APRIL 10, 1997
President's Report to the Global Board of Directors
By Joan Holmes
Overview: A new landscape for the end of hunger
As our 20th anniversary year gets underway, we face a new landscape for the work of The Hunger Project, and that this new landscape is a function of our solid progress over the past five years:
Our pioneering work in Strategic Planning-in-Action (SPIA) in India and in grassroots mobilization in Bangladesh has resulted both in concrete progress on the ground and in a new level of partnership with government and with large numbers of local voluntary organizations that now offer new, larger-scale opportunities.
Our expansion in West Africa, while new, is taking hold in four countries where we enjoy strong access to government and to the experience and reputations of Africa Prize laureates.
Our five-year strategy of educating our investors and empowering them to reach out to their friends and colleagues resulted in a precedent-setting 20% growth in income last year, much of which has come from entirely new investors to The Hunger Project.
Whereas, for many years it was extremely difficult to introduce and orient new people to our work, now, with our newly articulated “principles and methodology” document and workshops, more and more individuals are finding they are able to play leadership roles in our global movement.
These successes point to three major trends that will shape our work in the next 5 years:
In our programmatic work, we are now in a position to go beyond pioneering new, more strategic ways of working for the end of hunger. We can now utilize our methodology to work directly in partnership with government and local organizations to catalyze the large-scale society-wide transformations required for the sustainable end of hunger.
It appears that everything we can envision doing over the next 3-5 years can be accomplished within an income level of $8-10 million per year, and that extending the fund-raising strategies that led to last year's success may well be sufficient to reach those goals.
Organizationally, we can now afford to strategically expand our senior staff team. Our organizational structure had been kept extremely lean in order to hold costs down during difficult years. Now, we can begin to build the staff capacity appropriate to the demands and opportunities of the next 5 years.
Expansion in Africa – our highest priority
Since 1995, we have made expanding our on-the-ground work in Africa our highest priority, and to do so in partnership with the laureates of the Africa Prize. Last year, it became clear that we should begin in one region with the greatest number of Africa Prize laureates, West Africa.
Our focus in 1997 is to firmly establish our work in four countries in West Africa – to develop the track record of accomplishment and the network of leadership that can enable us to confidently expand our program in Africa in the years ahead.
Two new offices of The Hunger Project have been opened this year, in Burkina Faso and Benin, completing our establishment in four countries. In each of these countries, a highly-skilled country director has been hired and a National Council has been established.
In Burkina Faso we are building on the strength of Africa’s most successful grassroots movement, the Naam movement, led by 1989 laureate Bernard Lédéa Ouédraogo, now the mayor of Ouahigouya. Initial projects will focus on improving access to credit for rural women, and promoting new new, more productive crops. We have hired as our country director the very dynamic leader of Burkina Faso’s Institute of Development Research, Dr. Idrissa Diko.
In Benin our office is opening within the Songhai Center, directed by 1993 laureate Father Nzamujo. Our country director has served as the university’s dean of the agricultural department, Prof. Doussou Ahjahossou. Initial action will be to demonstrate how our principles can be applied in villages to translate a new commitment by Benin’s government to creating an enabling environment for the rural poor into demonstrable results.
Ghana has recently held its first strategic design meeting, a two-day forum with more than 60 members of parliament, leading officials from government agencies, NGOs and the university. The meeting resulted in a deeper, shared understanding and a stronger consensus on what must be done for Ghana to achieve its 2020 vision. In the next 6-8 months, THP-Ghana has committed to hold such strategic design meetings, and extend their on-the-ground work, in three districts of the country.
A priority in our work in Senegal is to reorganize this first attempt at working on the ground in Africa to incorporate the lessons we have learned in the other countries, so that expansion in Senegal can accelerate.
Fueling the phenomenon in South Asia
In 1997, as our program has expanded into more areas in West Africa, it has expanded in depth and impact in South Asia.
