It’s a well-established fact that most business startups fail, which is one reason venture capitalists make so many bets, hoping that one home run will justify many strikeouts.
According to Georgia Tech Professor Kirk Bowman, global philanthropy emanating from the U.S. often looks a bit too much like that, leaving the international landscape littered with failed development projects that disempower communities.
Financial and personal incentives align to drive well-intentioned Americans, especially idealistic college students, toward creating new initiatives that will pad their own egos, sometimes at the expense of locals already working to effect change in their own communities, Dr. Bowman said.
“It’s the tax system, it’s the way that we do travel, it’s family and church all of the different organizations that give you a little buzz of dopamine and make you feel good about yourself.”
“Voluntourism” fuels an entire industry built on “well-intentioned Westerners'” desire to change the world, he argues, to the point where commercial “orphanages” steal children to let travelers hold them, and where manual laborers fix in the evening the construction work mission trip participants have completed during the day.
Dr. Bowman and Jon Wilcox, a former banker and co-founder of their jointly run nonprofit Rise Up & Care, believe that rather than more philanthropic startups, the world needs funders that operate like community banks, the unsung heroes that back solid, successful companies based on their character and connections.
The co-authors outline their approach in the new book Reimagining Global Philanthropy: The Community Bank Model of Development, a recently published work cataloguing their experience testing the model in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
Too often, Dr. Bowman said, Americans exhibit what he calls “The Philanthropist’s Burden,” a play on the Rudyard Kipling poem “The White Man’s Burden.” Many would reject the racism in the colonialism the poem defends, “but if you look at the way that that we do global philanthropy, it’s really just a better version of the same system.”
Americans’ default mode is that the ideas, the leadership and the credit need to go toward the person from the “Global North,” the wealthy countries out of which the donations flow, he said during an interview with Global Atlanta as part of the “Authors Amplified” series of book talks, sponsored by the Atlanta Global Studies Center.
“We really believe that that whole model has to be inverted, where the ‘superhero’ has to be that person in the Global South — the leadership, the ideas, the innovation. Because the kids in those neighborhoods need role models, and they don’t need to look like Jon and me; they need to look like people who look like them,” Dr. Bowman said.
Dr. Bowman arrived at his ideas by way of missteps in places like Fiji, where he helped design health-delivery projects that were great in theory but in practice “failed miserably” because they lacked local knowledge and commitment.
Good intentions aren’t enough, he said. Projects also need to be relentless about efficiency, something he learned from Mr. Wilcox, who had no experience in global development but knew from his banking career that igniting something new was much harder than pouring financial fuel on an existing venture.
While this is self-evident in his view, Dr. Bowman said Americans’ biggest barriers to partnering with locals stem from the misguided idea, based in concepts of exceptionalism, that there are not enough productive projects to go around. In reality, he has found, they tend not to look.
Dr. Bowman persuaded Mr. Wilcox to fund an exploratory project in Rio to uncover local NGOs working to benefit their communities, and then to provide seed money to back new projects.
With just a few emails and LinkedIn posts, they uncovered the Miratus Badminton Association in the Chacrinha favela of Rio, where Sebastião Oliveira uses samba dancing to teach children footwork that helps them move on the court — and keeps them out of the crossfire of Brazil’s internal drug war. Mr. Oliveira built his four-court complex over 17 years with his bare hands, and now has a thriving institution that has sent competitors to the Olympics and Pan-American Games.
They though Mr. Oliveira was a “unicorn” but soon found themselves overwhelmed by potential projects, from the Redes de Maré tutoring service for the college entrance exam to the Crescer e Viver circus troupe to Nós de Morro, a community theater group for young people, and Jongo da Serrinha, a which uses drum and dance for social impact — all projects outlined in the book.
For those that are truly looking, finding impactful organizations can be as easy as asking a classmate from that country, contacting journalists or putting out feelers on social media.
“These connections happen really, really fast,” Dr. Bowman said. “You shouldn’t think that it’s really that hard. It’s really just opening your eyes and seeing what’s happening on the ground, because there are some really innovative, impressive local organizations, not only in the niche that we looked at, but also in women’s issues and the environment — all over the Global South,” he said.
Rise Up & Care, the entity Dr. Bowman and Mr. Wilcox created, has also upended the traditional application process so as to unburden these groups from the cumbersome bureaucratic process of asking for funding and conducting impact assessments, which derail them from their core strengths.
Rise Up & Care works backwards, finding practices that have already been proven effective — like engaging youth in activities like sports or music, which blend skill, reward and community — and then backing projects in those areas. The application is one page, and the impact assessment consists of simply confirming that they said what they were going to do — much like a community banker checking on whether a loan has been repaid.
Mr. Wilcox, who joined Dr. Bowman for the forum at Global Atlanta’s Constellations Community offices, continually repeated the mantra “No startups” as the key to philanthropic success.
“Find existing superheroes. It’s shocking how many of them there are — your impact just goes way up, and as somebody who likes to donate and help people, you want the greatest bang for your buck,” he said.
Dr. Bowman agreed that in the end, the approach outlined in their 177-page book hinges on humility — letting the local partner shine while the donor stays happily in the shadows.
“If we just do something really simple, which is to take off our Superman cape and embrace our inner sidekick, and think about how we can support local leaders, then everything kind of resolves itself.”
Trailer for “Bad and the Birdieman,” a film by Rise Up & Care on the Miratus Badminton Association:
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Learn more or buy the new book, Reimagining Global Philanthropy, here.
Rise Up & Care has produced five documentary films, including “Bad and the Birdieman,” which tracks the origins of the Miratus Badminton Association.
Mr. Bowman also has worked with Georgia Tech students and a Brazilian street artist Cazé on a children’s book, “The Birdieman of Rio de Janeiro,” which serves as the first installment of the Scout’s Superhero Search series where the young protagonist travels the world in search of everyday people changing their communities.