Re: Foreign Aid Business
From a Philanthropy Journal.
Let’s say that total annual U.S. philanthropy is about $190 billion. Estimates are that international private giving for all sources of giving is about 10.8 percent of that total (although foundations give only about 4 percent of their resources internationally.) This yields about $20 billion in cash giving. However, only about 6.5% of total U.S. philanthropy is given for international programs or sponsorships that are actually overseas. The “international” giving total is then reduced to $12 billion.
Another $850 million or so flows from U.S. sources directly to overseas (non-U.S.) recipients. Again, this is almost certainly an under-estimate, since it does not totally capture individual behavior (the Brownies of Peoria selling lemonade to help the clinic of the Peruvian colleague of someone’s pediatrician, or the Fight for Sight initiative of the students at Brunswick School in Greenwich, CT who pass the hat at football games to help a vision clinic in Tibet.) So, the cash total is back up to something on the order of $13 billion.
Added to this should be the $1.5 billion the U.S. universities provide in scholarships and services to developing country nationals in their years as foreign students in the U.S. So, we are up to $14.5 billion. From here on, things get murkier. The value of all donated goods – as technical as computers from Microsoft and as mundane as dear Aunt Tillie’s old summer frocks – is unknown. There is also danger of double counting here, since some donations will be counted in cash value both by corporations and by non-profits. But, it is probably at least $2 billion, with huge increases at times of natural catastrophe or war – events that are, unfortunately, common. After Hurricane Mitch, for example, the U.S. military base in Honduras had to call in the Marines – not to keep order, but help distribute donated goods, which were arriving at a rate of 120 shipments every date.
Finally, of course, there is the problem of valuing services. There is simply no way to do this without crossing over into rank speculation. But, the reservoir of American global voluntarism is broad and deep: executives traveling worldwide for the International Executive Service Corps, for example; physicians and surgeons providing basic care and complex services to clinics in poverty areas throughout the developing world; lawyers volunteering though the ABA’s international law program; lay volunteers in such programs as the Mercy Corps, a “Peace Corps” within the religious order of the Mercy Sisters. To be conservative, let’s say the value of voluntarism adds another $1 billion.
It is not unreasonable, then, to estimate that the total value of U.S. private philanthropy abroad is about $17.5 billion, nearly three times the size of United States government official development assistance. Having reached that conclusion, there is reason to pause, however. There is, of course, much debate about the effectiveness of government foreign aid. A dollop of similar skepticism is also in order for the implications of this level of private aid. Regulations can mislead. For example, for a U.S. non-profit to register with and receive funding from the United States government for foreign aid efforts, it must demonstrate that at least 20 percent of its funds are raised privately.
http://www.onphilanthropy.com/op2001-09-06n.html