The author, Mark Hill, is not on any of your blogrolls, and probably won’t be any time soon. He writes for CRACKED.com. Some of his other posts include: ‘The 7 Ballsiest Pranks You won’t Believe Actually Worked’ (viewed 2,640,722 times), ‘The 7 Most Irritating Characters From Otherwise Great Movies (viewed 2,113,788 times), and ’16 Real Old-Timey Photographs That Will Give you Nightmares’ (viewed 1,438,858 times). (No I will not hyperlink those.) By the way, warning: his prose is riddled with profanity that is NSFW.

Remember my chart on influence? Well, this guy would be snug up on top of the far left axis (even more snug than Ashton Kurcher) and way off the top of the chart. He’s clearly got an enormous audience of aid non-experts. How much influence that translates into, I’m not sure, especially given that this seems to be his only post on the subject. What is both good and surprising is that his post is actually pretty well researched by today’s standards (i.e. Googling and regurgitating what other people have written online) and not far off the mark to things we might say (with fewer four letter words). He links his reasoning to legitimate people that we know: Tim Odgen, Saundra Schimmelpfennig (yes, of Good Intentions are Not Enough), Brett Keller, Engineers Without Borders, The Guardian, The Economist, Forbes, Aid Watch, even a couple of academic journals.

Here is his list of five popular forms of charity that aren’t helping:

1. Awareness Campaigns: Most Are a Waste of Time
2. Donating Clothing
3. Choosing Your Charity Based on Its Overhead
4. Earmarking Your Donations
5. Volunteering After Disasters

See, not too bad. In fact, Mark Hill is sort of like a brassy potty-mouthed version of Saudra Schimelpfennig, whom he links to at least four times. Well, at least in this post he is; I can’t imagine Saundra writing anything remotely akin to ’6 Pet Products That Prove Rich People Have Gone Insane’.

In a way, this could be a mini case study from The Tipping Point. What Mark Hill has essentially done is used Cracked.com as a virtual Connector and acted like a Salesmen to expose his audience of list-loving, humor-seeking ‘Cracked Friends’ to the information generated by Mavens like Tim and Saundra. The result may be the best kind of influence an aid blogging ‘information specialist’ could ever hope for.

Figure 1. Edging Toward A Tipping Point?

You see, the danger of being an aid blogger is that half the time you’re just preaching to the choir. Most people, for whatever reason (we’ll just leave that open) simply don’t subscribe to blogs like Good Intentions are Not Enough. But, these same people may very well be the ones who hand over their used underwear to stupid campaigns for knickerless Africans, (btw, bravo to Zimbabwe’s finance minister for following Ghana’s lead today in banning imports of used underwear), or misuse Charity Navigator to rule out charities with anything less than 100% program/0% overhead ratios, or voluntarily airdrop themselves into disaster zones to ‘help however they can’.

Let’s play a little game: Which is greater, the number of wrongly-skilled volunteers on the ground within two months of the earthquake in Haiti or the number of people who read an article criticizing volunteering in disaster zones? Which is greater, the number of little dresses made from pillow cases sent to Africa (over a million) or the number of people who could make a reasoned argument why that isn’t super sweet? Which is greater, the number of slacktivists that changed their Facebook status, wore a bracelet, or used a protest Twitter hashtag AND NOTHING ELSE, or the number of people who actually donated a significant sum of cash or time to the same cause?

Figure 2. Making it Effective

So it is then that a non-specialist can write the most effective aid blog post ever. Key features: a snarky fowl-mouthed humor, a huge audience (that is not already singing in the choir), and a willingness to restate the thinking of actual experts.

1. Applied Creativity

I don’t know if creativity is a finite thing, but I do know that once I started blogging and tweeting, I began using a greater measure of it for things of questionable value.

2. The Big Trade Off

Choose how you use your time wisely. Somewhere along that line is a praxis sweet spot where action learning, reflective work, and contemplative activism takes place.

3. Snark Love

If you’re insecure about your positions, your social network following will likely plateau with your mom. You don’t really have to be snarky, but it helps to have an opinion and the ability to express it strongly and succinctly.

