Outdoor Industry Disingenuous?

[JayB]

Ken:

 

There's actually a bunch of material out there concerning the effects of food aid on economies in which most of the people derive their living from small scale agriculture. I don't have any at my fingertips, but there's plenty out there if you are interested in looking into the issue a bit more.

 

 

 

[mtnfund]

I am very interested in that, if you see something particularly good please let me know, and thanks.

[minx]

this is a great topic. mtn fund raises a great question.

 

glad to see ken4ord chiming in. he's got some first hand experience to add to the conversation.

 

i'll just throw in a couple of points.

 

1) JayB is right, there's a ton of good info on the effect of food aid for a country. it isn't always good. in many cases providing the necessary tools to allow microscale farming is better. it provides for one family and can also allow them to add food to the marketplace thus adding to the economy.

 

2) i think charitable giving, be it time or money, is a good thing. there are hundreds and hundres of ways, places and organizations to give to. pick one that feels right to you.

 

sometimes helping a few people can lead to bigger things. sometimes throwing a lot of money at a big problem does bring solutions. helping as many folks as possible always seems better but it is often difficult to predict what the longterm effects will be. sometimes a small project is just as important.

 

jon-i respectfully disagree, as stated before, it is not automatically a good choice or an improvement in conditions for people to move to a city. they may be just as likely to suffer form malnutrition and poor health care in the city as anywhere else.

 

 

[BigWave]

Wow, This is a great topic, but it seems to have fragmented a little. The first question to me seems to have been;

"Is the outdoor industry dingenuous because it uses images of places around the world without investing in the communities that surround those places?"

I would have to say no.

Is the outdoor Industry disingenous? Possibly.

But the use of print ads doesn't prove that. There are hundreds of examples of products that we use everyday that use advertising in places our concepts that aren't directly supported.

Did Chevy invest in the Navaho people when they drove the newest SUV to the top of a desert tower?

Does RedBull invest in research to actually give people wings?

These examples may be rediculous but I tend to think the reasoning is a bit of a stretch.

I also think that the Outdoor Industry is to be commended (for the most part) in their support of issues such as sustainability, environmental health and healthy lifestyles for their customers.

Can they improve. Definately.

The way we spend our $$ is powerful and we can send a message to companies and groups in the way we spend it.

 

How to influence positive change in the rest of the world seems like an enormous effort indeed.

[mattp]

When I first read Jon's post, I thought: say what? I don't think it is typical for rural residents of a poor country like, say, Nepal, to express a strong desire not to modernize or cultivate a higher standard of living. There are plenty of examples of places where some groups or communities have sought to protect themselves from some real or potential ill effect of modern cultural or economic invasion, though, and perhaps this is what Jon was referring to.

 

In reading some of the discussion here I am reminded of a story I heard in Nepal some years ago. There, a western charity sought to do something about deforestation and lung disease in a Himalayan valley and equipped an entire village with highly efficient wood stoves that vented the smoke outside the homes instead of the open unventilated hearths that were commonly used. When they came back, two years later, they found all the new stoves in a pile outside of town and the metal was being salvaged for other uses. Upon inquiry, it was learned that the roofs of all the houses where these stoves had been installed were quickly being devoured by bugs: the smoke infused environment had been serving as pest control.

 

With food aid or any other intervention undertaken even with the best of intentions it can be difficult to anticipate the impact of this or that development assistance.

[BigWave]

Brings to mind other situation in which we thought a quick answer was easy without truly understanding the intricate situations at hand. Iraq?

[wfinley]

There, a western charity sought to do something about deforestation and lung disease in a Himalayan valley and equipped an entire village with highly efficient wood stoves that vented the smoke outside the homes instead of the open unventilated hearths that were commonly used. When they came back, two years later, they found all the new stoves in a pile outside of town and the metal was being salvaged for other uses. Upon inquiry, it was learned that the roofs of all the houses where these stoves had been installed were quickly being devoured by bugs: the smoke infused environment had been serving as pest control.

