nonprofit digest vol. 2 no. 3 fall 2012 - interaction fall...nonprofit digest vol. 2 no. 3 fall 2012...

Nonprofit Digest Vol. 2 No. 3 Fall 2012

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Volume 2 Number 3 Fall 2012


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Copyright © 2012 by Nonprofit Digest, a publication of The Global Institute for

Nonprofit Leadership

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any

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ISSN 2165-7602 (print)

ISSN 2165-7610 (online)

ISBN: 978-0615727509

Published by the Global Institute for Nonprofit Leadership

In cooperation with

Civicus

17612 Highway E

Richmond, MO 64085 USA

www.CivicusConsulting.com

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On the cover:

Children in Kenya receive a meal from Feed The Children in July 2012.


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Contents

From the Editor ......................................................................3

Commentary:

Pay It Forward:

Innovation to Build Sustainable Communities .........................5

Kevin L. Hagan, M.A.

President and CEO, Feed The Children

Lessons from the Sierra Leone Civil War:

Need- v. Rights-based Approaches to Development .............. 23

Aisha Khadar Desince

Nonprofit Human Services Revenue Performance

and CEO Pay, Part II.............................................................. 33

C.T. O’Donnell II, Ph.D.

CEO, O’Donnell’s Strategy and Results

Solyndra:

An Example of Governance Gone Rogue

Or is it Really Just Business as Usual? ................................... 95

Doug Hiatt, MBA


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From the Editor

From the Editor

Welcome to the Fall 2012 edition of

Nonprofit Digest: The Journal of

Innovation for Nonprofit Leaders and

Scholars.

In this issue, you will find an intriguing guest

commentary by Kevin L. Hagan, MA, President and CEO of

Feed The Children. Mr. Hagan shares with us the innovative

approaches the organization has embraced to help overcome

hunger throughout the world by approaching the problem

holistically as opposed to treating it as a unique and

disconnected need. Feed The Children’s success over the past

three decades can hardly be ignored, and the approaches

developed to help individuals and families can serve as

models of innovation for other organizations.

We also bring you a follow-up article of sorts by

activist Aisha Khadar Desince. In an article last year, Ms.

Desince outlined the steps being taken to bring hope to war-

weary villagers in Sierra Leone. In this piece, she presents a

rights-based approach to community development.

You will also find the second and concluding part of

Dr. C.T. O’Donnell II’s study on the relationship between CEO

pay and human service organization revenue performance.

The concluding article, by scholar Doug Hiatt, MBA, is a

review of ethical governance among NPO and public

administration leaders, using the Solyndra failure as a case

study.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

Michael D. Call, MSM, APR, CFRE

Editor


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Commentary:

PAY IT FORWARD: Innovation to Build

Sustainable Communities

Kevin L. Hagan, M.A.

President and CEO, Feed The Children

Introduction

For the past thirty-three years, Feed The Children has

witnessed the heartbreaking impact of childhood hunger across

Africa, Asia, Latin America, and here in the United States. It is

estimated that every five seconds, a child dies of hunger or a

hunger-related disease.1 Now more than ever, a sustained effort

on the part of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to

address and remedy the scourge of child hunger requires a

holistic approach, which combines basic efforts of simply

providing the bare necessities for survival with programs that

address deep systemic problems in these communities.

By developing and implementing a comprehensive and

integrated strategy, we will be able to impact lasting change for

the families and communities where the most vulnerable

people work and live.

1 The Millennium Development Goal Report, 2010.


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his role and a keen passion to help those in need of life’s

essentials around the world.

Prior to his arrival at Feed The Children, he served as

chief operating officer for Good360, an Alexandria, Virginia-

based nonprofit organization dedicated to fulfilling the needs of

nonprofits with corporate product donations. His

accomplishments there include the consolidation of the

charity’s warehousing network and the creation and

development of a customer-focused environment through the

implementation and support of a call center. In addition, he

oversaw the operational transformation from paper-based

processes to an innovative online delivery platform.