4. Following to Death

You can’t drink from a fire hose. There’s so many Twitter feeds, blogs, chatty colleagues and other sources of news and information out there, its very easy to end up with information overload. Don’t follow everyone who follows you; don’t subscribe to every blog on topic; don’t be afraid to unfollow people who live-tweet their pedicure. You have to put some filters on this stuff.

5. Expertise in the Mirror

Go to a new country and in three weeks you can write a book; in three months you can write an essay; in three years you have nothing to say. I was always so dismayed when my grandfather who had a PhD in theology would invariably answer every question I had about God with “I don’t know.” It’s starting to make sense now.

6. Inspiration

A few blogs are actually deeply informed by direct experience with aid beneficiaries – those that we often lazily referred to as ‘the poor’. And these are special things (think Owen Scott’s series on PlayPumps). But many blogs are simply opinionated responses to op-eds and articles and other blogs. It seems we write for each other about each other as often as not. It’s not so much navel gazing as it is cliquey aloofness. This post for example.

7. Anatomy of a Dog Pile

Dog piles are killer fun! They can also be effective at actually getting miscreants’ attention and changing their stupid behavior, whether they’re a BINGO or a lone individual. Granted, its like a month of aid bloggers falling over themselves to repeat what’s already been said or be the first to write a compendium of all the other posts. But, not every bad aid blunder gets a dog pile – it helps to be in the trifecta sweet spot.

8. The Inequality of Influence

Don’t feel bad if your Twitter feed doesn’t garner 10,000 followers or your FB page isn’t ‘liked’ to the tune of six-figures or it takes two years for your blog to attract 25,000 page views. Real influence is a rare thing – if you’re writing to garner or demonstrate influence, you’re probably self-deluded. Here’s a little game – grab some ice cream and locate yourself on this chart. Be honest. Be okay with it. Write on. Right on.

9. The Big Crowd Out

Professional aid work is already so cluttered with organizational demands, sometimes it feels like we’re feeding a machine rather than helping feed the hungry.  We have to take care that our social networking activities don’t further crowd out the doing of the real work for which we joined this sector. There are diminishing returns for how much of this you do. (Imagine an alternative chart for this.) What the donors and bosses don’t know about how a ‘real aid professional’ spends their day might not hurt them, but it may very well hurt our collective efforts to address famine, human trafficking, gender violence, educational quality, water scarcity, and so on and so forth.

Blogging in the field…of international development

I realized the other day that I hadn’t updated my blogroll in about a year and a half. A lot has changed since then. Bill Easterly closed down the Aid Watch blog and is now blogging at NYU’s Development Research Institute; Tales from the Hood went off the air and locked many of his posts up under password protection (still has an active FB page though); others simply stopped blogging. I also starting following bloggers and sites, both new and old, that I hadn’t previously. Some of these are quite noteworthy, like Project Syndicate, Dave Algoso’s Find What Works, Duncan Green’s From Poverty to Power, and Ian Thorpe’s KM on a Dollar a Day. Take a look at the updated blogroll and find out who I think is worth following on matters related to international development. If you think I’ve grossly neglected a worthy blog or site, please let me know in the comments section. I’m always open to discovering new voices. Below is the list of new additions to my blogroll with this update. To see my complete blogroll (not just the new additions) click on the ‘About’ drop down menu on the top of the page and select ‘Blogroll’, or just click HERE.

Africa is a Country

A collective media blog with scores of contributors covering media, politics, sports, opinion, and events. Explicitly not covering famine, Bono, or Barack Obama. (But is it really an African blog without Bono?)

Aid on the Edge of Chaos

Written by Ben Ramalingam, this blog explores the nexus of complexity sciences and international aid. “It is hoped that the blog will provide a means of connecting up the emerging community of practitioners interested in alternatives to linear, mechanistic approaches to development.” Right on.

Development Research Institute – NYU

Oh rejoice, Bill Easterly blogs again!! No comments are allowed, which takes half the fun out of the experience, but Bill, along with Yaw Nyarko, keep their posts lively, short, and daily. A must follow.

Evan Lieberman

An associate professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, Evan manages to keep the posts accessible and non-academic. They are still informed and smart. He writes about governance, development, identity, and politics in Africa.

Find What Works

Dave Algoso is a young international development professional based in Kenya and a recent graduate of NYU’s Wagner School’s MPA program. He’s a very prolific and good writer – smart, articulate, and broad in scope. One of the best new additions to the blogroll.

