Private filantroper dominerer nu pengestrøm til NGOers nødhjælp

Among the favourable factors in private funding are independence from the political motivations of donors, being able to react fast, and the opportunity to focus on forgotten crises.

But the lack of tracking (kunne spore, hvor NGOernes penge kommer fra og anvendes til) creates an information black hole in coordinating aid and evaluating it, says aid funding watchdog “Development Initiatives” in a new report.

Trusts, founda-tions, businesses and individuals are the main sources of private funding, which as a share of the total humanitarian response grew from 17 per cent in 2006 to 32 per cent in 2010.

While NGOs depend on these sources for 57 percent of their financial support, the UN agencies studied depend on it for only 8 percent.

They are the World Food Programme (WFP), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

There are wide variations in the statistics:

* Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF = Læger uden Grænser)) gets roughly 90 percent of its funding from private sources
* whereas the Norwegian Refugee Council receives only 2 percent;
* UNICEF raises 20 percent of its funding privately, and
* WFP also gets just 2 percent.

Many of the agencies studied are courting private donors for reasons of practicality or principle, and usually both.

Flexibility allows choices