Before Good360, Kevin was at U.S. Foodservice, Inc.,

where he led training and cultural transformation initiatives as

well as corporate communications and branding.

Kevin has also worked at the U.S. Postal Service, where

he led several transformational initiatives and organizational

restructures to increase operational efficiencies.

Kevin received his bachelor’s degree in History, Political

Science, and German from Mercer University in Georgia. He

earned his master’s degree in International Affairs from The

American University in Washington, DC. He currently serves on

the board of directors for Academy of Hope, an adult education

nonprofit in Washington, DC.

About the Author

Kevin L. Hagan joined Feed

The Children as president and

CEO in June 2012. He brings

an impressive background in

food distribution and

operational management to


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Here at Feed The Children, we bring decades of

experience working in these disadvantaged communities to

bear upon the seemingly intractable problems of childhood

hunger, disease, and underdevelopment. The four interlocking

pillars that form our new comprehensive approach rest upon

the firm belief that we can effect positive change to help the

most vulnerable in our society. By providing a solid foundation

of life-sustaining food, we can begin the hard work of improving

water quality and access to sanitation, establishing the

groundwork for routine medical treatment and improving

access to educational opportunity, and finally, equipping entire

communities with the skills and knowledge to become

economically self-sufficient.

Overview

In 2011, Feed The Children delivered and provided over

104 million pounds of food and essentials to communities

around the world. Children receive the vast majority of our food

aid. The developing world remains the forefront of the epidemic

of childhood hunger, accounting for approximately 98 percent


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of the world’s undernourished.2 Feed The Children recognizes

that hunger, when left unchecked, inevitably stunts the

emotional and physical well-being of millions of children in the

developing world. By destroying the hope of a better future for

these struggling families, entire villages, towns, and regions

become trapped in a cycle of endemic poverty, characterized by

high infant and child mortality.

In order to address the multitude of problems created

by childhood hunger, Feed The Children has taken an active role

in providing hot, nutritious food to rural and underserved areas

in diverse regions around the world, ranging from The

Philippines, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador,

Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Malawi. Today, more than

350,000 children receive hot, nutrient-rich food daily in these

countries thanks to our efforts.

The struggles facing children who are malnourished and

undernourished do not end simply by providing a warm meal.

Long-term malnutrition and vitamin deficiency continue to

impact the health and well-being of children long after the

initial success of meeting their daily survival needs. In

developing a comprehensive approach to breaking the cycle of

poverty and childhood hunger, our new approach involves a six-

year, targeted program built on four pillars- 1) Food and

Nutrition; 2) Water and Sanitation; 3) Health and Education; and

2 www.fao.org/docrep/012/al390e/al390e00.pdf


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4) Livelihood Development. The interrelated elements of each

pillar serve to engage and empower the entire community in

becoming self-sufficient and ending the cycle of childhood

hunger.

Food & Nutrition

The foundation of our entire Community Development

Model is the first pillar- Food and Nutrition. First and foremost,

addressing child hunger by providing nourishing food directly to

children forges a strong path into a community. It has been

recognized that consistent access to nutritional food saves lives.

Without these feeding programs, children plagued by hunger

and insidious disease are left to scavenge through trash dumps

and wander the streets for food. Those images are seared in our

eyes and our hearts-no child deserves to suffer in such pain.

Our food and nutrition program establishes a

centralized location within a community, either a feeding center

or a school, to provide this life-sustaining food and vitamins.

Centralizing distribution enables Feed The Children and our

partners to ensure that nutritional education and hunger-

related diseases are identified and addressed in a

comprehensive fashion. Children who are facing hunger must

be examined to determine if they are infected with intestinal

parasites, which can rob a child of over half of the nutritional

intake they receive. Feed The Children is also keenly positioned

to distribute information regarding proper nutrition to mothers


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and children, thus enhancing the opportunity to safeguard

these precious gains.