From Poverty to Power

I can’t tell you why I didn’t have Duncan Green’s blog on the roll before. What an omission! Duncan is Head of Research for Oxfam GB. He can be a bit academic for some, but he is influential on a broad spectrum of topics related to international development: economics, aid, politics, climate change, global finance, gender, human rights, conflict and security, etc. A must follow.

Gernot Wagner

A young and brilliant environmental economist at the Environmental Defense Fund. Author of “But Will the Planet Notice?: How Smart Economics can Save the World.” He keeps most of his informative posts very short and focused.

Humanosphere

Update: I forgot to add this one to the original post. (forehead slap!) Tom Paulson at KPLU (public radio 88.5 in Tacoma, WA – awesome jazz station!) gives us news and analysis of global health and the fight against poverty. It’s part news outlet and part blog, and completely worth following.

KM on a Dollar a Day

Ian Thorpe works in the UN on knowledge management, monitoring and evaluation. The blog is fairly focused, sometimes technical, and not for everybody. But for those interested in KM, DME, data analysis, research, transparency, and smart aid, there is no better blog out there than this.

Open the Echo Chamber

Ed Carr is an academic that blogs on a broad spectrum of topics related to international development, but is at his best when talking about climate change, food security, livelihoods, and adaptation. I don’t read his blog that often because his font is too darn small. Ed is definitely worth reading; I just wish he’d change his font.

Owen Abroad 

Another overdue omission. Owen Barder is an influential thinker from the Center for Global Development. Smart as they come, broad spectrum of topics, always timely. He has a huge following and with reason.

Poverty Matters

Along with DAWNS Digest, (and Humanosphere), a key source of news and commentary for those working or interested in global development.

Project Syndicate

Posts from global thought leaders like Jagdish Bhagwati, Jeffry Frankel, Kenneth Rogoff, Josesph Stiglitz, Joseph Nye, Dani Rodrik, Jeffrey Sachs, Andres Velasco, Bjorn Lomborg, Naomi Wolf, Christopher Hill, and Anne-Marie Slaughter. Need I say more? A must read.

Roving Bandit

Lee Crawfurd writes about economics, democracy, development, and Africa. He used to based in Southern Sudan. Today he’s at Oxford Policy Management. His voice is fresh, readable, and sometimes snarky, but always intelligent.

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Although there are a bunch of bloggers here writing about everything from education to technology to impact investing to nonprofit management to social entrepreneurship, I pretty much follow this because Matt Forti from the Bridgespan Group posts there about measuring social impact.

1. Most Popular: Poverty Tourism: A Debate in Need of Typological Nuance
   (also won Most Absurdly Long)
2. Most Sought After: Corporate Social Responsibility in Four Easy Steps
   (also won Most Enduringly Popular)
3. Most Effective: Profits & Perverse Incentives: The New Face of Microfinance
   (also an Author’s Favorite Three)
4. Most Underrated: A Moderate Elitist (also an Author’s Favorite Three)
5. Most Awesome Image: The Myth of the Plan (also an Author’s Favorite Three)
6. Most Fun to Read: The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: on language, food, humility, and humor. (also won Most Fun to Write)
7. Most Hostile: Evaluating with Purpose – Part 1: The Evaluation Charade
   (also won Least Followed Up)
8. Most Academic: Participation Ladders 101
9. Most Sucky (i.e. Biggest Bomb): A Civil Dissection of David Korten’s Principles for a New Economy
10. If You Read Just One Post: The First Principle of Community-Based International Development

Image: Page views from around the world

Ironically, China does not like Staying For Tea. That’s okay, 118 other countries do.

And now, the longer version:

Two years and 25,000 page views lager, I write this post both in both celebration and trepidation. I’m really quite happy to have managed to keep this thing alive for two years, despite having abandoned it not once, but twice, for six-month periods when work overwhelmed my desire to nurture it. It’s been an exercise in learning, connecting, and brain dumping. I’m also genuinely honored that in this time people have navigated to one of these pages 25,000 times. Why the trepidation? Well, I run two risks in writing this ‘best of’ post.