In India, this year, 15 August marks the 50th anniversary of India’s political independence. In all 11 states in which we work, Hunger Project councils will mark the anniversary by demonstrating the success of hunger-free zone strategies.
Part of our strategy in 1997 is to make this success known – to meet with the Chief Ministers, to write up the work powerfully, to communicate powerfully with all key people in the states.
The new government has promised to incorporate this strategy in the new 5-year plan which has just begun, and we are committed to working with government to implement this strategy as quickly as possible.
The hunger-free zone strategy is designed to be “contagious” and to spread from area to area, gaining more and more partners. We are now seeing this process take hold. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, our council has received a grant of $150,000 last year from a USAID funded project to work with 120 communities (one block) to establish 40 community-run health centers as the centerpiece of a hunger-free zone strategy. We just learned last week that it has been so successful that a consortium of the state government and the State Bank of India has put up another $150,000 to extend this process into the adjoining block.
In Bangladesh our work has entered a new phase. The new Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, and other key cabinet ministers have attended our Vision, Commitment and Action workshop. They were very impressed, and their support is allowing us to have significant impact in reshaping government programs.
Our grassroots mobilization and our strategic partnership with government agencies is now resulting in major, district-wide mobilization campaigns for better health, nutrition, education and incomes. The first district-wide campaign is in Gaibandha district (the poorest in the country) – mobilizing 7,000 volunteers to reach all 400,000 households in the district and educate them on how to end the scourge of iodine deficiency, which causes crippling and mental retardation. It has also generated action to train youth in fish farming that is already moving thousands of families out of poverty.
New partnerships in Latin America
In 1997, The Hunger Project will create new ways to apply its principles and methodology in Latin America. By doing so, The Hunger Project will complete its global presence – with action underway in all three regions of the developing world.
While Latin America has made greater progress in ending hunger as a society-wide issue than Africa or South Asia, there remain serious pockets of hunger in the region.
At the recommendation of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, The Hunger Project is establishing initiatives in Latin America that will enable us to share our methodology with the networks of organizations devoted to empowering resource-poor people in Latin America. To do this, we will work in partnership with existing organizations who share a similar approach and world-view with The Hunger Project, and establish contractual collaborative projects in the name of The Hunger Project.
We plan to work in three South American nations with IMRs of 50 or higher: Peru, Bolivia and Honduras. Through the progressive NGO coalition ALOP, we are in communication with the leaders of organizations in each of the three nations, and expect to finalize our partnerships within the next few months.
Fund-raising: building on the breakthrough of 1996
Last year, 1996, was without doubt our most successful fund-raising year since we launched the new era of our work in 1990. We began 1996 with a goal of $4.25 to $5 million, with $5 million being a very extreme reach. We ended the year at $4.95 million, a growth in global income of nearly 20%.
This breakthrough has enabled us to keep up our expansion in West Africa while at the same time continuing to rebuild our operating reserve. Our research indicates that an organization our size should have a reserve of 30-40% of its budget. In 1996, we increased our reserve from 14% to 28% of the 1996 expense budget.
In a larger context, the intentions we created as we launched the Era of Fulfillment in 1992 have been achieved: our fund-raising organization is now one global team on the field; we’ve brought our donor constituency into the current era in terms of their understanding; and they have begun to express their leadership through giving others the opportunity to join them as investors.
The new principles articulated in 1996 were a major breakthrough for fundraising. Investors found themselves at the “center” of The Hunger Project once again. They discovered fundraising as a personal expression, and were empowered to generate The Hunger Project from its source and confidently articulate the work to others.
A key transformation in our fundraising effort was the shift from managing an organizational strategy, to directing and nurturing a movement and a phenomenon of diverse, local fund-raising initiatives in communities around the world.
The source of our expansion in 1996, as in 1995, was the Global Investment Group (GIG), both as investors at $5000+ per year and now as fundraisers. To get some sense of this phenomenon, at the end of 1996, there were 181 GIG members outside North America – 40% brand new donors to The Hunger Project. There were 176 in North America – 35% of whom were new investors.