 

When I was a kid my father worked for the World Bank and UNDP; he told a similar story about his first job which was in Nigeria. He was hired to go into rural villages to stop cholera outbreaks; the rural villages had no wastewater treatment plan and basically everyone crapped next to the water supply. So they built outhouses with containment / septic tanks and redug wells in areas that weren't contaminated. A year later his team returned to the villages to find the outhouses dismantled and everything back the way it was. Turns out that the villagers refused to share a common outhouse and water source due to social structures.

 

However; the project was not abandoned instead more fund were put into education and one everything was rebuilt the villages slowly came to accept it.

 

I imagine the same is in Nepal; in wealthy areas (like the Khunbu) chimneys are becoming the norm; however in other areas it will be a while before people can afford a chimney and new roof.

[mtnfund]

Those kinds of stories are true. A couple of years ago I brought a group from Engineers Without Borders to a village in Nepal to look at the stove issue. At a nearby clinic we support we were seeing too may negative health impacts from the smoke in the air due to the living room campfires most homes used. What we learned is that it was ok to vent the smoke out, so long as we only vented it up into the attic and not clear out through the roof. In the case of these villages they stored food in the attic and the smoke kept it free of pests.

 

In Gatlang which is near one of our health clinics in Nepal a group came and built a 3 stall toilet for the village. They didn't spend much time talking to the village about this idea though and that's where it all went wrong. The people of Gatlang had never had a toilet. They went in the fields and used rocks for toilet paper. It did not take long before all three holes were filled with rocks and the toilet is still there, filled with rocks and doing nothing.

 

Cultural issues enter in as well as you have noted. Most all of Nepal follows the Hindu caste system, even in villages like this that are not Hindu. Tamang are not low enough in the caste system (they are low, just not dalit) so cleaning and caring for a toilet is not their place in life. We'd have had to import a dalit to the community to maintain the toilet and that would mean going to Kathmandu, finding a dalit, convincing them to move to Gatlang and then putting some sort of public funding program in place to pay the dalit to maintain the toilet.

 

Too often I see projects take the classic - study, implement and leave approach. The toilet people did that. They studied that were no toilets, built one and left. Too bad too as the next bunch that wanted to install toilets had a hard time of it. The villagers felt ripped off from the first go around and would only accept individual toilets for each family. Practical Action Nepal was putting some in last time I was there in March. Problem is they don't have enough resources to give one to everybody so some will have and some will not. That's probably going to be a source of trouble in the community at some point in time.

 

Funding sources make things like this problematic for the nonprofits though. They like hit and run tactics. It's hard to find foundations who will support staying long term in an area and working slowly through one problem after another. They prefer the 3 year plan at best. Year One - study the needs of an area, prepare a plan to correct, Year Two- implement the plan and Year 3 - leave and start over somewhere else. If the team in the post above hadn't gone back to check those outhouses would still be in pieces on the ground. I see those projects all over the place. If groups don't keep going back and providing the education to make them viable what happens is villages end up feeling ripped off and after a while they don't even want to discuss projects, they feel too betrayed, too many times. That 3 year plan is pretty deeply ingrained in the donor community though, its hard to find long term support to stick with something. In Mountain Fund's case, it has been possible only because a majority of our budget is from individual donors, not foundations. That's made it possible, so far, to stay in an area and work through the issues that are certain to come up once you do one thing. I'd love to hear more of your fathers stories, good lessons to learn there I bet.

[111]

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/117868111251870.xml&coll=7

[chris]

Interesting thoughts, all.

 

For what its worth, the AMGA (MtnFund's second "A") is indeed a nonprofit. And rightfully so. While MtnFund did a great job quoting the mission statement, you didn't do a very good job looking into what the AMGA does.

 

It is first an educational non-profit, offering courses and exams that create a national standard and raise the level of technical skills in the guiding community. It also provides guide services a national accreditation standard, which is a useful tool for clients.

 

Since the United States government doesn't have a national standard for guides or guide services operating in the U.S. (each NPS, BLM, and USFS is responsible for setting their own requirements), the AMGA is also lobbying to raise awareness of the AMGA and the need for a national standard (PM me or start another thread if you really want me to rant on about this).