First, I am a bit sheepish about my numbers. For bloggers, there are few metrics to gauge the value you add to the world by hunkering over your desk after working hours to bang out a post you think someone else might enjoy reading.  (Yes, I realize some geniuses have figured out how to get paid to this full-time – I’m not one of these.) WordPress, however, does count and continually remind you of your page views and subscribers. If we’re not careful, a blogger’s perceived worth can track with these numbers the way a Wall Street trader’s ego tracks to his end-of-year bonus. And much like traders compare the size of their bonus for bragging rights, bloggers like to know where they stand vis-a-vis their peers in terms of these numbers. So, despite an effort to not care, it with some apprehension that I announce in celebration that I’ve only just now surpassed 25,000 page views. This, after two years of blogging. (Raised eyebrows, muffled chuckles) On the other hand, I may be the least prolific blogger in my field, posting on average a little more than once a month. To have anyone still paying attention at all is gratifying enough for me.

Secondly, I risk ending up like the rock group Journey, with more Greatest Hits compilations than actual albums. This is only my 35 post, and five of those hardly even count as real posts, and yet I’m going to write my first ‘best of’ compilation. Hmm. But, I want to commemorate these milestones and thank my readers for engaging with these topics together with me. And so, after much ado, the winners are:

Poverty Tourism: A Debate in Need of Typological Nuance

Bloggers and journalists like to write about poverty tourism using a huge range of terms, tones, and intended meaning. Having a coherent debate is hard when you aren’t really talking about the same thing. To keep us all from talking past each other, I created a taxonomy of terms used across various posts and articles – some openly disparaging like “poverty porn”, others more benign like “community tours.”  The hope was to resource more linguistic clarity around the fault lines and confluence in the ever ongoing discussion of poverty tourism.

Awards: Most Popular, Most Absurdly Long

Most Popular: I liked this post because I learned a lot writing it. Honestly, I hadn’t previously given too much thought to the topic and this was a great excuse to dig in and figure out what it was all about. I shared what I learned on my blog and it took off. The post has garnered about 1/10th of all page views since launching my blog. It also got nine 5-star ratings and generated 28 comments. Interestingly enough, the third and fourth most popular posts are also about voluntourism. Poverty Tourism Taxonomy 2.0 - the one with the awesome graphic (shown above) that went semi-viral – is #4 with just under 1000 views. It was also the most commented on post, with nearly 50 comments. The Future of Voluntourism (#3 with 1,100 views) was actually the first blog post I wrote after introducing myself and the new blog. Why in the world I chose to write about voluntourism first, given the stated purpose and theme of my blog, is beyond me. You know, the thing with my brother just sparked my thinking and I went with it and began exploring a topic I really knew nothing about. Next thing you know three of the four most read posts on my blog are about voluntourism and I’m getting known as a voluntourism blogger and winning awards for it and stuff. Crazy. Perhaps instructive for new bloggers out there – stay on topic…or not.

Most Absurdly Long: Breaking all blogging assumptions, my most popular post is also my longest. Supposedly, blog posts should be 500-700 words of punchy reading. This one topped 3,300 words, had six pictures, a graphic, and 30 hyperlinks! WTH?! Again, instructive for new bloggers out there – keep in short and punchy…or not.

Most Instructive?

Corporate Social Responsibility in Four Easy Steps

In 2009 I did some consulting work for Barrick Gold Corporation and World Vision Canada and wrote a case study that I presented at the Devonshire Initiative in Toronto. The study was published in two languages and helped the company win some CSR awards. This post outlined the simple framework for assessing CSR strategy that I used. Successful CSR strategies produce benefits to both society and to business and they do so in such a way that the relationship between society and business is improved.

Awards: Most Sought After, Most Enduringly Popular

Of the 45 most popular search terms that bring people from search engines to my site, more than a third of them (16) are some variant of ‘four steps of CSR’! This may indicate that people search to come back to this one like some kind of resource. Crikey! I imagine some poor newly appointed CSR Director somewhere reading this hoping that CSR can really be done in four easy steps. As of right now, this post has been viewed 2,267 times – just seven views shy of winning Most Popular Post. It was the most popular post in the last month, the last quarter, and the last year (Home page notwithstanding). Even in the last 7 days, only my most recent post outperforms it! Next week it will overtake Poverty Tourism as all time most popular, which is really weird since, thematically speaking, it may also be the least likely post to have been written on this blog.