Feed The Children purchases its foods through local

sources, making sure that the rice, beans, maize, and other

vegetables are appropriate to each culture and region in which

we operate. By a sustained effort of directly providing food to

these at-risk communities over the course of six years, Feed The

Children can provide a foundation to regularly monitor the

health of these children while helping develop the local market

conditions and infrastructure. Ultimately, our community

development model seeks to reduce the share of the total costs

we spend, as the community becomes empowered to grow or

purchase the food itself.

For example, in Malawi, Feed The Children has

committed to address child hunger and nutrition in the form of

826 Community Based Childcare Centers (CBCCs), providing

support for more than 73,000 of Malawi's most vulnerable

children. The Feed The Children Alliance presents a complete

approach to food security, nutritional education, income

generation, and water and sanitation improvement with

“Tiwalere,” a five-year, 20 million dollar project. In the language

of Chichewa, the word “Tiwalere” means “Let’s raise them up!”

In working with local community leaders where Feed the

Children serves, we have made “Tiwalere” a goal for our efforts

moving forward, focusing on child hunger and poverty as the


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gateway to creating a more holistic approach in carrying out our

four pillars and “raising up” the community. Immediate

assistance comes in the form of targeted supplemental

nutritional commodities and water purification packets, and

extends to sustainable methods and technical training in

agriculture, hygiene, and income-generating projects.

Ultimately, “Tiwalere” aims to address all aspects of the health

and welfare of young children under the age of five at the

individual, household, and community levels.

As a further example, in Kenya, Feed The Children

serves children in 167 schools each day, through a partnership

with the Nairobi City Education Office. We have ensured that all

food handlers are instructed in best practices for food hygiene,

storage, and preparation. Our focus and reach through food

and nutritional programs has opened the door for Feed The

Children to engage and work with community leaders to

address the economic development of these areas, forming the

foundation for the three other pillars.

Water & Sanitation

Feed The Children believes that everyone deserves

access to clean, safe water.

Presently, unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation are

a critical health problem across much of the developing world.


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The statistics are bleak - 1.1 billion people lack access to safe

drinking water, 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation, 1.8

million people die every year from diarrheal diseases, and 90

percent of children affected are under 5 years old.3 Hunger-

weakened children, whose immune systems are compromised

and suffering the ill effects of malnutrition, are especially

vulnerable to dysentery, diarrhea, and intestinal parasites.

Once we have established a firm relationship with

disadvantaged populations within the countries in which we

serve, we quickly bring in technical advisers who are trained in

the best practices of locating sources of clean water and

maintaining these sources. In every community we service,

there is a unique ecology and environment requiring adaptive

methodology. In Kenya, our technical advisers have focused on

teaching local personnel how to construct water pans and

rainfall harvesting systems, as the annual monsoons provide

abundant water for a brief time period. These systems are

designed to provide communities with water for up to six to

seven months after the rains dissipate. There are over 52,000

pupils in 64 different schools who benefit from water and

sanitation support through this particular intervention.

3

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/facts2004/en/index.html


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In comparison, many parts of the Philippines are

characterized by low-lying, swampy terrains that are particularly

vulnerable to flooding and water-borne diseases, such as

malaria. As of 2012, 58 out of 81 provinces in the country are

declared malaria endemic, with 14 million people at risk.4 To

address these problems, Feed The Children has augmented its

program of water catchment devices with an education

program regarding the Anopheles mosquito and its breeding

practices. The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program

and campaigns on proper waste disposal and composting have

assisted local communities in diminishing the spread of malaria

and deaths from diarrhea. These life-saving programs are

reaching over 4,000 children and over 1,600 families from the

Feed The Children headquarters in Cebu City, Central Visavas

region. Expansion of the municipal water system in several of

these localities increases access to clean water and invigorates

leaders in the local community to petition for greater

government engagement.

Finally, in Malawi, Feed The Children has had success

facilitating point-of-use purification of unclean water from the

source. Clean water practices are being promulgated through

the CBCCs, and technical expertise has been provided to

construct latrines and installation of community wells.

