Grant-Proposal Guidelines and Their Effects on NGO Programming: An Intern’s Perspective in Cambodia

By Tiana Gierke

May, 2007

 

In the summer of 2007, I was one of four interns at the Legal Aid of Cambodia (LAC) in Phnom Penh.  We were all law students from the United States, and none of us spoke a word of Khmer. With eight offices, LAC provides legal services to poor people throughout Cambodia and is committed to developing the rule of law and promoting judicial reform in order to protect the rights of all Cambodians.  LAC is comprised of four main units: the General Practice Unit, the Land Unit, the Juvenile Litigation Project, and the Juvenile Unit.

 

At LAC, we worked among the first few generations of lawyers in post-conflict Cambodia—all of whom had survived the genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and were dedicated to constructing a just society in the name of family and friends who had not survived. Throughout the summer, I constantly questioned what I could possibly add to their efforts.  The language barrier was partially to blame, but so was the inescapable fact that we were merely first-year law students from a different culture. There is no doubt in my mind that I took more from the experience than I was able to give. Grant-writing, however, was one area where I was able to offer concrete assistance. 

 

Like most NGOs in the developing world, LAC’s existence depends upon funds from international sources. Grant-writing is a logical task for interns because the vast majority of the grant proposals have to be submitted in English. Throughout the summer, I helped LAC staff members write and edit their grant proposals and strategic plans for submission to the international donor community. This experience enabled me to understand the relationship between Cambodian NGOs and the international donors. I was able to observe the extent to which the international donor community influences NGO activities on the ground in Cambodia and the unintended consequences of this influence. 

        

Phnom Penh has an active NGO community whose prominence has been shaped by the steady presence of international development workers. While remnants of French colonialism remain, the true roots of this international presence go back to the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). The UNTAC years, February 1992 through September 1993, required the presence of many foreign development professionals in Cambodia, and in the years since, an assortment of UN agencies have remained in Phnom Penh. Today, entire sections of the city are filled with the offices of the UNDP, UNICEF, UNIFEM, and the UN Population Fund, to name a few. I suppose this UN presence has been a magnet for other international organizations and international development professionals. In the past few years, many of the NGOs that were originally set up by foreigners have transitioned into Cambodian management, and the number of Cambodian NGOs has multiplied as well. Thus, Phnom Penh’s NGO community is comprised of international NGOs, Cambodian NGOs, and Cambodian-run organizations, which are overseen by international boards.

        

Each of these NGOs relies on funding from the international donor community, and every year, the NGOs compete for funding by submitting grant applications to the various international agencies with offices in Phnom Penh. Connections on the ground in Cambodia matter—networking is just as important for a successful grant application as the grant proposal itself.  Thus, the application is not the sole determining factor for the dispersing of funds. It is interesting, however, that the requirements and guidelines set forth in the grant applications have a huge influence on the substance and nature of NGO programming on the ground in Cambodia.  In order to compete for funding, the NGOs cater to the thematic emphases of the grant applications. There is a visible shift in the NGOs’ programming in response to the promulgation of new funding guidelines by any of the major international donors.

        

Last summer, the grant application cycle seemed to focus on women’s rights, although indigenous rights and the environment were also emphasized. All of the big international donors specifically required the NGOs to provide information about how the money, if awarded to that particular program, would influence women’s rights and gender equality. So, Cambodian NGOs hoping to attract funding had to devise plans or at least articulate their ongoing activities accordingly. As an intern, I was invited to participate in a series of meetings with LAC’s management team as they constructed a five-year strategic plan. In response to these grant-application guidelines, the management team spent a large portion of the meetings discussing how their organization should focus on women’s rights. In the end, they decided to propose a “Women’s Rights Unit” to handle all legal cases pertaining to women’s issues.  

 

While gender equality is obviously an essential component to development efforts, during these meetings, I remember thinking there must be a better way to emphasize its importance or to encourage NGOs to focus on this area.  Plus, I wondered if the new focus on women’s rights would leave a void in other areas as NGOs were forced to shift a portion of their resources away from existing programs. Furthermore, a shift in programming in response to the latest trends in the funding applications seems to detract from effective program development in specific areas of expertise. Indeed, in the preceding funding cycle LAC had proposed to expand legal services in the northeast provinces of Rattanakiri and Mondulkiri —which have the largest indigenous populations in Cambodia. A member of LAC’s management team explained that this expansion had been a successful attempt to attract funding specifically geared towards indigenous-rights issues. 

 

While the benefits of the indigenous-rights project cannot be ignored (providing access to justice in Cambodia’s most remote provinces), my experience in Cambodia showed me that there is an inverse relationship between the breadth of NGOs’ programs and the effectiveness of their service to a community. An organization that is constantly expanding to tackle new problems or to serve new communities beyond its expertise inherently forgoes opportunities to improve or expand existing projects. There is a balance to be struck for sure. However, it is in the public’s best interest for NGOs to specialize, and in some respects, the grant application process encourages just the opposite.

