WHY WHY WHY is there so much fund raising, but never much accounting

I have received this fund raising message today. Every well organized big NGO uses humanitarian crisis to do their fund raising.

But when you try to find out exactly what they did with the last lot of fund raising, there is near zero information available.

Part of this is incompetence. Part is systematic 'near fraud'.

But there are even bigger issees. The problem of famine in the Horn of Africa has been an issue for a very long time, and the ONE organization and Bono are very high profile in the humanitarian and development assistance arena ... so WHY WHY WHY is this famine happening. The issues being talked about by the high profile experts on development like Bono and a lot of academics are simplistic and essentially wrong.

The media does not help any. They have high profile reporters turn up when there is a disaster, but it is impossible to get their attention for the boring work of making sure that the socio-economic system works all the time, especially when it is not big news.

Accounting is a boring thing ... but accountants do accounting when there are good times and when there are bad times. Accounting is done all the time. But the international organizations and government officials don't want accounting and don't support accounting. In fact, it is worse. If you try to do good accounting you are likely to pay for it with your life.

If the money that has flowed from wealthy sources into humanitarian assistance and development had been accounted for properly ... and used properly, rather than being diverted in all sorts of personal self serving directions, things would be a whole lot better.

The following comes from ONE

Dear Peter,

Last night ONE co-founder Bono and Somali-born singer and poet K'naan talked to CNN's Anderson Cooper about the famine in the Horn of Africa — and what's being done about it. Click here to automatically sign ONE's petition calling on world leaders to end this crisis, and then check out the clip for yourself:

http://act.one.org/go/34?akid=2370.1143194.KnRtP8&t=3

If you've seen some of the footage from the region, you know what a devastating toll this famine is taking on millions of people, many of them children. But I'm also encouraged because the world is starting to respond. Just days ago, the United States pledged an additional $105 million in Somali aid funding, for a total of $565 million in aid funding for the region. That's something that should make us all very proud.

But there's still a lot of work to be done. While some countries are stepping up to the plate, others have done little or nothing to help stop the starvation. So we're asking leaders all over the world:

Please urgently provide the full funding that the UN has identified as necessary to help people in the Horn of Africa, and please keep your promises to deliver the long term solutions which could prevent crises like this from happening again.

There's still time to save millions of lives. I hope you'll join me by clicking here to automatically add your name to this important petition.

Sheila Nix
US Executive Director, ONE