Profits & Perverse Incentives: The New Face of Microfinance

Microfinance has lost its first love and lost its way. A focus on investor incentives over borrower incentives led to six fundamental shifts in the practice of microfinance that changed its face and left it operating more like a for-profit bank and less like an innovative pro-poor movement. I posted a punchier version of this at the Huffington Post titled How Microfinance Lost its Soul. It did fairly well. 

 Awards: Most Effective, Author’s Favorite (1 of 3)

I really had something to say. I wanted it to be read and to be effective. I think this post succeeded for several reasons. First, I’m actually a bit a subject expert from both an academic and experiential standpoint. Second, I’m passionate about what I see as a sad hijacking of an innovative pro-poor movement toward financial inclusion. Third, I kept it relatively short. The result was an effective piece that was reposted and shared widely. I’m proud of it.

A Moderate Elitist

I think a case for competence can and should be made, but I don’t see the value in embracing elitism. Every aid professional started somewhere and I bet most of us made mistakes that would make us cringe today. But, what if, instead of being mentored into professionals and allowed to learn from our mistakes, some aid elitist had bashed us upside the head and told us we should take our good intentions elsewhere and leave development and aid to the pros? What we should be doing is encouraging competence with a healthy measure of grace and humility.

Awards: Most Underrated, Author’s Favorite (1 of 3)

And by underrated, I mean under-read. I think it is one my best posts and yet it’s only been viewed  370 times. WTH? If you haven’t read it yet, now’s your chance to right this wrong.

The Myth of the Plan

98% of the relevant information we need to write a good plan is unknown at the time we write it. We more or less know where we want to go, but the map we draw to get there is based on heroic assumptions about the terrain ahead well beyond our vision. We fall into the myth of the plan twice, once when we write the myth, and again when we try to manage to the myth. When we plan, we omit a reasonable cushion, making it unrealistic. When we manage, we apply an unreasonable rigidity, making it mythological. 

Awards: Most Awesome Image, Author’s Favorite (1 of 3)

My goodness that is an awesome illustration! I don’t remember exactly how I made it now, but it captures the essence of the post so well. I also like that I peppered words like ‘heroic’ and ‘mythological’ throughout the post. I’m also still pretty pumped about the content of this post – I still stand by it. In fact, hardly a month goes by where my views aren’t reconfirmed and deepened on this one. The only thing I’d change is the ending – I think I’d like to rewrite the ‘How Then Shall We Plan’ part and be a bit more detailed and prescriptive about how to fix the sad state of development planning. Still, I’m proud of this post and happy that it was well received and well read. (#6 most popular post)

The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: on language, food, humility, and humor.

“Oh, hell no!” I’m neither that culturally sensitive nor that drunk.

It’s important to make an effort to embrace that which is local, be it food or language, if only to remind ourselves that we are the guest, that our language and food and culture are just ones among thousands of similar inherent value. Of course, doing this takes a healthy dose of humility, self-depricating humor, and an iron stomach. But such efforts are generally well received and appreciated – they may even help pave the way for more effective community work. 

Awards: Most Fun to Read, Most Fun to Write

This post was an instant hit, not least because it contained a couple of jokes and funny anecdotes. A student in Oregon actually wrote a blog post called ‘Why’s this so good?‘ about this blog post on their journalism program’s site. She writes ‘Why this blog post is great…is because it’s self-deprecating. The best person to make fun of is yourself. While humbling himself, he makes genuine statements about the world and appreciates those around him. He writes for humor, but he writes to be real.‘ That was sweet.

Evaluating with Purpose – Part 1: The Evaluation Charade

For someone whose job description is built around doing evaluation work, I can be remarkably hostile toward project evaluations. They tend to be expensive, distracting, and mostly useless. They can be surprisingly costly, often requiring projects to set aside 5-10% of the project funds that could otherwise have been budgeted to activities that further project objectives. They eat up a lot of staff time, not so much during the evaluation itself, but in the set up for it – designing indicators, measuring baselines, managing monitoring activities, etc. But most critically, very few ever accomplish the stated purpose of the evaluation – to provide rigorous evidence about whether the project was any good or not.

