Nicholas Kristof reports in the NYTimes that a few countries, including Canada and the United States, will meet the aid targets for 2010 that were they in 2005. France is falling behind and Italy — as we reported earlier in the week — is hopelessly far behind, and trying to change the rules of their commitment. (See One.org tracking this data.)

What caught my eye this morning isn’t Kristof’s assertion that humanitarians are abjectly ineffective at selling their causes. Any brand of toothpaste is peddled with far more sophistication than the life-saving work of aid groups. Do-gooders also have a penchant for exaggeration, so that the public often has more trust in the effectiveness of toothpaste than of humanitarian aid.

One of our long-terms goals for Anne of Carversville is to combine a pragmatic, bottom-line business perspective with a deeply-seeded concern about global problems.

Kristof’s next factoid left me speechless, until I considered it more fully.

Research supports the fact that people are more willing to help a single person than a multitude. In a recently published book, “The Life You Can Save,” Princeton’s Professor Peter Singer agress with University of Oregon psychology professor Paul Slovic that the more people who die, the less we care.

Kristof uses Singer’s and Slovic’s work to identify key attitudes driving this real life response to humanitarian crises:

Personal responsibility. One-on-one makes us more responsible for each other. Multitudes imply that there’s plenty of other folks around to worry about the problem.
Large scale problems overwhelm us. Show us the success rates of attacking big problems and winning.
If the suffering is too overwhelming, we turn away and hurry on.

I would add that especially in a global economic climate where people have lost faith in our institutions — and that includes notoriously corrupt African governments — it seems that we’re often throwing money into a sinkhole, with our contribution.

In the same way that One.org tracks nation’s keeping their promises, we must understand which humanitarian organizations truly deliver results.

Anne of Carversville supports projects that are clear in purpose and results. Keep a Children Alive buys AIDS drugs on a monthly basis. Until I discover major ethics problems with the organization, I’m satisfied that my money actually buys AIDS drugs for infected children.

The Grameen Foundation has a spectacular track record of loans being repaid and reinvested. Have microloans lifted Bangladesh out of poverty? No. Has the Grameen Fund’s microloan program, and the work of Muhammed Yunus improved the lives of many? Yes. But most important, the money hasn’t disappeared into the coffers of bureaucrats.

With my focus on Cultural Creatives and Smart Sensuality women, I am arguing that people want to work towards solving global problems more aggressively than in the past.

But as Kristof writes, the majority of aid groups don’t have their act together. People who have money aren’t interested in pouring it down a bottomless sink hole.

When I read that ships carrying desperately-needed food for starving people are highjacked by their own relatives, then I leave it to the UN and governments to solve the problem. I cannot.

In all honesty, I’ve got my own problems in this global, economic meltdown. And I’m held accountable for financial results on a daily basis. I am only as good as my most recent contribution to my client’s bottom line.

For those organizations who demonstrate effectiveness in generating real, verifiable results over the long-term, then we must do more. Today’s agricultural focus on helping Africans grow their own food, rather than airlifting in more food to thwart starvation, seems like a better way to go.

This proposal takes me back to our HopeTracker, week of July 6, story about Cultural Creative Howard Buffet on the ground in Africa. Buffet employs a holistic strategy of not only working to institute better agricultural practices in Africa, but to support a fund that pays for long-term investments in renewable crops and the ‘ownership rights’ asserted by big agriculture companies like Monsanto.

Bottom-line in this debate is the growing understanding that global problems need activists, celebs, scientists and scholars AND experienced business people to combat the death-defying emergencies that face us in the future. Anne

Note from Anne: Since writing this article we’ve opened our Smarty Pants and International Women’s Rights channels. Follow our drop down menus in masthead to see subgroups in these postings.

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