The Philanthropy Secretariat

As my first posting outlines, my primary goal for this summer has been to gain a perspective I felt I would be severely lacking as a development practitioner without: really understanding what it's like to get things done in an African government.

At first I thought I'd intern with the Finance Minister, in order to understand, you know, how Finance Ministries work. I am primarily studying economics after all. Though I did receive an offer to work with the Ministry of Finance, by then I had realized there was another opportunity more closely aligned with my development interests.

Minister Natty Davis is part of the President's Office and works on initiatives that are strategic in nature, require cross ministry coordination, or do not fit neatly into any single ministry's day to day activities. I know, I know, it's true. Completely analogous to the Strategy and Business Operations team I was in at Google.

To date his primarly role was leading the Liberia Reconstruction and Development Committee (LRDC), which is moving into the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs. As such, there was some significant ambiguity in my internship when I first accepted. I'd heard however, that though traditional aid coordination was shifting with the LRDC, working with Liberia's growing private foundation partners would stay with Minister Davis.

Upon accepting my offer, I made it clear that I was very interested in working in this space if there was need. I am sure that foundations make many mistakes in their engagement with developing countries, and I didn't want to be perpetuating them based on my ignorance. Working from the government side on foundation coordination would allow me to better understand best practices and develop my own perspective on how foundations should best engage on development issues.

I received the other day Liberia's plan for a newly formed Philanthropy Secretariat. Apparently, this is the first office of it's kind, designed to coordinate foundations and engage directly with a government. It's actually funded by four of the five foundations that are very active in Liberia right now. It's a two person team (one manager and one assistant) responsible for coordination with foundations, including:

• Facilitating information sharing between foundations
  
• Determining which Liberian government priorities should be supported by foundations
• Expanding existing foundation relationships
  
• Establishing new foundation relationships
• Helping connect foundations to NGOs
• Facilitating foundation trips to Liberia
• Monitoring existing activities suported by foundations and carried out by NGOs.

This is essentially one person's job for the next year (the assistant will play a very administrative role). Needless to say, I think he could use my help.