Awards: Most Hostile, Least Follow-up

I really really like this post. There’s truth in it, but it is a bit hostile. For example: “The truth is that most project evaluations fail to provide either learning or accountability.” “There may be some perfunctory discussion and finger wagging around negative findings, but this is largely just a charade – everyone pretends the evaluation mattered a great deal when in fact it mattered not at all.” And then it just gets nasty. Nevertheless, I still stand by this post and wish I could force every manager in my organization to read it. Unfortunately, I never followed up on writing the rest of the series that this was supposed to be a part of. So, it ends up being a long gripe session without any hint at what to do besides the last sentence: ‘Stop the charade’.

I’ve had a few posts like this that didn’t get followed up on. I didn’t come back and show some of the Badly Presented Data examples I got following said post. I didn’t continue publishing the best posts in Spanish as promised here. (I can partially blame my wife on that one who had promised to help with the translation and took up tennis instead.) Maybe this will be a year three resolution, to follow up on these, especially the evaluation series. I think its important to talk about what makes a good impact evaluation and what makes a good evaluation strategy, not just gripe about what a charade the current state of  much development program evaluation seems to be.

Participation Ladders 101

There are a number of single dimension participation ladders that development facilitators should be aware of, if only for academic purposes. If you’re already familiar with participation ladders, you might want to skip this post – I’m not going to provide much commentary or opinion here – this is more of an academic introduction to these conceptual tools for those that might be newer to the field of international development.

Award: Most Academic

Yeah, more like most boring. Man what a sleeper! I even get bored reading this one. Nevertheless, I intended it to be a good resource for those who haven’t been exposed to the conceptual tool of a participation ladder before. As I mention in the post, I actually prefer the multidimensional table of Robert Chambers. But I guess its good to have a historical perspective on the development of the ladders before you dive into the table. I guess. At any rate, it’s the seventh most popular post I’ve written, so it seems to be a useful summation and that’s why I wrote it.

A Civil Dissection of David Korten’s Principles for a New Economy

Award: Most Sucky

So, David Korten releases a new book, ‘Agenda for a New Economy’ and writes a blog post about it laying out ten ‘common sense principles to frame the New Economy’. And for some reason, I decide I’m going to trash on them like an arrogant thesis advisor. I don’t know what got into me. I just harangue on the guy in an overly academic and pedantic tone. I say things like ‘I mostly agree with this, but I think the efficiency framework is inaccurate.’ and ‘Disagree. Rather than increasing the money supply (adopting an expansionary monetary policy), a more appropriate tool would be an expansionary fiscal policy.’ and ‘You unfortunately contradict yourself here.’ What a prig! Naturally, and luckily, nobody read it. (At 120 page views, it is the least viewed ‘real’ blog post.) No need to start now. 

The First Principle of Community-Based International Development

Award: If you Read Just One Post

Read this one. This is the first of a six-part series of posts that republished the article Staying for Tea that is the conceptual foundation of this blog. In the past two years the blog has wandered around an unlikely set of topics ranging from microfinance to voluntourism, evaluation, and cultural sensitivity. I don’t know if I’ll get any more focused in the year to come – I’m planning on writing about global citizenship in the coming months – but I do know where the heart of what I wanted to write about is, and it began with this post.

“Value people over projects, and effectiveness over good intentions. Hold in tension  a humanitarian ethic of service and a professional ethic of competence. Good international development is competent service guided by good principles and done through good practice.”

Some other interesting blog stats:

Most clicked hyperlinks: The Krista Foundation, Good Intentions Are Not Enough, Amazon, the late Aid Watchers, New York Times, the late Tales From The Hood, and How Matters.

Biggest Referrers: Search Engines, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Huffington Post, goodintents.org, talesfromethehood.com, aviewfromthecave.com, Google, and how-matters.org

Busiest Day: August 18, 2010, right after posting Poverty Tourism: A Debate in Need of Typological Nuance. 242 page views

UPDATE July 2, 2012: Three days after posting this, I published Deflating the SOCCKET Ball. The next day I got 533 page views. Four days after that I published Aid Blogging: A Cautionary Tale in Charts. The next day I got 670 page views. A few days later, 1,256. How quickly things can change.