VA
Insights

NGOs should participate in public emergency events with more ration, identifying needs and prioritizing their own mandates.

The existence of any commercial institutions or NGOs is based on their insights into social needs: what are the needs? can I meet the needs effectively? what is my value-add?

There is no exception even in the case of public emergency events.

However, during a public outbreak, demands get extremely urgent, huge and diverse in a very short time, and the government has been given more responsibility and power than the normal period. Therefore, NGOs need to analyze and assess demands with more calm, ration and proactiveness, so as to play the role of making good omissions and deficiencies.

As for the COVID-19 epidemic, there are two major types of social needs, which we call “planes” and “points”.

“Planes” refers to large-scale and common rigid needs, such as masks, protective suit, etc. These needs mainly come from medical institutions, and government agencies (such as the National Health Commission) are in the best position to coordinate the medical institution network. Thus, the medical network should be utilized to respond to the need for medical supplies, with the government taking the lead to collect information from bottom-up and then to raise and allocate relevant resources from top-down. The same applies to issues like the coordination of medical staff, the treatment of patients, and the epidemiological investigation, which are more of the government’s tasks as NGOs have little capacity and resources to fully cover needs of such massive scale.

“Points” needs may also appear on a large scale, such as the patients’ traffic problems, the shortage of epidemic prevention workers in communities, the daily care problems of families with special difficulties, people’s psychological problems caused by the epidemic and so on. These needs are not necessarily obvious and well-known, and also to satisfy these needs are not the primary task of the government in the outbreak. Therefore, social force is more needed to identify and solve these issues.

It’s worthy to point out that, since public emergencies often attract everyone’s attention, NGOs could seize the opportunity to investigate such events’ impact on their target groups as soon as possible and to develop specific social projects, instead of blindly following the crowd and devoting enormous energy into things that are “eye-catching” but deviant from organizational capacity or mandates.

Effective collaboration can get twice the result with half effort, regardless of the types of needs.

Firstly, solving “plane” needs is inseparable from the coordination between the government and social forces. For example, the government can coordinate the request and distribution of medical supplies, while NGOs can help to raise materials from more diverse channels, and the private sector can utilize their business strength to support, such as overseas procurement, warehousing, logistics and etc.

The emergency management of COVID-19 in China is led by the National Health Commission (“NHC”). Unlike the government department in charge of natural disaster emergency management, NHC has not built up the cooperation mechanism with NGOs, which, to a certain extent, caused the lack of effective collaboration between the government and social forces. In a recent interview, Peng Yanni, Secretary-General of Narada Foundation, suggested that “If we could have a coordination representative of NGOs to manage the contact with the government, it would be a meaningful solution to truly smooth the collaboration between government and social forces.”

Secondly, cooperation among NGOs is also very critical. Foundations and the front-line NGOs can cooperate in “raising” and “using”——the former can raise money and materials and the latter can get through the “last mile” to target beneficiaries, demonstrating complementary advantages and efficient operation. This would require foundations to be well prepared in the construction of such a cooporation “network” prior to the emergency events.

For example, Beijing Chunmiao Charity Foundation (“Chunmiao”) responded to the COVID-19 outbreak very soon, with both fund/material-raising and frontline volunteering. Chunmiao did not do it on its own, it cooperated with Fosun Foundation, CEIBS Alumni, Ginkgo Fellows from Ginkgo Foundation, “Breath” volunteer group and other local volunteer teams, utilizing the advantages and professional expertise of all parties. The partnership purchased a lot of vital rescue materials, such as oxygen generators and blood oximeters, and seized every minutes  to deliver to needing parties, creating several miracles of competing with death for time, none of which could have been done without effective collaboration among all.

In addition to building cooperation network, the nonprofit sector also needs a stronger “infrastructure” based on digitalization and professionalization

1. Digitalization: the integration and sharing of data and information

An open and transparent big data platform enable relevant parties to handle public emergencies with more calmness, including the bottom-up collection of funds/goods request and personal information, as well as the whole-process tracking for needs from hands raised till problem solved. Taking mask request at a hospital or in a household as an example, the big data platform can clearly disclose who initiate the call for demand, who verified the request, when the masks were purchased, where they were shipped from, when they were delivered, and even what the beneficiaries think of the masks’ quality. Such data loop can efficiently guide the action of resource owners and allocators, avoiding uneven distribution. The data provides evidence not only for project implementation when evaluating needs, but also for public monitoring.

We appeal to the leaders of NGOs to immediately build data system of the nonprofit sector, to set digitalization standards and guidelines for the industry, and to partner with leading technical companies. We suggest NGOs to promote collaborative network and its digitalization, to build a credible platform for NGOs in the network for routine services, and to link platform’s data with the government’s. Altogether, the sector could build a solid foundation for the “master coordination” of data and information against emergency crisis.

2. Professionalization: the capacity building of NGOs

Public emergencies, such as natural disasters and epidemic diseases, are unexpected tests for skills and capabilities accumulated from daily efforts. As the old saying goes, “train an army for a thousand days to use it for an hour”. In recent years, the performance of One Foundation in all kinds of emergencies is very outstanding, and has thus gained increasing public trust, which is inseparable from its unremitting efforts to “operate” its own disaster relief network throughout the whole country for years. Even in the normal days, One Foundation invests a lot of human resources and others to support the professional development of NGOs within its network, not just the skills of their own professions but also general project management capabilities.

Therefore, we also appeal to resourceful institutions for directing their resources to grassroots NGOs in the front-line and the communities, securing their funding stability and allowing diverse use of funds, which would empower grassroots NGOs to better accumulate and improve professional capabilities in daily works and respond more effectively in public emergencies.