Synopsis
Since 2001, the Global Development Alliance (GDA) business model has led to the creation of nearly 300 alliances which have used $1.1 billion in Agency funds to leverage $3.7 billion in private sector funds. The success of GDA has made it a finalist for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government “Innovations in American Government” Award. There is a general perception that public-private alliances lend themselves most easily to economic growth activities, as most people tend to focus on the corporate community when exploring non-traditional partners to work with. With the understanding that public-private alliances can provide opportunities and resources in other sectors, the GDA Secretariat will highlight democracy-building and governance alliances.
A panel of alliance partners working in democracy and governance will present their work and collaboration experience. Additionally the panel will share their views in the future of democracy and governance partnership.
Notes
Dan Runde and Rory Donohoe of the Global Development Alliance Secretariat (GDA) organized the fifth USAID Summer Seminar, Public-Private Alliances in Democracy and Governance presented by Phil Henderson, Vice President, German Marshal Fund of the United States (GMF) and Dr. Oscar Rojas, Executive Director, AlvarAlice Foundation. The session was one of the best attended with more than ninety attendees, including employees from USAID, the Departments of State (DOS) and Justice (DOJ), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the private sector. USAID created GDA to leverage the rising share of international development assistance from private sector sources, which has risen from 30 percent in 1970 to 85 percent today. GDA fosters Agency partnerships with corporations, foundations, and universities. Since 2002, GDA has used $1.1 billion of USAID resources to leverage $3.7 billion in private sector money. GDA invited Henderson and Rojas to discuss the efficacy of public-private partnerships for promoting democracy and governance. Both presenters summarized their organizations’ joint efforts with USAID and identified the hurdles and rewards of collaborating with the Agency.
Henderson started by sharing background information on GMF, a non-profit foundation based in Washington, D.C. dedicated to promoting transatlantic cooperation. GMF is a “hybrid between a think-tank and a grant-making organization,” and is the product of a monetary gift from the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. In the late 1990s, GMF’s leadership decided to expand the foundation’s activities and play a more proactive role in promoting democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.
The political climate in Serbia during 2000 provided the first opportunity for GMF to partner with USAID. The Agency awarded GMF a $1 million grant to give to various organizations in Serbia that were promoting electoral change. The value of this first experience of working with USAID encouraged GMF to start laying the foundations for a “long standing initiative with USAID that would foster and fund democracy movements throughout the Balkan Peninsula.” The initiative became a reality three years later with the Balkan Trust for Democracy.
GMF, USAID, and the Charles Mott Foundation jointly launched the Balkan Trust for Democracy in June 2003 as an initiative “to support good governance in Southeastern Europe.” USAID and GMF both contributed $10 million each, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation donated $5 million. Under its agreement with USAID, GMF pays for all office and staffing overhead so that every USAID dollar goes to the field.
GMF’s partnership with USAID raised the profile of the Balkan Trust for Democracy and attracted other governments’ participation. The Greek government donated $600,000, followed by Dutch and Swedish annual commitments of around $1 million each. This collective leveraging of public and private resources allows the Balkan Trust to award $2 million a year to “civic groups, indigenous NGOs, governments, think tanks, and educational institutions throughout the Balkans.”
Henderson then presented eight key lessons learned from GMF’s public-private partnerships. They are:
- Partners of a public-private alliance must recognize the distinct “institutional baggage” that they each bring to the relationship. Private donors have their own boards and mandates, while government donors are accountable to politicians and taxpayers. To compensate for these differences, the GMF includes all donors in discussions about Balkan Trust for Democracy grants. A USAID employee from the Hungary Office is present at all discussions and provides input.
- Patience and persistence are essential to a public-private partnership. The government sector functions at a much slower pace than the private does, and this time lag discourages many other private foundations from working with government agencies.
- Being an “outsider” organization that does not have a long history of working with USAID makes collaboration more difficult. USAID seems opaque, especially to organizations that do not have a dedicated team to interface with USAID.
- USAID given its large size is not a natural partner, especially for smaller foundations.