 

The majority of the outdoor industry's support of the AMGA is in the form of grants to students to help lower the cost of courses and exams (running programs at a 3:1 or 2:1 ratio isn't cheap), and the AMGA is working to create an endowment fund for tuition costs. It pays its office staff equivalent salaries of other non-profits of its financial size.

 

Personally, I think overseas climbing-educational nonprofits, like the Khumbu Climbing School, go hand-in-hand with other more traditional non-profits like the Central Asia Institute. The KCS provides job training that can raise a participant's annual income, while the CAI provides a service by building a community resource. So they both deserve my support and promotion.

 

Mountain climbing is a selfish endeavor, and I never believe that climbers are some unique form of tourist that impact local communities less than others. When I'm guiding in the United States or abroad, I have a point of making my clients aware of local non-profits that could benefit from their support.

 

P.S. MtnFund, please check your PM's

[ken4ord]

Funding sources make things like this problematic for the nonprofits though. They like hit and run tactics. It's hard to find foundations who will support staying long term in an area and working slowly through one problem after another. They prefer the 3 year plan at best. Year One - study the needs of an area, prepare a plan to correct, Year Two- implement the plan and Year 3 - leave and start over somewhere else. If the team in the post above hadn't gone back to check those outhouses would still be in pieces on the ground. I see those projects all over the place. If groups don't keep going back and providing the education to make them viable what happens is villages end up feeling ripped off and after a while they don't even want to discuss projects, they feel too betrayed, too many times. That 3 year plan is pretty deeply ingrained in the donor community though, its hard to find long term support to stick with something. In Mountain Fund's case, it has been possible only because a majority of our budget is from individual donors, not foundations. That's made it possible, so far, to stay in an area and work through the issues that are certain to come up once you do one thing. I'd love to hear more of your fathers stories, good lessons to learn there I bet.

 

I have seen this approach in Africa as well. What they fail to do is involve the community in all three step, especially the first one. Without the involvement of the community there is no long term success. It is really crazy, I work in reasearch, sometimes I do visits to the National Reference Laboratory, and it is so sad when I step into a lab where there is a $50,000 (or more) piece of equipment that is just sitting there not being utilized. That is mainly because the project wasn't thought out. They do a pilot program and when the funding is over the use of the equipment is finished, because the don't have the resources to maintain and operate the equipment.

 

 

 

 

As for food aid doing more harm than good, I guess I was speaking from my own expience here. If the food aid was say bannanas and potatos, hell yeah, it could really screw things up for farmers here, because those are the most abundant crops. In Rwanda so far all of the food aid I have seen are things that aren't locally produced. In a country that is smaller than Conneticut and has a population of 8 million, they cannot produce enough food for everybody, even though every square inch of this country is cultivated. So from my experience food aid is important and helpful to the community.

[minx]

Ken- great points about food aid. Fortunately organizations have become more aware of the impact of they type of aid that is delivered.

 

i see the problem of these programs being just the opposite of you do. its not as hard to get the money for the research phase of the project in my field but what's harder is to get money for introduction of new technology into a community. however, the universal common denominator for an effective outcome is lots of community involvment.

[mtnfund]

Hi Chris and thanks for the PM. I don't have any beef with any of the A's. As far as I can tell they all do a good job at what they do and deserve to be supported. I think the industry could do a much better job at looking outside of its own borders though.

 

Climbing for instance doesn't just take place here but is a global sport. There is a lot for the industry to gain in extending its reach beyond our own borders. Orgs like KCS for example, create a lot of goodwill that enhances the image of the outdoor industry in Nepal. Being a good global citizen is important. If the industry is going to promote the recreational opportunities in other countries we could do a better job of giving back to those countries. It is interesting that there are quite a few organizations like KCS that are run by individuals from the US outdoor industry but not, so far as I have been able to discover anyway, much support going from the outdoor industry as a whole to those organizations and those countries.

 

This is a global industry with product sales and use all over the world. I am suggesting the industry do a better job of recognizing that and re-align its social programs to reflect the global nature of its business. All the A's, with no disrespect to them, are about taking care of our own at home. That's a good start, time for us to reach out more though. Just an opinion.

[billcoe]

Outdoor Industry – Disingenuous?

