SEPTEMBER 23, 2003

President's Report to the Global Board: Expansion and New Opportunities

by Joan Holmes

We began this year with a commitment to begin expanding our programs to reach more people and have more decisive impact - while at the same time, in declaring this to be the “Year of the Investor” - increasing our sustainable funding to make possible even greater program expansion in the future.

This strategy is succeeding. Our programs are reaching more and more people in more and more villages. We have launched important new interventions, including the HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop and the Ending Hunger in India Briefing.

In our funding as of the end of August, our cash and reliable pledges for the year are 27% ahead of where we stood at the same time last year - without including the special one-time $1 million proceeds from the sale of the Raul Julia Ending Hunger House.

In addition, a new opportunity has emerged. Working with women members of the U.S. Congress, The Hunger Project has begun to exert influence on official U.S. development assistance with the objective of making it more effective for the end of hunger.

As always, this report will touch on many of the highlights. Greater details can be found in the individual country and financial reports that follow.

The Year of the Investor

At the beginning of this year, volunteer investor activists from around the world met in New York, confronted the fact that our programs were out ahead of our funding, and launched a year-long campaign of action to increase our sustainable level of funding from the $6.1 million in 2002 to $8+ million in 2003. We underscored the strategic importance of increased investment at this time by declaring 2003 to be the “Year of the Investor.”

Overall, at the end of August last year, we had raised (from both cash received and reliable pledges) a total of $4,974,000. This year, our August 31 level is $6,294,000, an increase of 27%. As mentioned above, these figures do not include the special one-time $1 million proceeds from the sale of the Raul Julia Ending Hunger House.

Since our April meeting, we have focused on fundraising activities in five strategic initiatives. Let me briefly highlight our progress in each area.

• Women and Philanthropy. This initiative empowers women in the developed world to become powerful with their own finances and invest in their sisters in the developing world. It has become the most successful new track of Hunger Project funding. Earlier this year, Irene Alomar of Sweden increased her personal investment this year to $690,000, leading us to raise our target for this track from $1 million to $2 million.
• Leadership ($25,000+). Fundraisers develop personal strategies to empower more individuals to step forward at the highest levels of investment. In the US, the 37 investors at these levels currently provide 43% of our income, so this is a very high-leverage strategy.
• Renewal and Upgrade of recent and current investors. Key to our strategy beginning last year is to give every recent and current investor the greatest possible opportunity to renew for 2003 and increase their pledge. Last year our total renew rate for investors at $1,000+ was 69%. This year, we have already renewed 77%.
• Locality Fundraising Events. Our volunteer investor activists in the US focus their energy on holding local events that generate funds from new, current and lapsed investors. So far this year, 88 local events have been held, raising $165,000 and bringing in most of our 660 new investors so far this year.
• Corporations and Foundations. Last year, corporations and foundations provided 12% of our total US income - a figure not entirely inconsistent with 17% for all US philanthropy. Our target is to increase total Corporation and Foundation investment this year.
• Partner Countries. Fundraising strategies outside the US apply the same strategic framework through activities that are idiosyncratic to each country. Last year, partner countries contributed $1,638,000 to global program (after meeting their own expenses) and have already raised $1,780,000 for this year.

At our annual Fall events, we have never really taken the opportunity to acknowledge the investors of The Hunger Project. This year, in the year of the investor, we will seize that opportunity.

Just as we utilize the Africa Prize to identify qualities of leadership for shaping the future of Africa, at this year’s event we will also make clear the qualities of leadership that the investors in The Hunger Project display each and every day - year after year.

Africa Prize: Emerging Women’s Leadership

This year, the Africa Prize will honor emerging women’s leadership.

As we know, sub-Saharan Africa is not in good shape. And part of its problem is that it is trying to develop without the full participation of half its people. Women have largely been denied leadership positions. Yet there are women in Africa - lawyers, health specialists, grassroots organizers, providing leadership for a new direction for Africa. These leaders have been invisible, unsupported and unacknowledged - because they are women.

This year we are honoring two women legal activists who have been at the forefront of the struggle for equal rights in Africa - Meaza Ashenafi of Ethiopia and Sara Longwe of Zambia. A brief biography of these extraordinary women in included.

This year, for the first time, will hold a Policy Forum on the afternoon of the Africa Prize. This “Strategic Forum on Women’s Leadership and the Future of Africa” will allow us to explore the critical, substantive issues facing Africa in depth - an opportunity not afforded in the evening ceremony itself.

Africa: Expansion plus the HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop

The restoration of last year’s cuts in our program budget has produced stunning results in all regions - and nowhere more so than in Africa. For example, last year we were able to establish 9 new epicenters, empowering 180,000 people to meet their basic needs. This year, we are establishing 18 new epicenters - twice as many as last year.

Most importantly, the increase in program budget has allowed us to fully launch our HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality Workshop in all our epicenters across 6 countries of Africa. This workshop is the first time ever at the grassroots level that communities have not only learned the facts about how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS but also confronted the harmful gender roles that drive the spread of the disease. A campaign is underway for 100,000 people to take the workshop this year.

