全球视野 | 睁大眼睛!慈善机构可能会用听起来令人印象深刻的数据来误导,捐赠人必须要学会看穿表面

 
 
 
 

 

 

慈善机构经常用听起来令人印象深刻的数据来误导。捐赠人必须学会看穿表面。

Charities Too Often Mislead With Impressive-Sounding Data. Donors Must Learn to See Past the Facade.

 

作者:

Robin Pierro

来源:

The Chronicle of Philanthropy

 

 
 
 

文章《Charities Too Often Mislead With Impressive-Sounding Data. Donors Must Learn to See Past the Facade./慈善机构经常用听起来令人印象深刻的数据来误导。捐赠人必须学会看穿表面。》发布在慈善纪事报上,作者Robin Pierro是全球人权基金/Fund for Global Human Rights的传播和营销总监。作者认为在激烈的资金竞争中,非营利组织通常依靠虚荣指标来推销其有效性,这些数字听起来令人印象深刻并说服捐赠人捐款,但事实上并不总是能反映慈善机构的工作的真正价值。

 
 

 

 

The annual December scramble for donor dollars is now behind us. And as the New Year gets underway, many of us in the nonprofit field are taking time to reflect on our accomplishments and missteps. How did year-end campaigns perform? What lessons were learned? What needs improving? 

 

一年一度的争夺捐赠人资金的活动,已经在去年12月结束。随着新年的到来,我们许多非营利组织都在花时间反思我们的成就和失误。年终活动的表现如何?吸取了哪些经验教训?哪些方面需要改进? 

 

Importantly, this analysis should include an honest examination of the messages nonprofits market to the public and how those messages affect the way donors measure an organization’s success. 

 

重要的是,这种分析应该包括诚实地检查非营利组织向公众营销的信息,以及这些信息如何影响捐赠人衡量组织成功的方式。 

 

In the fierce competition for funding, nonprofits often rely on vanity metrics to sell their effectiveness — numbers that sound impressive and convince donors to give, but don’t always reflect the real value of a charity’s work. 

 

在激烈的资金竞争中,非营利组织经常依靠虚荣的指标来推销他们的有效性。这些数字听起来令人印象深刻,并能说服捐赠人进行捐赠。但这些数字并不总是可以反映一个慈善机构工作的真正价值。 

 

As more organizations join the vanity-metrics chorus, our collective voice is creating a misleading narrative about what sustainable social change looks like and how it is achieved. Take it from me — as a charity communications director, I’ve been part of the choir for more than a decade. 

 

随着越来越多的组织加入到虚荣指标的大合唱中,我们的集体声音正在创造一个关于可持续社会变革是什么样子以及如何实现误导性叙事。相信我,作为一个慈善机构的传播总监,我加入这个合唱已经超过十年了。 

 

Charity marketing teams, such as the one I lead at the Fund for Global Human Rights, now operate in a climate in which nonprofits peddling big numbers or seemingly cost-effective and quick outcomes have a monopoly on the donor market. This forces other organizations to compete on their terms by altering the way they talk about their work — and sometimes by altering the work itself — to meet well-intentioned but misinformed donor expectations. 

 

慈善营销团队(比如我在Fund for Global Human Rights/全球人权基金领导的团队)现在面临的运作环境是,那些宣扬庞大的数据或是看似具有成本效益和快速成果的非营利组织垄断了捐赠市场。这迫使其他组织按照这些组织的条件进行竞争,改变他们讲述自己工作的方式,有时还改变工作本身,以满足充满善意但被错误信息误导的捐赠人的期望。 

 

Many nonprofits — including the one I work for — tout how many people, partners, communities, and countries their programming reached during a certain period. Such data may show the breadth of an organization’s work, but conveys little about its efficacy. 

 

许多非营利组织(包括我工作的那家)吹嘘他们的项目在某一时期覆盖了多少人、合作伙伴、社区和国家。这些数据可能显示了一个组织工作的广度,但对功效的描述却很少。 

 

Beyond this, nonprofits feel compelled to highlight how little it will cost to achieve an immediate outcome — $5 to feed a child today, $50 to train a farmer, $200 to provide a family with water. All are noble causes, and such metrics provide donors a sense of what’s possible through their giving. But metrics like this also obscure the reality of what it takes to address the underlying causes of poverty and inequality, and perpetuate the belief that impact should be immediate. 

