A merging question…

“…the process could evaporate off their technical staff…”

Is it healthy for us to absorb one of our collaborators/competitors as a simple donor to our projects/partners?

On the one hand:

· it could reduce our cumulative bureaucratic load,

· it is a positive sign in an all-too-often cynical and fragmentary world,

· it could allow them to focus on core skills of fund-raising and us on programme delivery.

On the other hand:

· we have lower field supervision expectations than they presently do; can they accept this as ‘progress’ or will they want us to increase our supervisory intensity?

· will they maintain their technical inputs to projects they support as supernumerary to our overheads, or will they attempt to subtract them from our overheads – in effect removing our leeway to manage as we see fit; who will end up controlling whom?

· the process could evaporate off their technical staff; and if this happens, will we have won or lost?

· will the process also drive away their own current partners, unwilling to partner us now, or unhappy at not having been consulted?

Gender Debate

"I also believe in workshops."

THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT GENDER ISSUES CAN NOT CURRENTLY BE PRIORITISED IN OUR ORGANISATION'S FIELD WORK.

We have competing major priorities: we are trying to reach a critical mass awareness of the value of 'rights' and 'participation' per se amongst our staff and field partners; later we can break it down to specifics like gender.

You are quite simply a misogynist; you hate women.

Donor partners feel obliged to move themselves (and their partners by default, i.e. us) fast down this track to maintain credibility in their own fund-raising environment, but the pace is too fast for our operating context and is damaging our programme cohesion as diverse elements (not merely gender) are expected to be fast-tracked.

You are a closet saboteur of gender-related rights; you have some hidden vested interests in trying to muddy clear waters with your stirring, detours and questions.

Our staff and field partner cohorts contain significant and not easily remediable reactionary elements; we are not prepared to stop or slow our programmes in order to root them out rapidly since beneficiaries will be hurt and structures (even assets) damaged.

I am amazed that you were appointed to your job or allowed through your probation period; you are just a sign of your organisation's structurally entrenched biases. Just look at the gender composition of your organisation's senior management team for evidence: prejudice there is inevitable. I suspect your organisation has a hidden agenda; you are just their front.

Projects aided by donors with a more advanced emphasis are welcome to channel the requisite additional resources required to get 'their' projects over the gender hump, but these will be 'ring-fenced' special cases and subject to agreement by implementing teams without management coercion.

You are making excuses for your own poor management; your organisation could easily enough progress as quickly as gender-related rights (i.e. we) demand.

Our strategy will eventually get us to gender, so relax; there is much more distance to catch up than you assumed.

You are not taking this seriously; this is not a theoretical debate; you should be acting, not talking.

We are entitled to determine our own rate of progress, since we are the ones making the sacrifices needed to do the implementation in the first place; if you don't like it then leave your comfort zone and work out there yourself.

Your assessments about your context are mistaken; in fact staff and partners in your field areas could easily and readily absorb gender-related analyses without any disruption.

It looks to me like you might have been co-opted by your own government's political agenda since they are your most significant source of funds: they insist on gender as a priority; you say gender prioritisation is your own idea, but I think you are in denial, or maybe your politics are reflected by your government, in which case stop blaming them for so much else.

You have framed this all wrong: it's not about the dichotomy you appear to describe; it's not either/or but both; you're in a process, a journey; you have the capacity to weave it all together.

You are devaluing my genuinely held beliefs; I am not a worse 'person' than you; you are a hypocrite regarding human rights if you disallow my world view.

You only have the impression of external pressure but in fact we recognise your desire to progress and accept it; we are just contributing clarity to your strivings; you are slightly paranoid; we welcome your partnership and celebrate your commitment, and we stand alongside in solidarity ready to offer the capacity building inputs you need.

Stuff you, I'm resigning; I don't need this harassment.

It's so hard recruiting committed people for secondment to work in difficult places, or to find local partners who have overcome the shallowness of their own cultures and risen above the vagaries of their own environments. Let's increase our money supply by dependancy on a single donor source.

Hi, I used to work for a reactionary organisation but I resigned and was jobless so I got myself reconstructed; I also believe in workshops. And no – the ‘international development industry’ is just an illusion.

Dalliance with Divorce

"To divorce them seems tempting but isn't it better to work at resolving
things?"

I'm nervous. It should be nurturing; meeting one of the donor partner agencies in our global network. But in reality, both parties seem extremely wary of each other now: I know I am and one of their staff recently wrote of his fear that every time he met my staff he was, "walking on egg shells."

The two of us have a strange working relationship: he is notionally seconded to me one day a week to supervise one of my project managers - a project his organisation seized control of last year in a temporary 'coup' because our management was not meeting their expectations. The solution: the project now bypasses our country management structure who's leader, having been slighted, doesn't buy my statement that our newly seconded staff can be easily treated as part of the team. (I'm trying to do so myself as hard as I can but hey - I don't live anywhere near there so it's hard to disagree that I'm just blowing hot air...)

Bizarre? I'm trying to address it positively. But it isn't half confusing and won't solve the sense amongst some staff that the donor is interfering rather than 'adding value'; in some lights it can also look like I've been disloyal to my own staff - betrayed them even. But what else can I do? Standing in the donor's shoes, I too might have been tempted to do what they did: they thought the project was going down the toilet and didn't want the fallout to damage them.

We don't want to break relations with them; we helped set them up and we're part of each other. To divorce them seems tempting but isn't it better to work at resolving things? My leadership thinks so, but I'm still nervous.