Increased funding for the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative has not only enabled us to increase the number of women taking loans this year by 40% but also has increased the speed with which our loan programs can be transformed into sustainable rural banks, managed by women themselves.

India: Expansion plus mobilizing a new cadre of leadership

The first priority for this year in India has been to expand our four-prong strategy for empowering women as key change agents in local democracy (panchayati raj) from an initial five states to more than 12 states. In fact, we are now on our way to carrying out programs in 15 states by early next year, including states where we’ve never worked before, such as Assam and Jammu and Kashmir.

In meeting with our leadership earlier this year, we saw that - to truly catalyze the society-wide transformation required to end hunger in India - we need to mobilize a far larger cadre of leadership at the national and state levels that understand the critical importance of women in local democracy and will advocate for it. To mobilize this leadership, we have created a new Ending Hunger in India Briefing which was officially launched on India’s independence day, August 15th in New Delhi.

On October 2nd, Mahatma Gandhi’s Birthday, The Hunger Project-India will award its third annual Sarojini Naidu Prize for Best Reporting on Women and Panchayati Raj. The Sarojini Naidu Prize is increasing in impact. Last year, the number of submissions increased from 165 to 456. This year, the number of submissions increased again, to 584, with a strategic emphasis on languages other than Hindi and English.

Bangladesh: Empowering women and strengthening local democracy

Our strategy in Bangladesh is similar to that in India - to empower women as key change agents in local democracy. In Bangladesh, however, we need to strengthen the entire institution of local democracy, and demonstrate its importance. Last year we were able to carry out a 10-point “women-centered, Union Parishad (UP) based-strategy” in 100 UPs - clusters of villages with approximately 20,000 people. This year, we have more than doubled the number to 209.

Alongside the grassroots mobilization strategy, The Hunger Project has established two national-level advocacy alliances - the “UP Self-Government Advocacy Group” made up of elected local leadership themselves - and “Citizens for Fair Elections” made up of top-level elite who are committed to effective local government and women’s full participation.

On September 30th, The Hunger Project-Bangladesh will hold its Fourth Annual National Girl Child Day, dedicated to combating all forms of discrimination against girls. For each of the last three years, we have doubled the scale of this celebration - holding 50, 100 and 200 local events. Our team has similar ambitions for this year.

Latin America: Empowering indigenous women in local democracy

Our strategic priorities everywhere on the world - the empowerment of women, and the empowerment of grassroots people to meet their basic needs through local democracy - is at the center of all our work in Latin America, and this work is increasingly focused on the most marginalized sectors of the population - the indigenous peoples.

One highlight of this period is the formal launching of our new partnership in Peru with Chirapaq - a network of indigenous organizations with a philosophy and focus completely aligned with that of The Hunger Project. Each quarter, Chirapaq brings together women leaders from all 37 language groups across the nation for an intensive period of training and advocacy - these women then return to their areas and recreate the training three times in their own local languages. This July, one of our indigenous woman leaders from Mexico traveled to Peru to participate in this training. She shared The Hunger Project’s “Vision, Commitment and Action” workshop with the participants, and also gained a great deal of knowledge on the legal rights of indigenous people that she has brought back to her region in Mexico.

Washington D.C.: Women’s leadership in the US Congress

As you know, since our last meeting I have been invited twice to address caucuses of the US Congress: once in May to the Human Rights Caucus, which in turn led to an invitation by Rep. Marcy Kaptur for me to address the Women’s Congressional Caucus.

I took the opportunity on both these occasions to underscore the fact that unless women are empowered, hunger will not be ended and none of the UN Millennium Development Goals will be reached.

I was struck how strongly this message resonated with the women representatives and their staff members - a set of ideas which strongly challenge the conventional ways the U.S. government currently allocates its development assistance. We will explore this opening more fully in the months ahead, to determine whether and how we can seize it to advance the work of ending hunger.

It would be remarkable if we discover that women leaders in the U.S. Congress turn out to be the key change agents for the end of hunger, just as we are finding in the developing world.

An Emerging Vision for 2004

As we have said in our fundraising all year, we are poised for significant expansion in our programs. We knew when we began the year that seizing the immediate openings within our existing program countries would require a level of income of at least $8 million, and only when we could reliably project levels beyond that could we begin to respond to the strong demand to establish The Hunger Project in additional nations - a further expansion that would require a sustainable revenue stream of at least $10 million per year.

The amount of sustainable funding we achieve this year will set the bar for the pace and scale of that expansion in 2004. As always, we must match any expansion in our overall budget with a proportional increase in our operating reserve, to ensure our organizational sustainability. Increasing our sustainable income to $10 million per year will also require additional investment in fundraising.

Our highest priority for 2004, therefore, is to continue to increase our sustainable income towards our long-term goal of $10 million per year. As we achieve this, millions and millions more people will gain the opportunity to end their own hunger. Tens of thousands fewer people will die. And the power and influence we will have to catalyze the society-wide transformation required for the end of hunger will be dramatically enhanced.