International Efforts to Promote Local Resource Mobilization for Philanthropy in Africa: Why the Ford Foundation's Initiatives Failed

Abstract

The exportation of institutions from developed economies to developing countries has been a development strategy that international actors have employed for decades. In the 1990s and early 2000s international donors introduced philanthropic foundations into African countries. The Ford Foundation was instrumental in setting up a number of foundations in African countries to promote the mobilization of local philanthropic resources for self-reliant community-driven development. However, more than a decade after their establishment the Ford-founded philanthropic institutions continued to depend heavily on international funding. This dissertation investigates why Ford’s exportation of foundation philanthropy to African countries for the promotion of local resource mobilization was unsuccessful. Current explanations attribute the local resource mobilization ineffectiveness of donor-founded philanthropic institutions to domestic factors --- developing country governments’ failure to provide an enabling environment for the development of nonprofit institutions. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, I go beyond the endogenous explanations to examine the role and institutional transplantation strategies of the external actor, the Ford Foundation. Based on in-depth interviews with former staff and consultants of the Ford Foundation, as well as staff of selected Ford-founded African foundations in Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal (namely The Kenya Community Development Foundation, the African Women's Development Fund, and TrustAfrica) I contend that the oft-cited domestic “obstacles” are actually the preexisting local conditions that Ford should have taken into consideration during the formulation and implementation of its philanthropy promotion program in African countries. Using institutional transplantation theories as a framework, I argue that Ford failed to achieve its local resource mobilization goal in African countries because the American-inspired foundation model that it transplanted in those countries for the purpose was incompatible with the local African cultures of giving and philanthropy.