In the spirit of the holidays, let’s ponder the strategy of using forlorn children and their bellies for fund-raising, which seems to intensify each year around this time.
I was introduced to Skip1.org, a new marketing effort of the Children’s Hunger Fund by a friend over Thanksgiving dinner. I was pulled in by the simple message “Skip something. Feed a child.”
To illustrate this, the site has a video of plates of gourmet steak and veggies being transported from a table at an upscale restaurant to starving children in another country – still on their pristine white plates, served by a smiling waitress. If this bore any relationship to what CHF actually did, Aid Watch could evaluate the number of children served, how their parents were involved, whether these children grew up to grow their own food, the effectiveness of serving children on white china, etc.
Of course, aid veterans, although not the general public, know that direct donor-to-child transfers never happen because of high transaction costs, so the ad is already misleading in a very well known way. But then we find out that the reality is that CHF is not even primarily a food distributor. According to their website, they do send “Food Paks” around the world to needy families, not just children. The photo of a Food Pak features an American diet, including saltine crackers and animal crackers, intended to feed entire families.
However, according to Fred Martin, Communications Director at CHF, “In fact our Food Pak program is a small portion of what we do. We highlight it because it is our flagship program that we’ve seen work very well in building relationships with the poor so that deeper needs can be uncovered and responded to.” I learned from Fred they also provide beds in eastern Europe and medicines in Asia, which are not identified on their website or their annual report to donors (only the totals of aid given by country or region). By reviewing their financials (IRS form 990), one sees of the extent of their non-food work: 85 percent of their donations are, in fact, medical supplies and medicines; they also collect and distribute toys, bicycles, beds and millions of dollars of clothing (a form of aid that NGO critics like Good Intentions are Not Enough is critical of).
I believe in helping people with supplies that make a difference, so, why do I sound like a Grinch? Because I believe in honesty in conveying what a charity really does. This ad seems to take us back to the simplistic and wildly inaccurate Sally Struthers “save a child” world, long since discredited. Can we please hang onto progress in aid transparency when we make some?
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I still can’t believe that this video is posted by a genuine charity and not an ‘Onion’ spoof…
Good post, although as teekay says, I can’t believe this is real…it looks suspiciously like a spoof. Also, apart from all the obvious points in the post – how, exactly, does someone skipping a meal (presumably when they are hungry) possibly help matters? Surely the point is for everyone to be fed and not for hunger to be passed around or traded (yes I know the people represented in the Ad – e.g. people in the west – can easily ’skip a meal’ – if not a few! – and also that the idea of ’skipping a meal’ is to illustrate the idea of hunger, rather than actually skipping a meal – but the point remains that it doesn’t work well).
No, Bill you are not a Grinch for complaining about misleading, simplistic, and I might add stereotypical, advertising to fundraise for charities. You might even be too idealistic. Whether it is the RED campaign, Save the Children or the Children’s Hunger Fund (or even Kiva), the argument will always be the same– “well if it takes some oversimplication and distortion of the truth, isn’t that a small cost compared to the benefit of raising new money for a worthy cause?”
I agree. Sort of. I only have one thing to add:
Economically speaking, let’s say the fancy meal costs 100$ (I’m terrible at math so just go with this nice round figure) – and let’s say a nutritionally satisfactory meal for both of these children costs 2$ (again a simple number for the purpose of the example) – wouldn’t the ad be sort of correct considering all the lost administration/distribution costs? That 98% of the “skipped meal” wouldn’t go to the children but still result in a decent meal? I.e. one skipped “fancy meal” does result economically in a decent (albeit not as fancy) meal for the “hungry children”.
It’s a stupid ad… But maybe not as off the mark economically as it could be. I might be missing something here.
The fact that most of the money doesn’t “feed the children” is another matter altogether so I won’t go into that here.
Ah well, I’m done thinking for now.
This ad is misleading and quite upset about it. The organization’s vision might be a good one but they have no idea how this ad will tarnish their reputation in the long run.
I can understand the readers who think that this is a hoax. If I were commissioning a spoof of the most simplistic extreme naivete that aid money flows automatically from donor to worthy recipient, I couldn’t think of a better one than this one. Unfortunately, it appears to be real.
The worst part was the self satisfied look on the waitress’ face as she delivers the ludicrous meals. It’s wrong and deceitful on so many levels. No wonder there is so much cynicism about foreign aid. For shame.
Yes, these ads are misleading. But it is the degree of oversimplification that counts, no? To some extent, the concept of food security and assistance to the malnourished is way too complex to distill into 20-30 seconds. Yet, showing a simple “meal skipped = child saved” formula is simply not true. The trick is how one comes to a reasonable balance. I agree the add goes way too much in the latter direction.
