What is "Significant Change"? (and are we ready for it?)

[J.]

The other day Bonnie Koenig posted this over on her site, Going International:

Are We Readying Ourselves for Significant Change?

She outlines five emerging trends in the aid and development world. They are:

• New international configurations and players (BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India, China) and beyond – Indonesia, South Africa, Vietnam, Mexico, Turkey and Argentina).
• Increased focus on accountability and outcomes
• Virtual connectedness
• Changing demographics – the baby boomers who took NGOs and their support organizations to a new level are now feeling the influence of a younger generation less focused on labels and structure.
• The social entrepreneur movement is now over 3 decades old and is influencing discussions about structure and outcomes.

I'd see the first and the last (international configurations like BRIC - or is it BRAC?, and the whole #socent ball of wax) as the most significant.

Why?

Because those are the two which have the greatest potential to significantly challenge and modify the current menage-a-trois status quo.

BRIC, BRAC, and all of the other more up-to-date acronyms that basically describe countries that used to be "developing" but now are "donor" countries challenge our assumptions and expectations around "beneficiaries." For the first time since the aid industry came into existence we have people who once were beneficiaries, now implementing aid programs. We're challenged both practically as well as paradigmatically by this emergent reality.

Social entrepreneurship and the so-called "movement" around it have the greatest potential to challenge and change realities around the relationship between aid providers and aid donors. Simple as that.

Whether on their own, or taken together, I'd see these two out of Bonnie's original list, once again, as being the most important if one is to think about those emerging trends with the greatest potential to significantly change the aid industry. They strike at the core, fundamental relationships which make the aid industry what it is.

Why not the other three? Briefly:

"Increased focus on accountability and outcomes" is needed. It is good. It makes aid better. It's sort of new. But it won't substantively change the nature of what aid is, in my view.

"Virtual connectedness" can change the "how" of aid/development in many ways. It can make some things more efficient. It can grant access to conversations that might otherwise be out of reach to some. As such, I'd see this one as having great potential to contribute to accountability, transparency and even some aspects of #socent. But I wouldn't see it driving fundamental structural changes or, again, by itself challenging the menage-a-trois.

"Changing demographics." Again, perhaps an enabler for some aspects of larger change. But not by itself a driver.

[Tom Murphy]

I have to disagree with the potential for increased accountability. A lot of what it can do depends on how it is employed by aid actors. Social Ent and the BRICS are external changes that will force alternative deliveries, while accountability requires internal change. In theory, greater transparency and accountability will mean looking into what programs are accomplishing  Doing so, may provide the necessary evidence and pressure to abandon poor aid practices. It also complicates your menage-a-trois as it puts pressure on each of the three and hopefully calls into question standard aid practices.

That is rather aspirational, but there is the potential for accountability to chip away internally. With more robust accountability the comparisons to alternative strategies employed by Soc Ent and the BRICS can stand out clearly. By itself it is not as powerful as the two external forces identified, but accountability can play an important role.

The challenge, which I imagine may be what causes your reservations, is if true accountability and transparency are embraced by organizations as a form of change rather than as a tool to dig the aid trenches a bit deeper.

[Bonnie Koenig]

Thanks, J. for putting up this post to continue the discussion.  I cited these 5 trends as some of those I have observed that are putting pressure on the current structure(s) whether that be the ‘menage a trois’ (donors, aid providers and receivers) or specific structures within any of those groups (i.e. NGOs).  I did not necessarily rank which will put more or less pressure on the status quo, although actually I suspect it will be a combination of different trends and how they interact (similar to the way Hurricane Sandy may combine with the jet stream and full moon to become a more ‘megastorm’!)  My purpose in listing some of these trends is to call attention to the fact that there are quite a number of jolts to the system happening in different ways that we can either wait to react to when we have no choice, or be more proactive about guiding.  I’d also be interested in hearing what trends others may be seeing, and yes, how they might weight them.