustainability was very vague. The Youth House was expected to start generating income from their activities and eventually a small tuition might even be created to pay for the activities of the center. This was the genesis of the proposal candy: income generation as applied in the Bosnian NGO experience. In the actual implementation of this idea there was confusion about the definition of income generation. On the fly a new aspect was developed. It was reasoned that if the activities of children was to finance the cost of a youth center then the children should certainly have some greater incentive than low tuition. In a hypothetical setting it seemed greater incentive would lead to greater innovation. In the actual reality it was clear that any income earned by the children went into the common goal of supporting the family unit. In the early stages of implementation of the program it was clear that the income generated would not be able significantly to support the operating budget of the center. The funding level of the Youth House had been establish during the emergency phase at between fifty and one hundred thousand dollars. This level of financing was maintained in 1995 despite the low displaced percentage. By creating an innovation in the market place of income generation UMCOR was able to divert attention from the central problems of the project itself. Granted this was not a calculated decision, but developed from the dialogical project design process. A high percentage of the Youth House budget was required to finance this process. It did not make much sense to create an account to gather the money for the Youth House and 90% of funds generated were dispersed to the participating children. The largest customer for the Youth House “Shop” was groups of short-term volunteers who generated 10% of the yearly income. In 1995 there were six of these groups. After another year of the income-generating phase of the youth house projects, UMCOR did determine that their goals were not obtainable. Based on the income generation model UMCOR was able to establish Youth Houses in four other cities within the Republic Of Bosnia. Currently these centers are funded through UMCOR’s monetization[1] project, which imports American agricultural products for sale in Bosnia. A part of the proceeds then goes to fund the activities of the youth house projects. Critics have argued that this project amounts to dumping, these agricultural products are a product of US government subsidies for American farmers and tend to be a destabilizing force within the local bazaar economy. No other significant source of funding has been identified by UMCOR for the youth house projects.
“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages,
are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them
general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing
WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being
RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense
of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes
more converts than reason.”[i]
[1] “Monetization involves the importation and sale of US-produced agricultural commodities that are culturally and dietetically appropriate, and using the proceeds from the sale of the commodities to support humanitarian assistance and development programs. After a successful inaugural year in 1997 ($1.9 million was invested)…”from UMCOR’s web site updated 1999.
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