Misinformation abounds re: NGOs, nonprofits, aid agencies...
11:08, 4 October 2010
.. Posted in Development, Relief and Advocacy Efforts1 trackbacks
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Even while living abroad for most of the last nine years, I was aware that there was a lot of misinformation going around in the USA regarding the nonprofit sector, as well as about non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and aid agencies working in developing countries. But I tended not to take it seriously. I certainly never believed it was any kind of anti-NGO movement. While working at a United Nations agency, I once showed a non-American colleague some of the web sites set up to spread disinformation about the UN as a whole and various individual UN agencies like UNICEF and UNFPA, and she kept saying, "Are you joking? Did you set these sites up yourself to fool me?" We had a laugh, and we moved on.
Now that I am back living in the USA, I have realized that the misinformation isn't limited to fringe groups on the far-right; the misinformation about nonprofits in the USA, as well as NGOs and international humanitarian agencies abroad, is pervasive and growing. It's very-well organized propaganda, and it is proving very effective: I hear it on mainstream TV, I read about it on various online discussion groups, I hear it from fellow volunteers in community work I do here in rural Oregon... I even heard it from the guy setting up gopher traps at a nearby elementary school (not this guy): a misguided-yet-strong belief that nonprofits in the USA are tools of nefarious forces on the left bent on doing away with the US Constitution, and NGOs and international agencies abroad are tools of nefarious forces based somewhere (depends on whom you talk to) bent on doing something evil (again, what that evil is depends on whom you talk to).
My wake up call that this was something I needed to take more seriously was the widely-report-yet-bogus claims of James O'Keefe, the self-proclaimed independent film-maker who brought down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a national nonprofit that very-effectively advocated for the needs and rights of low- and moderate-income families in the USA. He used what turned out to be incredibly misleading videos that used heavy edits and staged scenes to paint ACORN as misusing funds, and he has turned out to be not-at-all independent but, in fact, funded by several heavyweight conservative backers.
After than, the more I read and listened, the more I realized that there are growing, well-funded efforts by many different people and organizations to spread misinformation about the nonprofit and NGO sector so that they lose their funding -- and their influence.
Yet, go to state or national associations of nonprofits or NGOs and you will find no effort to address these myths. Even the Myths About Nonprofits by the National Council of Nonprofits is woefully out-of-date -- I could name half a dozen more myths they urgently need to address about nonprofits!
To ignore this misinformation campaign is a huge mistake; it will not only result in less funding from individuals, governments and the corporate sector for the vital work of nonprofits in the USA, as well as NGOs and international humanitarian agencies abroad, it will also:
- further disempower people who do not have the money, connections and other resources to advocate for themselves and their interests against much better funded individuals, organizations and institutions
- take away very important voices of dissent
- remove some of the best sources for innovation and information that benefits people across various demographics (regional, educational, economic levels, etc.)
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Reveillon 2011
08:42, 7 December 2010 .. Posted in Reveillon 2011Don't know what to do for New Year's Eve! Any ideas?