- It is critical that private organizations working with USAID find a specific person within the Agency that can be their point of contact who they can work with and ask questions.
- Private partners need to be prepared to deal with the high rate of turnover at USAID. This raises the challenge of partnering with Agency employees who do not have the institutional memory of prior Agency employees. [This is specifically an area where the USAID Knowledge for Development subcommittee is seeking actively to address]
- USAID money is a magnet that attracts new partners, specifically other government donors. The experience from the Balkan Trust for Democracy showed the credibility that USAID money has among both private and government donors, and its value as a tool for attracting more funds.
- Private partners can give USAID additional flexibility and responsiveness. Private donors are more readily adaptable to changing situations on the ground, and partnering with private donors allows USAID to leverage these strengths that it often lacks.
Henderson concluded his half of the presentation by noting that the GDA Secretariat has already helped overcome many of the challenges mentioned above. Specifically, he noted that GDA provides a single point of contact to which smaller organizations can refer to improve their collaboration with the Agency.
The second presentation expanded on Henderson’s themes and provided case examples of public-private partnership successes. Rojas began by highlighting the AlvarAlice Foundation’s partnership with USAID through the Alliance for Restorative Justice, Coexistence and Peace in Colombia. The Alliance is a GDA-supported three-year project to “promote the application of restorative justice theory and practice in Colombia.” The collaborative effort seeks to mitigate the lasting impact of the decades-long Colombian conflict. Alliance partners include the AlvarAlice Foundation, USAID, Synergos Institute, VallenPaz Corporation, Corona Foundation, Javeriana University Cali, and the Peace and Well-being Foundation.
Rojas described the context in which the Alliance operates by providing information on Colombia’s new Justice and Peace Law that the Colombian Congress passed this past June. The Justice and Peace Law “seeks a balance between the need for peace and the need for justice.” The law achieves this balance through the creation of a National Commission of Reparation and Reconciliation, distinguishing between “rank and file and leaders… or authors of violent crimes,” and establishing minimum and maximum sentences for serious crimes.
By drawing on the resources and expertise of the public and private sectors, the Alliance compliments the recently enacted legislation with urban, rural, and academic components. The goals of the urban component are to:
- Promote restorative justice and human rights
- Reduce violence
- Strengthen Civil Society Oragnizations (CSOs) and Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)
- Develop income generating projects
The objectives of the rural component are to:
- Enhance community sustainability through the promotion of organic agriculture, watershed protection, fair marketing of agricultural products, etc.
- Promote restorative justice and human rights
- Reduce violence
- Improve rural living condition
- Improve social and physical infrastructure
The academic component goals are to:
- Document, systematize and disseminate international and national experiences on restorative justice, and
- Incorporate contents of restorative justice in the curriculum of at least three law and political science schools.
The Alliance has produced many results through the contributions of USAID and other partners. In February 2005, the Alliance sponsored an international symposium that attracted 1500 participants, including 36 international and 112 national restorative justice experts. Key participants included President Alvaro Uribe and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Moreover, the Alliance has established five restorative justice centers and provided 3,500 rural households with conflict management and vocational training. USAID and the AlvarAlice Foundation are currently in discussions for establishing an additional partnership.
After summarizing the success of the Alliance’s relationship with USAID, Rojas identified five lessons learned from this example of public-private collaboration. They are:
- Public and private organizations working together in a synergistic way is the most advantageous method of addressing social development issues.
- Programs to address youth-to-youth violence should be accompanied by income generating projects.
- Local governments in Colombia have proven to be appropriate partners.
- Members of the alliance can benefit from each others’ experiences.
- International cooperation has a catalytic effect favoring the leveraging of local funding for social development programs.
Both presentations highlighted the potential for promoting democracy and governance when governments and the private sector pool their resources. Since the share of international development work conducted by private organizations has more than doubled since the 1970s, the GDA Secretariat can help USAID to leverage private sector expertise and funds to best use them to tackle assistance and development challenges.
Question and Answer Session
Is USAID giving the financing directly to the German Marshall Fund (GMF), and is GMF managing everything itself or is it pooled financing? How does this work with all of your partners?
