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Nonprofit Digest Vol. 2 No. 3 Fall 2012
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Copyright © 2012 by Nonprofit Digest, a publication of The Global Institute for
Nonprofit Leadership
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ISBN: 978-0615727509
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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
Nonprofit Digest Vol. 2 No. 3 Fall 2012
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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.