 

除此之外,非营利组织会感觉,有必要强调要取得立竿见影的效果,成本非常低:5美元就能喂饱一个孩子,50美元就能培训一个农民,200美元就能为一个家庭提供水。所有这些都是崇高的事业,这些指标让捐赠人感觉到他们的捐赠可以实现些什么。但是,这样的衡量标准也掩盖了解决贫困和不平等的根本原因所需要采取的措施的现实,并坚定了影响应该是立竿见影的信念。 

 

Addressing systemic issues and creating sustainable social change takes time. It requires long-term investment in groups tackling the laws, policies, and societal norms that enable and perpetuate problems such as poverty, inequality, corruption, and the climate crisis. At the Fund for Global Human Rights, this looks like supporting domestic workers in Mexico who have spent years fighting to secure minimum wage and social security to lift themselves out of poverty, or funding a collective of LGBTQ+ people working to overturn a colonial-era ban on same-sex relations in India and prevent legally reinforced mistreatment. 

 

解决系统性问题和创造可持续的社会变革需要时间它需要长期投资于应对法律、政策和社会规范的团体。这些法律、政策和社会规范导致了贫困、不平等、腐败和气候危机等问题,并使其延续。在Fund for Global Human Rights/全球人权基金,这看起来就像支持墨西哥的家政工,他们花了数年时间争取最低工资和社会保障,以使自己摆脱贫困;或者资助一个LGBTQ+集体,他们努力推翻殖民时代印度对同性关系的禁令,防止受到法律上的虐待。 

 

Work of this kind can’t always be measured with a simple metric. Producing concrete and quantifiable results may take years, even decades. But when those results do happen, their impact lasts for generations. 

 

这种工作并不总是可以用一个简单的指标来衡量。产生具体和可量化的成果可能需要几年,甚至几十年。但当这些成果真的发生时,其影响将会持续几代人。 

 

Donors hold the power to make or break these efforts with their support. That’s why the narrative nonprofits create about what makes for effective charity matters. Nonprofits must do more to communicate how sustainable change is achieved, and donors must look past metrics to find other ways to assess the effectiveness of an organization. 

 

捐赠人拥有权力,通过他们的支持可以使这些努力成功或失败。这就是为什么非营利组织创造的、关于什么是有效的慈善的叙事很重要。非营利组织必须做更多的工作,来沟通传达他们会如何实现可持续的变化。而捐赠人必须越过指标,找到其他方法来评估一个组织的有效性

 

捐赠人可以这么做

 

Show the Steps

 

They can start by seeking out nonprofits that provide regular updates about the incremental steps they are taking toward that larger, more transformative win — an indication that they have the resolve and know-how to continue the fight even if they aren’t seeing immediate results. 

 

捐赠人们可以从寻找这类组织开始,即那些定期提供最新信息,介绍他们为取得更大的、更具变革性的胜利所采取渐进步骤的非营利组织。因为这些信息表明了那些非营利组织有决心,并知道如何继续战斗,即使他们看不到立竿见影的效果。 

 

Donors should also look for organizations that are transparent not only about their finances but also about what they are learning. Most charity annual reports include multiple pages on the year’s achievements. But do they highlight what went wrong that year, what that means for the organization, and how they will adapt and improve? The ability to be honest about and learn from changing contexts and occasional mistakes is what makes for stronger organizations — and is a reality for any nonprofit pursuing long-term structural change. 

 

捐赠人还应该寻找那些不仅在财务上透明,而且在学习方面也透明的组织。大多数慈善机构的年度报告都有好几页介绍他们当年的成就。但是,他们是否强调他们当年出了什么问题?这对该组织意味着什么?以及他们将如何适应和改进?面对不断变化的环境和偶尔的错误,坦诚相待并从中学习的能力是使组织更加强大的原因,也是任何追求长期结构化改革的非营利组织的现实。 

 

Finally, grant makers and individual donors should ensure that the groups they support are led by, deeply rooted in, or have truly equitable relationships with the communities they serve. Gone are the days of charitable workers swooping in from Europe or North America to “fix things.” Many large international charities built on this colonial model have been forced to fundamentally rethink their approach. Some have made important commitments to change. Others may falsely claim to be shifting power to local communities but have changed very little about how their work is carried out. 

