john anner

author, international development expert, fundraising strategist and avid explorer

east meets west

Launching Thrive Networks

east meets west, international development, leadership, vietnamJohn AnnerComment

When the world changes, you have to change with it. Twenty-six years ago, Vietnam was just emerging from the dark years of socialist austerity and international isolation. Today, it is a development success story with a burgeoning middle class and a booming economy. Good for the Vietnamese people, but 26 years ago East Meets West was the only NGO game in town. Today, there are over 1,000 international organizations registered to work in the country. So we decided to re-launch East Meets West as Thrive Networks and seek our fortunes in the rest of the world (without leaving Vietnam behind, not by a long shot).

This was not an easy or quick decision; it took years of hard strategic planning work. But we started from the very beginning with a focus on transformation, not just change. We exhumed all our assumptions, aired out our values, cast a critical eye on favored programs, and looked out around the world to see what we thought was fresh, innovative, challenging and needed.

This led us to realize that a lot of innovation was happening in the rapidly-growing NGO sector, but most of these groups were really struggling to reach scale. We also came to believe that the era of helping low-income people with basic needs was over, and it was time to focus on low-opportunity individuals and communities and figure out ways to help them not just survive, but thrive. So we set up Thrive Networks to find great partners with innovative solution-oriented programs, and invite them to join with us to reach as many people as possible.

The board of directors voted in late 2013 to approve this strategy, and in February 2014 to change the name to Thrive Networks. This has led to a fantastic new organizational energy, with lots of new partners, three mergers completed, and more to come. We also learned a lot of lessons about how to do it right. Being a good American, as Churchill once noted, I try to do things correctly, but only after exploring every other option first. So we made some big mistakes along the way.

I'll share those in another post. And on Friday, our new website goes live -- with a big new section devoted to providing real insight into our performance. There is a lot to be proud of, but we don't shy away from telling the truth. Indeed, much of our work is now reviewed and verified by third parties.

Stay posted!

John

Breakthrough Performance #1: Introduction

organizational mgmt, east meets west, leadershipJohn AnnerComment

I have become increasingly obsessed with how social change organizations can achieve breakthrough – meaning how can they become powerful in effecting the social change that they want to see. I’ve also become discouraged at the way our sectors are structured, and the sources of financing available. At the end of the day, it’s only possible to be big and powerful if you can raise enough money – no matter if you are a for-profit company, and non-profit organization, or some hybrid form. Unfortunately, the sources of catalytic capital are few and few between, meaning that most social change organizations will languish in marginal obscurity for many years, never reaching escape velocity and changing the world.

Integrity

east meets west, international developmentJohn AnnerComment

Every clan has its rituals and code of behavior. This is true of organizations big and small, from a girls softball team to a Rotary Club to any organized religion, and is just as characteristic of unconventional enterprises as it is of mainstream ones. The penalties for violating a code of behavior can be extreme – think of the IRA and “kneecapping,” where informants would have their knee caps shot off.  The prospect of a lifetime of disability and pain is a strong incentive not to talk to the authorities.

Quang Ngai

east meets west, international development, travel, vietnamJohn AnnerComment

There are some areas of Vietnam where development is exploding, and then there is Quang Ngai. A beautiful province with mountains to the west and the East Sea to the (you guessed it) east, Quang Ngai is still over 80% rural, quite poor and with no tourism to speak of. There are a few industrial projects, and downtown Quang Ngai is bustling, but for most people in the province, life goes on much as it did ten or twenty years ago.

Quang Ngai, located south of Hoi An in central Vietnam, is best known as the site of the My Lai massacre, a particularly nasty example of American soldiers out of control and killing every person they could find.  These days, according to the members of the provincial People’s Committee I spent a few days with this week, My Lai is a local symbol of how to turn hatred into something positive, an example of how evil can be transformed over time into inspiration for peace.

Hidden in Plain Sight

east meets west, international development, travel, vietnam, familyJohn AnnerComment

My wife and I stopped the other day at some hole-in-the-wall near our house for breakfast, a nice hot bowl of pho bo chin (beef soup with soft flat rice noodles, served with brisket). We sat on small plastic chairs at plastic tables; at the next table were three white-bearded men eating, laughing, smoking and drinking rice vodka. They might stay there for a couple of hours, the food long since gone, but there is plenty more rice booze in re-used plastic bottles stacked along the walls, and the water pipe sits next to a big box of lung-searing tobacco.

While waiting, I had my motorbike filled up with gas and washed until it gleamed. The total for all this activity was $4.60. Had we wanted, we could have continued down the road a bit, put the motorbike into a full-service garage, enjoyed breakfast at the Intercontinental and spent more like $75, plus plus (i.e. paying the value-added tax, or VAT).

Values, Virtues and Vampire Squids

east meets west, international development, organizational mgmt, philanthropy, valuesJohn AnnerComment

Values are everywhere these days, dripping off the pages of corporate annual reports and the subject of earnest discussions in non-profit strategic planning sessions. The World Bank, for example, advertises their core values as “personal honesty and integrity, working together in teams, empowering and respecting others, and enjoying work and family.” Who could find fault with that? These are laudable values, and if it is true that every single person in the organization around the world holds these values dear, then the World Bank must be a great place to work.