Sometimes a smart decision in your eyes, is a total failure in another's. It's a matter of perspective. And putting first things first.
One of my colleagues in an International NGO told me a story about his first public board meeting. Many life-time donors had been invited and were sitting in the front row. He was the new CIO and was giving a presentation to the board on a smart decision he made to cancel a large IT project that had gotten out of control before he arrived. An 80-year donor raised her hand and asked how much had been spent on this project to-date. 1.4 million pounds, he answered, and turned to the slide deck to continue, only to be interrupted by a shriek and wail from this octogenarian. "You've just spent my entire lifetime of donations on a mistake!"
He was stunned, and the audience fell silent as the distraught donor was escorted from the room.
He never forgot this and made his resolve to always think about projects in terms of donor-years and donor-lifetimes. Here is the math: An average individual donor to his organization gave 110 pounds per year; an average donor-lifetime was 20 years, or 2,200 pounds (see the cost details, below). These became his key metrics. So a 1.4 million project takes 636 donor-lifetimes. A 6 month project with 4 consultants equals 106 donor-lifetimes. Now when he asks whether the organization is getting good value for money out of a project, he has a whole new perspective.
This came up again when a journalist reported that another international organization was sending 30 people to a climate change conference in a nearby country. A reasonable view was that this was indication of a strong commitment to this issue, especially for a global organization with hundreds of thousands of employees. But let's do the math (again, see the details, below). A three-day conference for 30 people is $83,769 for the time alone. Add to that the travel costs and the expenses side of another $31,920. The grand total? $115,689. How many donor-lifetimes is that? About 32 donors assuming US dollars. Is that worth a 3-day conference for 30 people?
This is not a comfortable or popular question to ask. After all, people in International organizations work very hard and are passionate about doing whatever it takes to achieve their organization's mission. But sometimes it's good to look at a project or an event through a different lens and ask if it's still valuable in terms of things as basic as the cost in donors it takes to accomplish. |