 

I pose this as a questions, not a statement of fact, hence the question mark. Some time back there was a post directed at me from Raindawg, it read like this.

 

I think money is much better spent on programs such as the above than on a mountaineering class/experiment. 7,000 people and three villages are helped, rather than a few handful. Mountaineering is a luxury. No food, clean water and basic health care: no big expedition fun.

 

That started me thinking. How many people feel this way? How much is this attitude reflected in the charitable practices of the outdoor industry. As Cascade Climbers members have proven to be passionate and vocal, as well as smart, I decided to put some things to you all for feedback. Does Raindawg have the right point of view? Should money be spent to provide basics? Well, if he does, he may be in the minority, let’s find out.

 

I read the latest report from the Outdoor Industry Association today. They say that the outdoor industry is a $730 billion dollar a year moneymaker! That’s a bunch of outdoor stuff. You can read the report for yourself Outdoor Industry Report

 

The Outdoor Industry Foundation, a part of the Association gives some money away each year too. Their program called Outdoor Idol promises media recognition of outstanding young athletes under the age of 23. They took in $600k in 2005 and spent it on “Promoting the benefits of outdoor recreation.” They (the association) also published a report on the participation of Hispanics in outdoor recreation that points out the potential lost sales by not making more effort to reach this fast growing sector of our society. It’s all on the web site. To be fair, I believe we do need to promote outdoor activity, we are all getting fat, our kids are getting fat at rates that are scary, hell I think I am getting fat too !

 

So, I figured with such a robust economy for the outdoor industry as a whole, there must be some charity going on out there too. I did a bit of google work on some of the most popular brands (look in your closet) and was somewhat surprised by what I found. I won’t mention names right out as I can’t afford a lawyer. For most all of the big name companies, I found that places like the Nepal, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Peru etc. figured prominently in their marketing. Buy this whatchamacallit and you too can conquer K2, Everest or some remote peak in some far off land. So, it stands to reason that if you are using these countries as your backdrop, you are helping out there too? Hmmm. Well........

 

One big company with a real rep for saving the planet says in its guidelines for saving the planet grants it gives out “we fund work that takes place in countries in which we do business (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Ireland, Austria, Spain, Scandinavia, Belgium, Korea, Japan, Chile and Argentina) Reads like a who’s who of environmental disaster zones to me.

 

Another big boy with a logo more famous that Mickey Dee did not seem to have any information on its web site about giving anything to anybody. Guess they don’t need that sort of promo anymore? I know they do though as they gave my clinic in Nepal about $10,000 a few years ago. I never met anyone from that company and no one ever called to ask what I did with the money, still it was quite nice of them.

 

Another biggie with a bunch of initials says it gives around $4,000,000 away each year. I checked and it does. All seems to go to US organizations though which struck me as odd. The same company has a travel business that offers to take you to Tanzania, Botswana, Nepal, and Peru to name just a few. You’d think they’d spend some money there?

 

So, this got me wondering, where does the money go? I can’t near account for what you’d expect from a $730 billion dollar industry but I found a few of the dollars. For starters, all charities with the first letter of their name being A did well. The top three choices by most of the big gear makers are charities that start with A.

 

One well-known A says it’s purpose in life is (take a deep breath, this is gonna take awhile) the promotion and dissemination of knowledge about the mountains and mountaineering in general as well as the cultivation of mountain craft, and the promotion of good fellowship among climbers; and the study of the high mountains of the world, the gathering of facts and the observation of phenomena pertaining to them, the production of a series of illustrated publications to present a complete description of the alpine mountains of the world; and the scientific exploration of high mountain elevations and of the regions lying within or about the Arctic and Antarctic circles; and the conservation and preservation of the mountain environment; and ---- well there are several ands. It all sounds good to me. I could use some more fellowship especially good fellowship. Lord knows my mountain craft needs updating. So, I decided to check this outfits tax return. As a public charity, they have to make it public you know. Wow, they have some money and a half. Over $8 million in assets. They take in around 2.2 million a year and pay out $315k in management, $145k for fundraising and spend about $1 million on programs. The programs are books and education (not quite $30k) (k means thousand) mountaineering research and library ($252k) and general support to expeditions and mountaineering related activities a whopping $700K.