From a purely utilitarian NGO’s perspective, I also think they become victims of their own ads when they are restricted to these artificial spending targets: “90% of our your funds go DIRECTLY to the beneficiaries.” This is no way to run a competent organization. You need administrative, HR, financial, technical backstopping, and mgmt systems to make sure your aid actually works (including evaluating results). The ones who spend 50% on non-direct expenses might actually have more impact than those that stick to these artificially high numbers (which are also calculated in a very strange manner, by the way).
But this is just the nature of life – things are simplified to the point of destruction. And in a sense, maybe that doesn’t matter AS LONG AS people have the appropriate skills to unpack the message and look behind the oversimplification. The problem is when so few have time to do that and the oversimplification becomes accepted truth.
Oh yeah, and then there is THIS aspect to CHF’s work, the Compassion Institute.
The Compassion Institute “exists to equip recipient organizations with biblical and ministry formation…CHF views the local church as it’s primary training recipient. CHF has the expertise and experience to equip the local church with resources to operate an effective compassion ministry focused on reaching low-income and poverty stricken children and families with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Sooo, in other words, all that money you give to Skip1.org instead of buying a new TV goes to proselytization in impoverished communities. Well, THAT sure doesn’t come across in the Skip1.org’s advocacy video.
http://www.chfus.org/en/relate/compassion-institute.html
Just think, Bill Easterly — in addition to Food Paks, your donation to Skip1.org will help buy bibles and “Pastor Paks”! Maybe that’s what Mr. Martin meant by the “deeper needs” of the poor.
http://www.chfus.org/catalog/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=2
Maybe that’s also why their charitable items weren’t itemized…
Hmm, CHF conducts work in “in the refugee villages in Northern Uganda.” I wonder what their stance is on the anti-gay legislation making its way through the Ugandan parliament.
http://www.youtube.com/skip1dotorg#p/u/1/FuSFai45AxQ
You should probably be careful using the acronym CHF to describe the Children’s Hunger Fund. While that organization uses the acronym on its own website, you’re much more likely to confuse the casual reader, who might think you’re referring to CHF International, a completely different organization. From my experience, when people say “CHF,” they’re only referring to the latter organization.
http://www.chfinternational.org/
@ Jeff & IdealistNYC
Thanks for the compliment, but my perspectives are only similar to Bill’s. (Among other things, he’s less of a Grinch.)
Would the Children’s Hunger Fund raise half the money they do if they produced ads that illustrated an accurate image of the foreign aid process. I think people would change the channel. I think most people don’t want to see the world as it truly exists, it would crush their comfortable reality. If they did want to truly understand, most people would get their nightly news from the PBS newshour, not FOX and CNN. So, if tasked with bringing in the money for an organization, telling people exactly how it is on the ground would be a good way to fail at accomplishing your task.
I know this probably seems more pessimistic than the original post, but I don’t think we can assume that people interested in giving to a good cause want to be enlightened. Trying to undertake the task of changing the US’s cultural contentment with ignorance would be a much larger feat than the development department of an Aid org should be tasked with.
In the interest of accountability to skip1.orgs facebook fans, I decided to post a link to aidwatchers.com on the skip1.org facebook page………….will the good people of CHF be open enough to critism to leave it there I wonder?
This one of the big problems with markers of “concern”. If you start worrying about accuracy, truth, effectiveness, etc you are against “concern”. Hence the “being a Grinch” feel to it all.
Hrm…is this supposed to be some twisted allegory for “Give a man a fish, and he eats for one day…Show a man how to fish, and he can feed himself?
They don’t mention their purpose statement in that video…
Purpose Statement
“Children’s Hunger Fund seeks to alleviate the suffering of children by equipping God’s Church to communicate the Gospel through effective compassion ministry.”
SERIOUSLY???
On one level I think the concept of this advertising campaign is good. It encourages people to give money by showing them a realistic way of doing so. Lots of people don’t give to charity. This advert at least shows people how to go about doing it practically – giving up a few things that they enjoy in order to be able to contribute to charity.
I agree that the advert doesn’t accurately describe the mechanisms for how that money will be used, but I think the message of giving things up is not a bad one.
Yeah, tell those marketers to focus on Aidwatch readers as the target audience. Let’s see the program diagram and logframe, and some impact stats.
That’ll really get the money flowing.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by tmsruge: Aid Watch Grinch Edition: Are We Mean to Ask that NGO Ads not be Simplistic and Wrong? http://bit.ly/89tMaF...