Is the major role of charities to provide kingdoms for princelings to rule?

I think like many people, I felt something was rotten in the state of NGOLand when (i) I noticed that at TED in 2009 there were NFP/NGO startups popping up in all sorts of areas usually left for businesses and (ii) it later became clear that Haiti was devolving into a "more charitable than thou" situation as literally many thousands ( 3,000 - 20,000 depending on who you read) of NGOs set up shop* - and immediately started squabbling with each other - and a year later we have the unedifying lesson of NGO's declaring heroic victory whereas on the ground things are actually much worse:

In the run-up to the anniversary, some governments and many aid groups are raining a barrage of largely self-congratulatory details about their work in Haiti since the quake. Representatives reel off lists of projects approved and funded, supplies delivered, staff in-country and future plans. This jars with the view, expressed by many ordinary Haitians and a few aid groups, that a year into one of the world's biggest humanitarian and reconstruction operations, there is little to show for so many promises.

Little to show, plus the small matter of a cholera epidemic. Anyway, I started to do a bit of digging using good old Google, and it seems that that firstly huge amounts of money have gone in, but much appears goes to "go elsewhere". - Le Monde:

Following the old colonists, American and European NGO officials are in just about all the camps. With their luxury vehicles and expensive equipment contributing to the traffic snarl-up, they offer “work for wages” to more than 100,000 people employed in the clean-up. The wage, 200 gourdes (under $7 a day), is a small fortune, which in 2009 President Préval found too costly for the Haitian economy; he would not pay it despite a long struggle with the workforce. But in today’s Haiti, NGOs have more financial muscle than the state.

We calculate about 30% of the c £3.3bn of donations to Haiti has been spent, and we hope (and pray....) that the rest is due to be spent there soon - on the poor people, not the 4x4s that is - as it's clear Haiti needs a lot of help still, what with the cholera and all. In fact, the cholera was a bonus opportunity for most NGO's to re-fiill their boots again - Guardian:

It is against this [Cholera Epidemic] backdrop that many non-governmental agencies have launched fundraising appeals, even while their post-earthquake coffers remain filled. The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has repeatedly claimed that underfunding of its $174m cholera appeal, launched primarily to benefit private groups, is hampering the response – despite the fact that Haiti is the top-funded UN appeal for 2010. As nearly a million Haitians remain homeless in the face of a full-blown public health emergency, arguments that existing funds are tied up in longer-term programmes ring hollow.

Be good if they were effective, but as The Independent notes that most of the medical care was by (un-NGO-funded) Cubans, for example:

A medical brigade of 1,200 Cubans is operating all over earthquake-torn and cholera-infected Haiti, as part of Fidel Castro's international medical mission which has won the socialist state many friends, but little international recognition.

Observers of the Haiti earthquake could be forgiven for thinking international aid agencies were alone in tackling the devastation that killed 250,000 people and left nearly 1.5 million homeless. In fact, Cuban healthcare workers have been in Haiti since 1998, so when the earthquake struck the 350-strong team jumped into action. And amid the fanfare and publicity surrounding the arrival of help from the US and the UK, hundreds more Cuban doctors, nurses and therapists arrived with barely a mention. Most countries were gone within two months, again leaving the Cubans and Médecins Sans Frontières as the principal healthcare providers for the impoverished Caribbean island.

I haven't even mentioned the whole raft of literature on how NGOs are actually just politics of imperialism or missionary societies by another name, how NGO workers drive the re-establishment of the vices (gals, gambling and golf) as much as anything else, and how Haiti is the testbed for how to reduce the global population to the New Feudalism - but I kept my linkages and writings to the reputable mainstream media articles.

So, the cost of the not-for-profit bizness may be a price not worth paying.....but I am still left with the question of why are there so many of them - after all, in every other ecosphere the eventual tendency ii consolidation and collaboration for efficiency savings (unless, of course, efficiency is not the primary driver, of course....)

In searching for a reason why this profusion of inefficient organisations all doing well out of doing good may have occurred in the first place, I came across this rather interesting paper from the Journal of Clionomics, essentially arguing that NGOs have expanded in numbers from c 800 in 1950 to c 28,000 in 2000 (an increase of 3500%, or 350-fold) whereas the number of disasters, significant issues, etc etc have stayed pretty constant, in the several tens a year (see graph above). Yet NGO expansion has been amazing, espacially in the go-go 1990's

For example, the category “women” by 2009 became the most popular issue in ECOSOC (present in 256 INGO titles). The issue was introduced in the 1940s, while 84% of INGOs addressing it were registered after 1995. Development” (mentioned 179 times) was introduced during the 1970s, but 83% of INGOs addressing this issue registered after 1995.

The conclusions:

.....the rise of enabling technology, the absence of major war and the expansion of the capitalist system – actually tell too little of the story of the great surge witnessed over the last half century to be satisfactory. We have observed that demand side factors, such as issue genesis, while they may explain organizational ‘genres’ (i.e. environment, human rights, poverty), do not explain INGO numbers or their distribution across time, genre, or in geopolitical space. The alternative explanation for the upward trend observes that cyclical demographic-structural processes have increased intra-elite competition over the last half-century. This is supported by evidence of rising credentialism, strong direct correlations with diagnostic cohorts, and indirect support of rising leadership age within IGOs.

Translated this means that the number of new countries, major global issues, disasters, wars, technology changes etc do not even begin to explain the 350-fold increase in the number of NGOs across time, type or geography. The alternative explanation is the "demographic-structural hypothesis" ( that an over-supply of elites and elite aspirants might lead to the creation of auxiliary vehicles for maintaining wealth and status – such as the INGOs). This is suported by evidence of rising credentialism (no haz MBA? - no can run NGO, sorry), direct correlations with what all the other Elites/MBAs et al are doing, and rising age of NGO leaders (a sign of oversupply and competition).

In other words, lots of little princes want little kingdoms to run, and even a 3500% increase isn't enough........ so the chances of this all getting better are pretty slim until donors start to look a bit more closely at how and where their money goes!

Update - I read that Google is finding it hard to reboot it's Philanthropy operation, if you've read the above then there will be no surprises....

* The term NGO and Charity are extremely loose in Haiti - businesses, scamsters, churches, child traffickers, nutters - you name it...