Henderson: The short answer is that GMF receives the money and is fully responsible both for USAID money and for all the other money that is involved. I mentioned earlier something called the Trust for Civil Societies in Eastern Europe. That is an effort that uses a pooled funding mechanism where all of the donors gave money to a “central pot,” and all of the donors in this case, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, GMF, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation pool their money and share responsibility. I can say from experience that it is an incredibly cumbersome mechanism, because then you are sharing all the minutia. It is useful to have, as we have done with the Balkan Trust Fund, all of the donors contributing in a substantive way to the focus of what is happening, and to have one institution that bothers with the logistics of who to hire to run it, how to report to each of the partners what is happening, and how to keep the day-to-day machinery running. This has turned out to be a much more efficient mechanism.
Having one central fiduciary person at each institution as a point person and an implementer of all of the ideas is very important.
Does AlvarAlice ever partner with police to foster trust building, for example in Cali where there are many poor and at-risk youth?
Rojas: There is a need to involve the police department in every effort to address youth-to-youth violence. Every time that a new chief of police comes to the city, he is taken to the slums, because there are many impoverished neighborhoods in Cali, places with high homicide rates. In the past police have been very aggressive, even arbitrary when dealing with youth. So in the last three or four years, there has been a very important attempt to moderate and make the police force accountable and also supportive of the youth involved in nonviolent programs. Actually, the chief of the metropolitan police and some of the officials of the force, participated in a training course on restorative justice carried out by Javeriana University and Peace and Well Being Foundation, just days before the international Symposion on Restorative Justice and Peace.
In many areas in Cali, like Agua Blanca, there is not a very strong police presence, what does your restorative justice program do in terms of working independently of the justice system?
Rojas: Within the USAID/GDA grant, we [AlvarAlice Foundation] have allocated some of the budget to carry out training for the police force and also for members of the judiciary system. In Cali, we are very lucky to have the first decentralized justice house that was built in Colombia. That house was built with USAID resources almost 15 years ago. It was almost abandoned after the initial efforts of the local authorities to support the personnel located in that decentralized justice house. But with the program we have included a budget to train judiciary officials in human rights and international humanitarian law working in that house.
This week’s edition of the Economist has a piece on restorative justice in Colombia, and it talks about some of the difficulties associated with this subject, one of which is public opinion. How do you think that [Colombian] public opinion perceives USAID’s role in this restorative justice program? Is USAID’s participation viewed as meddling in internal Colombian affairs?
Rojas: I am not quite sure about the image of USAID in Colombia, but I am sure that collaborating with restorative justice organizations is the best way for USAID to contribute to the peaceful resolutions of the conflict in Colombia. This is not the first time that USAID has supported a judiciary-related program in Colombia. As I mentioned earlier, USAID supported the decentralization and modernization of the [Colombian] judicial system.
Henderson: I’d like to add that the nice thing about partnership in general is that you share each other’s credibility. When people see a list of donors that includes known foundations or organizations, they will conclude that the project must be great if those donors are involved, which I think that is a positive thing. The USAID stamp of approval helps, and this mechanism [public-private partnerships] adds credibility in general.
What are some of the specific examples of programs promoting democracy in the Balkans that GMF is funding? Are they comparable to the American “Get out the Vote” effort?
Henderson: I defer to the GMF list included as a handout, which includes several good and precise examples. Our experience broadly in the transitioning countries of central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and now in Ukraine and Georgia, tells us that the youth are critical. Universities are critical places where reform-minded people are produced. The Balkan Trust for Democracy Fund supports a whole range of both formal and informal groups that have come together around specific challenges from the local level to larger movements around issues like free speech. Specifically around elections, perhaps it is tempting fate, but I would say that the most critical elections of the Balkan region are behind us. There are some challenges that still remain, but the elections to overthrow dictatorships have already happened, with the exception of Belarus. USAID and dozens of implementing partners were important in infusing cash into these groups as they were approaching these issues. However, more importantly they acted as conduits for the exchange of information. International donors have facilitated the transfer of lessons learned throughout that region. For example, the Slovaks in 1998 got rid of Vladimir Meciar through a massive countrywide campaign called OK98. The Slovaks were critical in Serbia two years later sharing expertise because those experiences are much closer to the reality of what is happening in the region than anything happening in the U.S.
