Many organisations view marketing as the fine art of separating the punter from his cash. In the case of foreign aid organisations, marketing can be a tricky task. People will give in response to a high-profile tragedy that they can relate to, such as a bushfire or a tsunami, particularly if it occurs in a location that they have visited. But people are less likely to want to give where the object of their giving seems intangible or they cannot perceive any actual difference being made by their donation.
An aid organisation can separate more money from more punters if it can find a way of making the objects of giving more tangible. Hence the child sponsorship form of giving has become popular. Donors are no longer giving to combat “world hunger”. They are giving to combat hunger for one specific little girl or boy. More recently, the “donate a goat for Christmas” kind of giving has become popular.
In a recent article in The Age, Daniel Flitton complained that not all of the money given goes to buy a goat, and the gift cards encourage a simplistic style of thinking. He then goes on to say that governments should be doing the work. In my view his proposed cure is mistaken. Governmental foreign aid already vastly dwarfs charity aid, and the majority of funding for NGOs already comes from government sources. The problem is that governmental aid is normally spent counterproductively, tending to entrench poverty rather than solve it.