Where Does Your Charity Donation Actually Go? The Uncomfortable Truth About the Aid Industry
- Adonias Tebebe
- 12 minutes ago
- 4 min read
By Benny Dembitzer | Author of The Global Famine Game
Last year, you probably donated to at least one appeal. Perhaps it was for famine relief in Sudan, earthquake victims in Turkey, or children facing malnutrition in East Africa. You gave because you cared. You trusted that your money would reach the people who desperately needed it.
But here's the question nobody wants to answer: Why are those same crises still headlines, year after year, decade after decade?
After 55 years working across 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa - for the World Bank, six UN agencies, and numerous international NGOs - I've come to an uncomfortable conclusion that I can no longer keep to myself.
The Aid Industry Has Become a Ponzi Scheme
I don't use that phrase lightly. A Ponzi scheme requires constant new money flowing in to pay those already in the system. The scheme doesn't solve anything - it perpetuates itself.
The international aid industry works the same way.
You need constantly more donations coming in to meet the costs of those administering the system itself. The intermediaries - the vast network of NGOs, consultants, researchers, and administrators positioned between your donation and the starving farmer in Malawi - consume the bulk of what you give.
The World Bank estimates that over two trillion dollars have been given to sub-Saharan Africa in the last half century. Where has it gone? Why are more people hungry now than when I started this work in the 1960s?
Living the Dream in NGOland
Here's what your donation actually funds before it reaches anyone in need:
International headquarters in London, Geneva, New York, and Washington - complete with research departments, communications teams, and fundraising specialists.
Country offices in capital cities, staffed by expatriates requiring international salaries, housing allowances, security details, and 4x4 vehicles.
Conferences and gatherings - a few years ago an events company in the Economist Group invited the development industry to an expensive, multi-day conference entitled 'Adapting African agriculture: building the resilience of small-scale producers'. The marketing literature highlighted the '2.5 hours of in-person conversations'. So how would the delegates spend the rest of their time out of the office?
The organisers suggested spa treatments, snorkelling and scuba diving. And where better to do that than in the host city, Sharm-el-Sheikh, the Egyptian resort where Mubarak's family had invested billions (and well away from those struggling small-scale farmers).
Local staff who are invariably the children of elites - useful for navigating bureaucracy, but hardly representatives of the communities they're meant to serve.
By the time your £50 donation has passed through this machinery, how much actually reaches the woman in rural Kenya trying to feed her children?
The honest answer: far less than you'd ever imagine.
The Silence of the Lambs
Why doesn't anyone speak up? Because everyone in the system is complicit.
The policymakers need to show results. The academics need research grants. The NGO executives need to justify their salaries. The local staff need their jobs. And the intended beneficiaries? They've learnt that saying the right things to the right people brings the next round of aid.
There's an unspoken agreement - what I call a "silent omertà" - never to admit failure. Evaluations are conducted in-house, under conditions of total confidentiality. Lessons are never shared. Mistakes are repeated endlessly.
I've watched organisations build schools that lie abandoned within years because no one trained teachers to staff them. I've seen water wells drilled and left to rust because no one showed villagers how to maintain them. I've witnessed seeds distributed that farmers didn't know how to plant.
And then? The same organisations launch new appeals, with new photographs of starving children, and the cycle begins again.
What Actually Works
In all my years, the most effective projects I've encountered share common characteristics:
They're small. A single woman working with farming communities in Malawi, teaching them to use local materials to improve their soil, has achieved more lasting change than programmes costing millions.
They're long-term. One project in Kenya has been running for 20 years, gradually expanding as communities themselves drive the growth. No grand launches. No celebrity endorsements. Just patient, persistent work.
They're locally led. The best initiatives I've seen put resources directly in the hands of older women farmers - the people who actually understand their land, their communities, and their needs.
They build self-reliance, not dependency. The goal should be to make aid unnecessary, not to create permanent recipients.
The Questions You Should Be Asking
Before your next donation, consider asking:
What percentage of my donation reaches intended beneficiaries directly?
How long has this organisation been working in this specific location?
What has actually changed as a result of their previous work?
Are local people leading this initiative, or just implementing instructions from abroad?
What's the exit strategy? When will this community no longer need outside help?
If the answers are vague, or if you're directed to glossy impact reports full of impressive-sounding numbers, be sceptical. Real transformation cannot be measured in wells drilled or seeds distributed. It can only be witnessed in communities that have genuinely changed.
Why I Wrote This Book
I've spent over half a century as part of this system. I've worked for the donors, the intermediaries, and alongside the beneficiaries. I've seen enough to know that our current approach is not just failing - it's actively making things worse.
The Global Famine Game pulls back the curtain on the structures that keep the world's poorest people trapped in poverty. It names names. It explains the mechanisms. And it offers a different path forward - one that puts power back in the hands of the communities we claim to be helping.
This isn't comfortable reading. But if you've ever wondered why your donations don't seem to make a lasting difference, you deserve to know the truth.
Get the Full Story
The Global Famine Game exposes the hidden machinery of the international aid industry and reveals what genuine development actually looks like.
Drawing on 55 years of first-hand experience across Africa and Asia, Benny Dembitzer challenges everything you thought you knew about charity, aid, and fighting global poverty.
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