For 1997, our network of fund-raisers worldwide have launched a campaign to further expand our sustainable level of income. Some of the key elements of our 1997 campaign are:
Continuing to empower the success of Global Investment Group members ($5,000+) to expand their own numbers through reaching out to their friends and colleagues through community-based, fund-raising initiatives.
Extending this same campaign spirit into expansion of our higher levels of investment: Leadership ($25,000+), Pacesetter ($50,000+) and Charter ($100,000). New leadership and new teams have been established to expand each of these levels, and significant expansion of the Leadership level has already been achieved.
Find leadership who can access Benefactor ($250,000+) and Patron ($1 million) levels of investment.
Work systematically with Hunger Project countries who have access to institutional funds.
Seize the opportunity of our 20th anniversary year to galvanize fund-raising now and for the future.
Expand the Financial Family, both through making this opportunity available at all fund-raising events and through renewing lapsed donors who “come home” to The Hunger Project during the 20th anniversary appeals.
Already, our campaign during the first quarter of 1997 has shown significant advances. Cash income for the period was just over $1 million, a 16.5% increase over first quarter last year, and we have reached a total of $3.56 pledged so far for the year, compared with just $2.5 at the same time last year.
Raul Julia Ending Hunger Fund
One particularly successful initiative in our fund-raising during the past year has been the Raul Julia Ending Hunger Fund which is now being led by Raul’s widow, Merel Julia. A gala event was held on Raul’s birth anniversary, March 9, at the Copacabana here in New York. During the past year, Merel and her team have raised more than $400,000 for The Hunger Project through this fund, and they have already committed to holding a second gala event on March 9 next year.
Plans for celebrating our 20th anniversary
Our 20th anniversary celebration is an extraordinary opportunity to galvanize the current expansion and transformation of The Hunger Project. Whether one has participated for 20 years, or just joined this week, people will have the opportunity to take pride in what has been accomplished
Work has already begun, and will continue throughout the year:
During the next quarter, we will catalyze a phenomenon of outreach, communicating with key participants from past years, and encouraging them to contact their friends and colleagues who have participated with them over the years – much like a class reunion.
On October 18 we will hold a gala event in New York. The presentation of the Africa Prize will be included as one part of this global celebration of our work. A new video on our work, and a printed commemorative program will be “premiered” on that evening.
In the remaining weeks of the year, we envision a multiplicity of events being organized in communities around the world, utilizing the video and printed materials, and expressing this celebration appropriate to each community.
Building the organizational capacity for this next phase
As we make the transition from an extremely lean $4 million/year organization into a highly-catalytic, global $8 million organization, we will need to expand our organizational capacity. I’d like to set out here several of the factors that are shaping this transformation.
Most of our organizational growth is on the ground in the countries where our Strategic Planning-in-Action (SPIA) work is being applied. At the same time, empowering this work and finding ways for our work to have policy-impact internationally requires some expansion in our headquarters staff.
Similarly, as the scale of our community-based fund-raising continues to expand, we need to fill certain gaps in our own fund-raising abilities, either through additional staff or consultants.
A growing share of our income is being generated outside the United States by Hunger Project leaders who have achieved a high level of sophistication and ownership of our work. Our empowerment of their work is now quite different than it was two years ago.
Our financial management needs are changing. During our “lean years” we needed an extremely careful approach to cash flow projections. Now, as our reserve grows, we need to be organized to maximize a safe return on investments.
Throughout the organization, our youngest staff members, who joined us in administrative posts, have grown enormously in their expertise, maturity and responsibility and are now able to take on greater accountabilities.
Transforming our organization into this next phase, without losing the high-caliber teamwork we have achieved, is a major challenge. We have already launched this process with the full participation of all members of the staff, and we look forward to filling the first new staff positions in the next three months.