[Directed at Rojas] I was wondering if you could talk about how the Alliance [for Restorative Justice, Coexistence and Peace] affected the creation of the law [Justice and Peace Law] or if it was vice-a-versa?
Rojas: We do not pretend to have a great or big influence on policy issues. However, after the Symposium on Restorative Justice, because of the debate and discussions that took place at the event, we register that references to restorative justice were introduced by the government to the Bill on Justice and Peace, which was being discussed at the Congress. We [AlvarAlice] were even called to the Presidential Palace for two or three meetings with the High Commissioner for Peace. Also, President Uribe requested AlvarAlice and the Peace and Wellbeing Foundation to support the efforts to reintegrate ex-combatants to society using a restorative justice strategy.
How did the Alliance for Restorative Justice, Coexistence and Peace’s relationship with USAID begin? How did USAID approach you or you approach them in building this alliance?
Rojas: I was the associate director of a large foundation in Colombia, when the USAID program for justice modernization was launched, it was in the mid-1990s. My organization managed a large grant, almost $14 million, to work with the judiciary sector and to assist with the modernization of the judiciary branch. When the new director of USAID was appointed, two years ago, I invited him to come to Cali to visit the restorative justice program, carried out by Peace and Well Being Foundation, and also to see the eco- agricultural rural development program developed by Vallenpaz. We took USAID people to talk to the youth participating in the restorative justice program and also to participating farmers of the eco - agricultural development program. At that time, I presented to USAID field office a proposal to support the International Symposium on Restorative Justice and Peace, and it was later accepted by USAID office in Bogotá.
Does GMF or AlvarAlice have any experience in engaging private corporations to promote democracy and governance? If you have, what are the challenges of working with the private sector?
Rojas: One of AlvarAlice partner, the Corona Foundation, is the social or development initiative of a big Colombian corporation, which is the Corona Corporation. Corona has a business equivalent to home centers in the U.S., and I know very well that the corporate sector, in Colombia, supports many development efforts, as Corona does. In issues of peace and conflict resolution there are at least two or three foundations dedicated to peace building. Examples include Fundación Ideas para la Paz and the Corporation for Excellence in Justice. I am convinced that the Colombian corporate sector is willing to support any effort regarding peace building and conflict resolution in the country.
Henderson: GMF as an institution does a number of smaller scale projects with corporations, but the Balkans Trust for Democracy does not involve private or corporate funds yet, but this may change at some later stage. The whole corporate responsibility movement from our perspective is a very strong one within Europe, and there are a number of cases particularly in transition countries that show that democracy and free markets go hand in hand. Large corporations with global reach understand that democracy is in their interest. An example that comes to mind is U.S. Steel, which purchased a huge plant in Serbia and one in eastern Slovakia. They are a model corporate citizen and give away hundreds of thousands of dollars to help reform the communities in which they operate. Our posture is that it is important to collaborate with them but sometimes working with multinational corporations (MNCs) particularly in the anti-globalization era is tricky. We are talking with BP [British Petroleum] about doing some work in the Black Sea area with them. BP has a multibillion-dollar investment in oil in the region and they know that their access to the oil is dependent on free markets and democracy there. The question GMF asks itself is do we want to be partners with BP when they might not always be seen as a positive actor in the region, and it is a good question.
[Addressed to Henderson] You mentioned that USAID at times seems opaque to potential partners. Can you give the agency recommendations on how to improve and become more transparent to organizations like your own?
Henderson: The Global Development Alliance plays exactly that role. It is helpful to have a Dan Runde on the other end of the phone that you can call when you need to understand what is going on inside USAID. I would say that when you are a small organization like GMF and you are working with an institution that has thousands of employees and a wide range of activities, it is natural for a partnership to be difficult. It helps to have interpreters, but more documents and better website are not the answer because these go out of day as soon as they are published. You need individual human beings that you can talk to and with which you can interface.