 

最后,资助者和个人捐赠人应确保他们支持的团体是由这些团体所服务的社区领导的,是深深扎根于社区的,或是与社区有真正公平的关系。慈善工作者从欧洲或北美蜂拥而至来“解决问题”的时代已经过去了。许多建立在这种殖民模式上的大型国际慈善机构,已经被迫从根本上重新思考他们的方法。有些已经做出了重要的改变承诺。另一些则谎称要将权力转移到当地社区,但对其工作的开展方式却没有进行什么改变。

 

避免‘无助的受害者’

 

Avoid ‘Helpless Victims’

 

Donors need to see past the façade. They need to look at who leads the organization and where their staff members come from. They should seek out charities that accurately attribute their strategies and wins to the local communities they serve or work closely with, instead of taking credit themselves. Likewise, the most effective nonprofits actively promote a range of diverse voices and showcase the power and ability of the communities they work with, rather than presenting them as helpless victims. 

 

捐赠人需要看穿表面。他们需要看一看是谁在领导这个组织,这个组织的工作人员来自哪里。捐赠人应该寻找的慈善机构,是那些准确地将机构战略和胜利归功于其服务或密切合作的当地社区的慈善机构,而不是把功劳归功于自己。同样,最有效的非营利组织会积极促进各种不同的声音,展示与他们合作的社区的力量和能力,而不是把他们描绘成无助的受害者。 

 

The unfortunate reality is that the nonprofit field is built on big ambitions to change the world, but there are too few resources to go around. My team has mere seconds to capture the attention of a scrolling prospective donor before we lose out on their support entirely. This encourages charities to show donors what we think they want and adds fuel to the false narrative about how sustainable change is achieved. 

 

不幸的现实是,非营利组织领域是建立在改变世界的巨大野心之上的,但可以利用的资源太少。在我们完全失去他们的支持之前,我的团队只有几秒钟的时间来吸引下划屏幕的潜在捐赠人的注意力。这鼓励了慈善机构向捐赠人展示我们认为他们想要的东西,并助长了关于如何实现可持续变化的虚假叙事。 

 

I’ve been guilty of playing along — both in my work and as a donor. I’ve scoured internal reports looking for stats to pad a public report. I’ve given to causes that sounded impressive on Instagram. But my experience in the nonprofit world has taught me that lasting social change doesn’t happen overnight. It requires long-term investments and constant learning. And to have any hope of lasting, it must be led by the communities affected by the work. 

 

无论是在我的工作中,还是作为捐赠人,我都对附和这种行为感到内疚。我曾翻阅内部报告,寻找统计数字来填充公开报告。我曾为那些在Instagram上听起来令人印象深刻的事业捐款。但我在非营利组织世界的经验告诉我,持久的社会变革不会在一夜之间发生。它需要长期投资和不断学习。要想有持久的希望,就必须由受这项工作影响的社区领导。 

 

As a communicator, I’m committed to doing more to change the narrative about what sustainable change really looks like and how it is achieved. I hope donors will hold me and every charity to those higher standards. 

 

作为一名传播者,我致力于做更多的工作,来改变关于可持续变化的真正面貌以及如何实现的叙事。我希望捐赠人能以这些更高的标准来要求我和每一个慈善机构。

 

关键句翻译

 

随着有效利他主义知名支持者山姆·班克曼·弗里德的被捕,以及他的公司FTX的崩溃,关于有效利他主义也引发了巨大的讨论。那么有效利他主义的英文是什么?

 

Effective Altruism

effective adj.有效的

altruism n.利他主义

翻译、撰稿:丁适于(杭州市基金会发展促进会)

 

 

 

 

杭基会是由杭州地区致力于推动基金会行业发展的社会组织、企事业单位等机构和个人自愿结成的联合型、枢纽型社会团体,是继深圳市基金会发展促进会后,国内第二个专门针对区域基金会行业的联合性组织。

 

杭基会由杭州市慈善总会、浙江省微笑明天慈善基金会、浙江都快传媒集团有限公司、浙江省残疾人福利基金会、浙江省妇女儿童基金会、阿里巴巴公益基金会、浙江正泰公益基金会、浙江海亮慈善基金会、杭州市西湖教育基金会、浙江锦江公益基金会、浙江传化慈善基金会、杭州青荷公益基金会、杭州市德信蓝助学基金会、杭州诸商慈善基金会等14家基金会和媒体共同发起。目前有会员71名,包含36家基金会、14家慈善会系统、以及媒体、学界、金融、法律、文艺、企业等领域代表。

 

杭基会的宗旨是遵守宪法、法律、法规和国家政策,践行社会主义核心价值观,遵守社会道德风尚,推动杭州市公益慈善事业持续、健康、快速发展。根据《中华人民共和国慈善法》的有关依法成立慈善行业组织的规定,促进基金会行业自律机制建设,健全基金会行业运作规范,加强对基金会行业的服务,提升基金会行业专业水平和社会公信力。

 

创建时间:2023-02-13