 

In addition to the fact that the manner in which the international donor community disperses funds dramatically affects the programming of Cambodian NGOs, it was also apparent that the grant-application process has many unintended consequences that actually impede the effectiveness of the NGO community.

 

First, NGO staff members are forced to dedicate a significant portion of their time to writing grant applications in English. These professionals have the expertise that is needed to propel Cambodia’s development; however, their time is being diverted to the cumbersome administrative task of chasing international funds. Thus, the application procedures significantly limit the progress and the results that NGOs are able to achieve. Furthermore, most Cambodian NGOs cannot afford to have a native English speaker on staff—nor should they be encouraged to do so! Yet, the vast majority of the grant applications must be completed in English.  At LAC, this is achieved by a highly inefficient system: Cambodian staff members attempt to prepare a grant application in English and then foreign interns proofread (and often rewrite) the document.  Even though many LAC staff members speak English extremely well, they are unable to communicate with the precision of a native speaker.  However, the summer interns lack the institutional memory needed to fully explain the program goals and structure. Not surprisingly, much is lost in translation. It is a shame that NGOs cannot complete the applications in Khmer. This would streamline the process, enable the grant writers to communicate their proposals with more precision, and allow the NGO staff members to devote more time to programmatic activities.

 

Second, through my experiences I believe that the international donor community should be cautious when requiring all applicants to focus on specific issues. This can have the unintended effect of pushing NGOs to divert resources from highly efficient and focused programs in order to create programs that are most likely to attract funding. The annual shift in programming seems to lead to the creation of haphazard programs which are not best-suited to address the emphasized issue. LAC’s Women’s Rights Unit is a particularly illustrative example. It is true that the new emphasis on women’s rights had its intended effect—LAC’s management team was forced to recognize the importance of gender equality in their institutional plan. However, the management team was only truly focused on attracting the funds they needed to continue LAC’s operations. Thus, they were not truly focused on women’s rights; they were only trying to comply with the gender prerequisite that appeared in all of the major grant applications that particular summer. 

 

Their solution, a Women’s Rights Unit, sounded good on paper, and it will probably help them secure the umbrella funding they need. However, it is an inadequate way to address the problem of gender inequality, and it will divert time and resources from the strong programs LAC already has. Creating a gender unit and then ignoring the gender nexus of each of the other programs hardly benefits women’s rights.  Oddly, gender mainstreaming, or incorporating gender issues in all activities, is the current protocol of each of the international donor organizations. Yet, gender mainstreaming will not take hold by way of grant applications requiring a focus on women’s rights. The NGO applicants are forced to chase funds, leading to the creation of more haphazard programs that lack the theoretical and experiential foundations necessary to truly address the issue at hand.

 

Third, this annual funding rivalry, which takes place within a radius of a few blocks in Phnom Penh, pivots the NGOs against each other. While competition for funding is a natural byproduct of limited funds, the battle is exacerbated in Cambodia and is detrimental to the overall development efforts. The international donor organizations are dispersing funding to further the development of Cambodia. To effectively do so, however, these organizations would be wise to strategically fund programs that foster collaboration between organizations. 

 

One example of the lack of cooperation between NGOs in Phnom Penh can be seen in the case of the 2005 law outlawing domestic violence. While this law marks a huge step forward in the country’s effort to eradicate domestic violence, the extent to which the law has penetrated society is unknown. Furthermore, there is no information regarding the adequacy of the victims’ assistance programs offered by the NGO community.  It is impossible to compile accurate statistics of the law’s success or of the victims’ needs because the NGOs refuse to share information with each other. 

 

This past summer, I attended a series of meetings with representatives from all of the different NGOs dealing with domestic violence in Phnom Penh. The purpose of the meetings was to initiate a coordinated effort to monitor the implementation of the law and to assess whether the NGO community should devote more or new services to domestic-violence victims.  However, it was immediately obvious that the NGOs were hesitant to share information with each other because of the funding competition. They each needed to have the highest intake statistics for domestic-violence victims in order to attract funding; therefore, they were not willing to share information with other NGOs about their policies or intake procedures. Since domestic-violence victims often benefit from services at more than one NGO, existing statistics double-count the victims in certain areas. This problem can only be resolved with the cooperation of each of the NGOs, but unfortunately, the series of meetings ended without any success. 

 

While I had not intended to spend the summer writing grants, I gained a lot from the experience. It provided a unique insight into the operations of Phnom Penh’s NGOs and their relationship to the international donor community. I learned about the structure of LAC’s programs and how they fit into the larger context of Cambodia’s post-conflict development.  Above all, it was one of the few ways I could offer assistance in a culturally sensitive, yet valuable manner. 

 

 

The writer recently completed her second year at the University of Iowa College of Law.  

 

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