The other day, the algorithmic gods at Amazon correctly calculated that I wanted a book on globalizing non-profits. So they sent a recommendation for the bestselling “Going Global for the Greater Good” to my email account. All right, truth be told: probably only the author’s family and I have actually bought this thing. But it looked like something worthwhile, and it dealt with a topic that I’m working to convince my organization to think seriously about. We’re an international professional association that has made some great strides into the international sphere. But to keep up with competition and a changing environment, we need to make some strategic movements into key regions of the world. When I bought the book, I thought it would provide a well-researched argument for taking an association global and offer a solid way to analyze what countries of the world to target—possibly country assessment, political and economic risk analysis, etc. (I had hoped that there might be something on globalizing international non-governmental organizations too, since US government funding is decreasing and the Council on Foreign Relations is recommending refocusing government funding on domestic programs. Such a book was something my previous organization needed too. It would have helped us keep from shot-gunning our development.) What I got instead was 137 pages of drivel that could have been penned over a bottle of wine (or vodka if you are an INGO worker in the Former Soviet Union). It was as though the author had read one of those shallow business management books and decided that the NGO world needed the same thing. Let me tell you: after reading this book, I can honestly say we DON’T need the same thing. What we need is a thoughtful discussion of the changed situation for the international non-profit community in a post-American world, and how we can continue to have an effect. Not a show-and-tell book on “how I spent my summer supporting the underserved people of (name your developing country of choice), but rather one that pulls together all of the successes and failures of the “End of History” era development programs (and entrances of non-profit associations into the international sphere) and provides some suggestions for where we go from here. Is there anything out there like this right now? Do we even have a place where we can come together and discuss these types of things? A conference? A publication? A website?—And I don’t mean something like devnetjobs.org where we only go when the funding for our latest program has run out.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 02:19:14 +0000
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