I was rewarded for my success at choosing the right parents....

Its been a long time since I have blogged. I'm working on blogging more regularly from now on. The reason for the blog today is that my parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary is on 10th March. We are sponsoring a small school in Ujungmakhon, Churachandpur District, Manipur for 3 years atleast.

What are my motivations to sponsoring a school? Coming from a middle class family, I feel education is of paramount importance in the world today. Even if I did not pay much attention in school does not mean, I did not get this point. Maybe in earlier times such as in the middle ages owning land was the what made one successful. Not that this doesn't make you successful now, they do but in this century it is education that will decide success. Good education in India is available to all, who can afford it. So the difference between you, me and a rickshaw puller or a janitor is not that we are geniuses (sorry to break the illusion). The biggest difference is that our parents could afford to keep us in school and away from working long enough. This ability to keep us in school makes a difference between 5th pass and a post graduation. This translates into difference in earning power a.k.a success. I hope the Ujungmakhon School provides others an education they deserve but can not afford.

Educated parents understand the importance of education, how going to school and college for 15 years and more translates into success. Therefore they work on educating their children even after school, reading to them etc. This creates a gap which will persist between those like us and those whose parents aren't educated. I don't know the answer to that but may be over 2 - 3 generations this gap can also be closed. And then the only difference between success will depend on ones own ability, hard work etc and not as Warren Buffet say's 'by winning the ovarian lottery'.

Why Manipur? I looked for a place with which I had some connection. My father was posted to Manipur and many North Eastern States and I have many fond memories of NE, my roommate in college is from there and had a lots of friends in school hostel who were from there. Also this is not mainstream India and would never be in the news. A place which not many would support. All this made me choose Manipur.

Please click on the link to Ujungmakhon School pictures of the school and the here is the link to SACSAS Academy which runs other schools in Manipur.

I hope and pray for the best for the children and the school, may it grow and prosper and educate many children.

Thoughts on Improving Basketball in India

Link to the PDF File on How to improve Basketball Standards in India

It is difficult to read the pictures below. So click on the link and read the pdf file.

India Motion - AfPak policy

Two articles on AfPak

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/04/indian_motion

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/World-rejects-Indias-Taliban-stand/articleshow/5511521.cms

Administrative Costs in Charities or NGO's

Good article on why administrative costs are not the only thing one should look at in a charity or a NGO.

Unless it's an extreme case, the percent an organization spends on administration is meaningless, and the focus placed on low administration costs can do more harm than good.

While it seems logical that the less a charity spends on administration the more of your donation reaches the people that need it the most, it's not as simple as that. In reality the amount that a charity spends on administration costs is a meaningless and potentially harmful indicator.

The amount spent on administration is no indication of the quality of work
The percent spent on administration is no indication of the quality of work done by the organization, whether projects were successful, or if they were even necessary. Cheap programs are not necessarily better programs and can often be just the opposite.

What is recorded as administration can be manipulated both at the field level and the accounting level
Field level - Organizations can alter how money is spent to make it appear to be a program cost instead of administration. In Thailand I oversaw four programs working across six provinces. In each province we wanted to put all the programs together in one office to increase collaboration and share resources. If we paid for the office ourselves it would be considered an administrative costs. If we gave each program money to rent their own office it would be more expensive but would be considered program costs.

Accounting level - Organizations can assign percentages of staff time to either programs or administration. A staff member could have 90% of their salary recorded as a program cost and 10% assigned to administration. Gifts-in-kind (donated goods or services) can be overvalued to make it appear that an organization is providing more in programs for the same administrative cost.

The pressure to keep administration costs low can impact the type and quality of programs
Organizations may under-staff or under-resource programs. A common problem after any relief operation is coordination. This is made even worse because most organizations do not hire people specifically to coordinate and share clear information with other agencies because they're trying to keep their administration costs low. Often this falls onto the shoulder of someone already over burdened with their main job. In Thailand I ran an organization that tracked all aid organization programs to increase coordination and decrease duplication and gaps in aid. It was common to have to wait at least a month for clear information from an organization. In one case an international organization made us wait four months. The result was wasted funds as some people received far too much aid while others received far too little. People commonly complained that some children received multiple sponsorships while others received nothing, others took advantage of the lack of coordination to get boats or houses from multiple organizations.

Another real problem caused by under-staffing is the organization not spending enough time with the aid recipients to learn their real needs and work with them in developing the recovery projects. This is all too common a problem, as documented by the Listening Project in their issue paper Presence "Why being here matters"

Organization may give priority to projects with inherently low administration costs. Some projects have inherently low administration costs such as construction projects - because of the high cost of building materials in relation to administration costs - and donated goods. This can lead to schools built or libraries stocked with books but both go unused because there is no money to hire teachers. In Thailand one organization tried to help the government hire more teachers, but they struggled to raise funds because teacher salaries were seen by donors as administration expenses.

Be wary of any program claiming extremely low administration costs
Administration is a necessary part of aid projects. Organizations claiming that all of your money will go directly to the aid recipients either have a secondary source of funding, are expecting volunteers to cover administration costs out of their own pocket, or are not being honest with donors. When I spoke with staff in my state's Consumer Protection Agency they said that one of the red flags that will trigger an investigation of a charitable organization is if it claims no fundraising expenses.

Meaningful financial indicators
Here are some things to look for instead of focusing on the percent spent on administration


Look for a detailed breakdown of their previous year's expenses. Do they provide information on how much money was spent in each location (town, province, or country - depending on the size of the organization), do they provide detailed information on how much was spent on each type of assistance (livelihoods, agriculture, food aid), and do they provide detailed information on how much was spent on expense types (staffing, salaries for top executives, rent, transportation, trainings).

Look for a copy of the previous year's financial audit/review. The rules governing whether or not a charity is required by law to have an independent financial audit varies by country. However, while they may not be required by law, it is good financial practice to have yearly external audits for large organizations and internal financial reviews for smaller organizations. Here's information on how to read a financial audit.

If an aid organization doesn't trust donors enough to share their financial information then why would donors trust the organization with their donation.

Unless it's an extreme case, the percent an organization spends on administration is meaningless, and the focus placed on low administration costs can do more harm than good.

Why did I start a blog?

The reason to start my own blog came from two sources besides, of course that people don't listen to my brilliant ideas :) I'm kidding.

a) I have got disillusioned with the media in India. Most journalists can be grouped into categories lazy or shit stirrers. First the Lazy Journalists are the ones who are fed information by PR agencies a.k.a Bollywood movies etc and they feed this to us. Adding insult to injury they say this is what Indians want. In a population of 1 billion plus and out of so many issues all Indians want to know is how a movie was made and who is in it. Really!!! And Shit Stirrer Journalists are those who believe everyone is out to insult India and this is a quick way of becoming famous and gaining readership/viewership. I don't plan on changing this and nor can I. But I can point it out and have fun.

b) I wanted to record my thoughts as things change around me.

This blog is going to be quite random and may include posting on varied things from current events, travel, adventure, sports, work and life in general.