4 http://davaotoday.com/main/2012/07/30/nocot-notes-

dramatic-decrease-in-malaria-cases/


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Once water treatment programs and new wells have

been constructed, Feed The Children provides continual

education and monitoring to assist local communities in

maintaining these precious sources of water. Feed The Children

engages local labor to build and maintain the water system and

latrine construction in each country, creating employment

within the community and empowering community leaders to

take charge of their own health and welfare. Furthermore,

Feed The Children works with those same leaders and the

community to create a fee system for water usage so that the

funds generated by the community can be reinvested in the

future maintenance and upgrade of the water system. This

methodology creates a sense of community ownership and

becomes a sustainable enterprise.

Socially, these improvements in access to clean water

have permitted women, who are primarily responsible for

locating and retrieving water daily, to perform other activities,

including the operation of small businesses. In this sense, access

to clean water empowers women and families, significantly

boosting the local economy. All of these changes are breaking

the debilitating cycle of poverty in these areas, and it begins

with access to clean water and nourishing food.


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Health And Education

After ensuring that the basic fundamental needs of

sufficient nutritious food and clean water are made available,

Feed The Children focuses its efforts and initiatives in the local

schools. In order to emphasize the importance of education in

bringing about positive change in these communities suffering

from the ill effects of childhood hunger, much of the food

provided to children is given at the local schools. The local

school becomes a focal point to extend our reach and foster

collaboration and facilitate program delivery with our partners.

It is axiomatic that millions of children in the developing

world are ravaged by diseases that lead to premature deaths.

Many of these diseases could be prevented through basic

health care. For example, common intestinal worms steal much

of the nutrients provided to small children, often leading to

starvation and death.

In Haiti, Malawi, and Uganda among many of the other

nations in which we work, our de-worming brigade provide life-

saving treatments in the form of a single pill, administered twice

a year. Our efforts alone, address more than 10 percent of the

known parasitic epidemic. It is especially heartening to learn

that schools in some of these communities we service have

seen attendance increase by over sixty percent, and that many

girls are now coming to school, receiving life-sustaining food


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and medicine, critical to breaking the cycle of poverty and

hunger.

Similarly, many childhood disorders begin with a

vitamin deficiency. In the Philippines, our health and education

programs work hand-in-hand to promote healthy, active

children who can contribute to their communities. Feed The

Children has developed a partnership with the Korea Hope

Foundation to build a school in Pasil, Cebu City. This new

education center provides fifth and sixth graders with furnished

classrooms, access to technology, and their own rainwater tank

and rainwater catcher. Additionally, 2.3 million capsules of

Vitamin A are distributed to pre-school and school-aged

children.

Additionally, once we have successfully improved the

health of children in these communities, Feed The Children also

provides school supplies to all pre-school and elementary

children in four communities in Bahol and Zamboanga del

Norte. Across the Philippines, our efforts reach more than

200,000 children, assisting them with nutritional food, clean

water and access to education and health centers.

Similarly, the network of educational facilities,

orphanages, and health centers we have developed in Kenya

over the past 30 years provide an enormous amount of support

to local health care providers and educators. Feed The Children


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has integrated teacher subsidies, scholarships, school uniforms,

backpacks, books, and other items into its educational program.

In striving to help those among us whose suffering and

need is greatest, one need look no further than the Feed The

Children Dagoretti Children's Center in Nairobi, Kenya. Feed The

Children has remained at the forefront of providing care for

infants, abandoned children, and disabled children in

communities where no support exists.

By integrating these three pillars, we can enable these

communities to begin large scale changes in self-sufficiency. It is

here that paying it forward really takes place.

Community Livelihood Development

The three pillars described above provide immediate

solutions to the problems created by hunger, lack of clean

water, and lack of adequate health care. The ultimate benefit of

these pillars lies in their ability to enhance the social

infrastructure necessary for a community to manage its own

resources and work together for the benefit of all. The fourth

pillar of our Community Development Model is community

livelihood development, where the greatest long-term impact

begins.

While many non-governmental organizations have

recognized the importance of developing local economies, few


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have met with great success. Feed The Children is uniquely

placed to work with individuals within communities to provide

education on basic business practices and provide the bridges

and relationships to access markets for these goods and

services.