 

The next A I looked into struck me as odd but they are on almost everyone's list to give money to. The mission is this. The _______ is a non-profit organization that seeks to represent the interest of American mountain guides by providing support, education, and standards. I had no idea those guides had it so bad they needed a nonprofit to give them a hand? I promise to pay my guide better next time, really. According to their tax return they take in around $492k a year and spend $400k of that on programs, $47k on fund raising and $80k on support services. Oh, about $220k seems to have been listed as payroll, just fyi. But the outdoor industry likes them, or so it seems.

 

The last A in the bunch may be the most productive. It’s hard to say for sure as I cannot locate their tax return. There is a brief posting on their web site that says that out of whatever they took in (around $1 million I’ve heard as a rumor only) they spent 15.5% on fund raising and admin, 49% on national policy, acquisitions & special programs, 22.5% on outreach and advocacy and 13% on something called general communications. These folks gave some money away as well. The guidelines to get money from though are very clear on one point; they will only fund projects inside the good old USA.

 

Seems like that good old USA is about the only place this $730 billion dollar a year industry wants it money to go. So when Raindawg tells me what he did, I have to wonder how typical that thinking is.

 

The gross national product of the US in 2000 was $10 trillion dollars. The GNP of Nepal is $42 million for 2006. Per capita GNP of the US is $38,000 per person as of 2000 the GNP per person of Nepal is $210.00 as of 2006. So, its pretty clear Nepal’s are not a likely market for all that outdoor gear. I wonder if that is why that $730 billion dollar industry invests little there.

 

Your thoughts?

 

And yes, my (OUR) tax return in right on my web site The Mountain Fund just click on the html version of the site, right there on the first page.

 

Oh, a footnote. Mountain Hardwear has been very good to us, without them I could not take the 20 medical people I will take this year to Nepal and Peru. Osprey and Montrail have also been very supportive. A special thanks is due Dan Mazur’s SummitClimb.

 

You make some very good points.

 

Concerning the thread: I suspect some of the people who believe that Nepalese shouldn't damn the rivers and electrify the villages have never been there, and in fact, if they themselves were to be forced to live this way "at peace and harmony with nature way of life" I suspect that they would be screaming their heads off about it within a week or 2 and complaining miserably about it all the while.

 

Congrats on trying to do something, it's much more than I can say. My brother and sister-in-law took a shot. Moved to Botswawna after joinging the peace corp. They took a shot at reversing the desertification of the Kalahari through extensive tree planting projects. It is a thing they are experts in. Bro suspected that the trees were cut and burned the moment that they left the country, and that their efforts had zero impact. He did not regret the experience.

[crackers]

I think the OIA and the member companies are scared because the core market demographics and user days are falling like a rock. If the industry is going to be as profitable as it hopes, it needs more than technically sophisticated white males to be involved, or it has to teach them that the prices should be much much higher.

 

The OIA's standard figure for the size of the core "outdoor business" is only about $3 billion, which is for manufacturers of "core" products. Coke sells a lot more water than that each year. You only get the hundred billion mark with ancilliary sales, the multiplier effect and hunting and fishing and bicycles.

 

Most of the foundations are incorporated in the US because that's the easiest way to reduce graft, bribery and malfeasance as required by US law for publicly traded companies. Do you really want people to spend more than the amount of the grant auditing a NGO in Nepal? My wife works for one of the world's best funded science oriented NGOs, with offices in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, India, the US and a few other places. In almost all of these places, funding is given out on a per project basis from the US branch. To my mind, it gets ridiculous quick.

 

Which brings my mind to food aid. Did you know that a USAID grant for, say, stationary has to be used to purchase US made stationary? And that the USAID logo must be prominently displayed on it? If you want to talk about subsistence farmers trying to market their goods, let's segregate food aid, relief and disaster response food aid. And then let's wonder about the long term consequences of enclosure via market flooding versus keeping a population alive with food relief.

 

There are good reasons I chose not to become a development economist.

 

 

[Dechristo]

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