The Child-Focused Community Development Program is

aimed toward community reinvestment. Rather than focusing

on creating and sustaining individual family incomes, we require

these families to reinvest in their own futures, creating self-

sufficiency for the entire community.

Throughout Central America, after establishing a firm

base of continual food support, nutritional supplementation,

educational facilities, and clean water programs, Feed The

Children begins the process of supporting economic self-

sufficiency. In one of our small communities in Honduras, Feed

The Children provided 15 families with a community sewing

room, 15 families with a tortilla-making project, and 15 more

families were introduced to “the chicken scheme”.

Feed The Children begins by providing these

communities sewing machines and initial inventories of

materials, patterns, and supplies. Participating mothers and

even some fathers learn the basics of sewing from a pattern.

Then, they learn to sew the school uniforms for all the children

in the school. After a few short weeks, the community can

qualify to produce school uniforms for other schools throughout


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the country. In addition, crude cost accounting skills are

introduced to help the participants better understand pricing

and profitability.

Feed The Children's “chicken scheme” involves a

popular and innovative approach, providing chickens to a

handful of families, including numerous hens and a few

roosters. Eggs, an extremely valuable form of complete protein,

are prepared and fed to children in the schools, while a portion

of them are set aside for sale. Eggs are also donated back to the

feeding center established by our Food and Nutrition pillar.

However, that's not the end of the story. As the eggs are

hatched, the first 15 chickens to reach maturity are passed on

as a complete module to the next family and the pay-it-forward

cycle quickly multiplies the number of households producing

income from eggs and poultry.

These 45 families experienced an immediate increase of

over $60 a month in their annual income. In a country where

the average annual income is approximately $156 per month,

the economic impacts of these programs are extraordinary.

Instead of repaying a loan from a bank or microcredit institution

into a revolving fund, each family is required to reinvest up to

15 percent of their profits toward the foods purchased for the

community-feeding program. There are now 63 participating

families who are funding almost 60 percent of the cost of the

food and fuel required to feed over 280 children every single


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day. As the program continues to grow and succeed, community

reinvestment will eventually cover 100 percent of the feeding

program, maintenance and expansion of the water system,

school fees, teacher's salaries, and housing allowances—thus

becoming a truly self-sufficient community.

Depending on the unique culture and geography of the

region, Feed The Children has promoted a number of different

economic development programs, ranging from livestock, fish

farming, woodworking, artisan/craft production, seaweed

harvesting, and beekeeping to name a few. Each livelihood

development program is designed with significant community

stakeholder input which provides for overall community

engagement and long term sustainability for the program.

Paying It Forward—The Impacts

Feed The Children has embraced the four pillar approach

because we simply believe it works. We've seen children grow

up in our programs and go on to college and careers in service

professions— some even serving with us. We've seen mothers

embrace us in tears for how thankful they are for their child's

wellbeing. We've seen other NGOs come to us asking for our

help in achieving their similar goals in the countries where we

serve.


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And this is our greatest hope: once a community has

become truly self-sufficient, Feed The Children can move on to

the next community with these life-changing programs. We

have the distinct pleasure of watching young children, whose

lives were ravaged by hunger and weakened by disease, to grow

into confident men and women, eager and willing to create new

economic opportunities and enhance the livelihoods of their

families and communities. We teach that to whom much is

given, much is expected. We use the resources so generously

entrusted to us to empower individuals to do the same for

others.

We are deeply invested in this approach and encourage

other organizations to do the same. Above all, addressing the

holistic needs of individuals and the communities where they

live enables all of us to give more than handouts but truly "hand

ups" to those with great needs. Of course, we know that with

time, our approach will continue to evolve as the needs of our

world evolve, but we know that as we stay committed to

building strong communities, we will be successful. We

welcome the opportunity to engage with these communities

and our partners to save lives, build hope, and enhance

prosperity. For we know that we are only one organization in

this larger cause, and recognize that we cannot win the fight to

improve child well-being alone.

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